I’d like to know all the different wood chips I can use for Wine Cap production.

I came to this forum in search of this answer. The last thread started by Christine Wilcox was unbelievable so props to her great work. However, I need a wide swath of acceptable chip varieties. One website says to use fresh hardwoods, the next, aged hardwoods for several months. I’m wanting to use beech, fresh oak and tulip poplar. Since every website that sells the sawdust spawn has a different set of chips they recommend I’d like to hear from you, the experts. Thanks in advance, Scott

Scott,

Wine Caps will grow on just about any non-conifers.  Probably should avoid black locust and cedar.  I have used oak, hickory and lots and lots of autumn olive, my main food for wine caps.

Aged chips help wine caps as they get a little upper hand as wine caps like to have some bacteria around, but I have also sown wine caps on freshly chipped wood.  I have a huge pile of wood waiting to be chipped.  I planed on chipping it by the end of January.  But then February hit and with it, non-stop rains.  I was wanting to get just a couple of months aging before inoculating with wine caps, but it now looks like I will inoculate fresh chips—no big deal.

Often hardwoods are recommended because they will support the fungus for a longer time, but it will also take long to get a mushroom flush.  Some people use straw for fast flushed of mushrooms, but wine caps will really devour the straw quickly.

Even though it is not supposed to work, a member on Permies actually got wine caps to grow in black spruce as that was all she had in her spot in Alaska.

I wouldn’t get too worried about the exact wood as long as it is not pine or locust.  Almost anything else that rots will work and wine caps are pretty good starter mushrooms that don’t require huge amounts of care.

All of the wood that you mentioned should work, fresh or aged.

I hope this helps,

Eric

Scott,

Before you go try to use any of the information I suggested, I do have to ask you a question.  Are you trying to grow mushrooms or are you trying to make mushroom compost.  The ideal substrate mix will vary slightly depending on your end goal.  Personally, I was trying to get the mushroom compost as a primary goal and actual mushrooms as a distinct secondary goal.  I did get both, but you might be able to tailor your mix depending on exactly what you want.

Eric

Hi Eric, i'd like to start Winecaps too. The plan is to chip different types of wood up and fill up the path ways in between the raised beds. Would you recommend when i have received the spawn that i first multiply it on boiled straw, so that i have a lot of it to infect the freshly chipped woodchip walkways?
Or will the mycellium have problems adapting to it's new food source?

Hi Hugo,

Personally I would not worry about the straw, especially boiled straw.  The whole purpose of the boiled substrate is to ensure that you have one and only one fungus growing and is most relevant for growing mushrooms for food.  Since your plan is to go and spread them outside anyways, it would be a little like washing your hands prior to digging in mud.  I would just get a nice layer of chips down, get them thoroughly wet ans sow the spawn.  I would still use that straw though.  My technique has been to lay down chips, sow with spawn, soak down the chip/spawn mix, then add a nice, thick layer of straw (to keep the underlying wood from drying out) and soak the whole thing again.  The straw will dry out fairly fast, but soaking it helps to work it into the straw so that it does not blow right away.  The wine caps may indeed consume some straw and that is OK as well.  Just make certain that the whole thing is kept regularly moist.

I have been thinking about getting some straw bales, soaking them and inoculating the straw with spawn and leaving them in my garden just to see how fast they produce a crop of mushrooms and how fast they break down.  Again, I am really interested in their compost and I am pretty certain that straw will not produce as much compost as the woodchips will simply because the woodchips are more dense.

But at any rate, this is the way I would do things.

I hope this helps and by all means, please let me know how things work out for you--I will be very curious to see your progress.

Eric

Thanks for your guidance Eric. That was the kind of answer I was hoping for! I have considered making my bed with layers of straw, wood chips and sawdust from my Lions Mane experiment. I saved most of the sawdust from cutting the logs into totem poles.

Scott,

All three of those substrates can work very well.  I will give you a little bit more of my technique.

But first, I have a long-running thread HERE:

https://permies.com/t/80/82798/composting-wood-chips-chicken-litter

that details my experience from being a total fungal newbie and utter novice to having a basic degree of competence.  I still have a long ways to go on this fungal journey, but at the very least I can make wine caps.  I keep that thread updated in order to help anyone else making the same journey.

In my technique I lay down about one foot/30 cm of wood chips in the bed.  I then excavate 8 holes about 1 foot in diameter and 8-12 inches deep.  I backfill these holes with a good topsoil/manure mix (I use bagged topsoil/manure for convenience) until they are level with the rest of the chips.  These are your fertile holes.   You should have a lot of chips left over from digging fertile holes.  Save them for a later step, don’t just throw them on the surface yet.  

