North Spore Organic Chicken of the Woods Mushroom Spawn Plugs, 100 ct

It took 2 years before I got any Shittake mushrooms. I innoculated in October 2023, Northern MN, on fresh cut oak logs (aged 2 weeks before inoculation). I've been mostly hands-off maintaining them. I moved the logs after the 2nd spring, after no results. The first location was shady, but maybe too much airflow, they may have been too dry. Maybe I need to be more patient. The second location was on a sloped area, near wetland, a little more shade. More forest density around them. Later that year, I stated getting flushes after decent rainfall. Into the 3rd year now, I still get to harvest once in a while, a few days after a good rain. I innoculated more logs last fall. Same location, still waiting on them. This batch from earlier this year. They dehydrate well. It works for me.

Received our order in March 2024 and placed our spawn plugs (shiitake, Italian oyster, snow, oyster, and lions mane) into the logs the following month. The order came with an instruction booklet which explained the best time of year to “plant” and what type of trees work best for each mushroom. Unfortunately, we had misidentified the tree we harvested for our logs and it was the one tree not listed. I didn’t want to cut down another tree so we used the serviceberry and hoped for the best. It is now early November 2024 and our shiitakes are blooming and we’ve even seen a few oyster mushrooms too. No growth on the lions mane but that may be due to us using a serviceberry for our logs. Needless to say, I am very happy with this purchase and I will definitely be using North Spore again.

It's actually works and very good! Put the bits in an oak or fresh oak logs and enjoy the mushrooms!

Purchased two beautiful cut logs, inoculated per instructions. Both logs grew nothing but Turkey Tail. Not a Snow Oyster Mushroom on either. Very disappointed. Time and investment lost.

Good product and easy to follow instructions. Can't wait to enjoy my Shitakes.

This product is a bag of small wooden dowels that are inoculated with lion's mane mushroom spores. A spore is similar to a seed but it is microscopic and grows mushrooms. These products are meant to be stuck into a piece of wood or other similar growing medium to create your own lion's mane mushrooms at home. You can drill into a dead log and tap these dowels into the holes to completely inoculate the log and get your mushrooms. These dowels are very similar to the type found in IKEA style furniture, they just happen to be apparently "soaked" with lion's main spores. But unfortunately these dowels did not result in any mushrooms for me. I am pretty well experienced with mushrooms and I have grown them before with ease. I know lion's mane is a little bit trickier of a variety but so far the closest I've come to getting the mycelium to grow is the picture above, which also appears to be contaminated. I have tried the manufacturer's recommendation of sticking them into a piece of wood, I've also placed the dowels and the crumbs from the bag in Coco Coir, sterilized popcorn, and other grain mediums to see what would happen (above is sterilized wheat berries). I have not had any luck getting the mushrooms. I know this is a very difficult type of mushroom to grow on command, but I would have hoped to at least had a little bit of consistent growth. Not totally sure if I made some errors along the way but I have grown mushrooms before without any issues and I understand the conditions needed to make them grow.

Still waiting??

I love how easy this was. They gave way more plugs than I could possibly use. Didn’t mind though

Good, reliable vendor.

I haven't harvested any yet but I'm really impressed with the price, packaging, delivery time, and extremely accurate instructions it came with.

Left them on the counter for weeks when I opened the package it said not to store in a cool place. Bit late. Those Instructions sould be on the outside. Waste of money

This is just what I ordered. It came with a guaranty and terrific instructions, as well as information on the other products the company makes. On top of that, the price is reasonable and it even arrived before I expected it to. While I have to wait a while to see how soon I get mushrooms the fact that they stand behind their work makes me feel good.