Mushrooms Follow-up

Do you remember this article? Our friend who set up a mushroom farm on his land. https://selfreliancecentral.com/2025/09/16/from-a-reader-growing-mushrooms-on-logs/

Well, he’s got an update for us!

It’s been dry down South where I live this Spring, so the mushrooms are slow to fruit.  We got a little rain last week and the Shiitake mushrooms took off and I harvested over 10 bags of them.

We eat and give to friends some of the fresh ones, then we will freeze dry and vacuum seal the rest.

For the Shiitake’s we’ll pull the stems out, because they are kind of tough, and slice or chop the caps.

From there we will put them into the freeze dryer.  Before we got the freeze dryer, we would dehydrate them.  Dehydrating is pretty decent, but freeze drying will preserve the color and taste much better.  They re-hydrate very quicky.  If we are adding to a soup or a sauce (like speghetti sauce), we just add them directly from the bag into the sauce and re-hydrate them that way.  

After freeze drying, we put them into vacuum bags and vacuum seal them.

If you’re going to consume your freeze dried mushrooms within a year or two, then you can keep them in the vacuum bags out of the light and be fine.  If you want long-term (like 20 years or so), put the vacuum-bagged mushrooms in a mylar bag and seal them.

I would suggest keeping it small to start with – you can always expand after that.  Once the mushrooms start to fruit, it may prove to be a rewarding experience you.  The best source I found was at:

Field & Forest ([email protected] or (800) 792-6220).  They are an excellent resource!!