Now take a stake, tomato tower or something to stick into the fertile holes to mark them for later.  Next, dig a series of little holes about 5” wide and deep around the bed, mounding the excavated chips right next to each mini hole.  Then connect all the mini holes with little trenches 2” wide and deep.

Now take your spawn (I need 2 5.5lb bags for a 6x16’ bed, last year I used 4 bags for a 8x16’ bed) and break it up and crumble it while spreading liberally in each hole and all trenches.  Cover all mini holes and trenches and if you still have anything left, sprinkle it evenly over the surface.
The reason for the holes and trenches is that each hole now contains a node of spawn (really give the holes a healthy amount of spawn). The trenches then provide little highways to connect the nodes.  This will help get the fungi off and running.

Now take all those chips left over from the fertile holes and spread over the surface.  This usually gives me an extra 1-2 inches of chips.  Now liberally water the chip bed till it is soaked, cover with 2-4 inches of straw and water again.

Lastly plant something in the fertile holes, I use tomatoes for the following reasons:

1). As the tomatoes grow their leaves will cast shade on the surface of the chip-bed

2). The tomato roots extend beyond the fertile holes and interact with the wine caps.  Wine Caps love to grow in association with plant roots (some peas or beans just poked in randomly will only help).

3). I get tomatoes!  You don’t have to use tomatoes, but tomatoes grow tall and wide and cast great shade during the heat of summer.  Peppers would work well also.  The decision is really up to you.

I hope this helps and If I can be of further assistance, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Eric

We've been growing wine caps on hazelnut prunings that we chip in the spring. As for putting it in garden pathways, I think that walking on the chips would potentially injure the young 'shrooms as they begin to emerge and mess up the bed. We don't walk on ours but the deer sure do and they damage anything coming up. The bulk of the fruiting seems to happen nearer the edges so if you can avoid foot traffic on those areas that would be best.

Larisa,

I mostly agree with you.  That being said, I have seen wine caps in unused corners of walkways, but those are the exception and not the rule.  I imagine that for actual wine cap production a bed is best.

Eric

Thanks for all the great interactions on my post! I’m sorry I haven’t been more active but when I work I’m too tired to really be engaged. One more thought though; do you think they would grow with dried bamboo chipped up in the mix? I use it for trellises but the time has come to get some new bamboo. Thanks!

Scott,

No worries about having to work.  If you follow the thread I linked above, I have had a few developments.  Mostly I finally chipped up my wood pile and made a rather huge pile of wood chips in addition to putting my back out of commission for a couple of days.  Really, the bad back is worth the shear volume of wood chips I have acquired.  Incidentally, I have a fairly wide variety of wood in my pile.  Probably more than half is autumn olive, an invasive around here that I utilize for woodchips.  Oaks and hickory make up most of the rest.

Wine Caps will devour most types of hardwood (which in this case is a grossly exaggerated term as autumn olive is pretty soft and I am pretty certain that wine caps will devour willow.  Just don’t give it pine or black locust) and even straw.  Basically hardwood just means not pine wood.

I hope this helps,

Eric

Thanks Eric, it does help. When I grew shiitake I was told not to use wood that had been down more than a couple weeks. The thinking was that it was already colonized by another fungi. The wine cap patch I’m making is going to be pretty small and I’d like to know what wood is going in it. Do you think I could pick up brittle, old limbs from the surrounding area to use in the mix?

Scott,

So I think that if you are trying Wine Caps, most non coniferous wood will work.  If you see some wood that is obviously colonized by another fungi, as in it is covered in mushrooms, you might want to leave that part out.  But wine caps are aggressive.  No doubt, if you are getting wood from the “wild” so to speak, they *WILL* have competing fungi.  But for the most part, Wine Caps just don’t care.  They are so aggressive that they will out compete almost any fungi.

Shiitaki mushrooms are nothing like wine caps, so they need a fairly sterile medium.

As far as what wood to use, one of the desirable qualities of wine caps is that they are not at all picky about what wood they eat, so long as it is not black locust or a conifer.  If you are starting wine caps for mushrooms, then a softer, less dense hardwood will give you mushrooms the fastest.  In fact, if you really want mushrooms in a hurry, sow them into bales of straw.  If you want compost, use something like a hardwood.  It will take longer to decompose but in the end you will have more compost.

The reason for this characteristic has to do with the lifecycle of a “mushroom.”  Wine Caps (as well as many fungi) start off as a spore, which is kinda like a little fungi egg (not a perfect analogy).  When the spores land on something they can eat, the have a massive party.  The individual spores begin to form a fungal body inside the substrate.  Once in the substrate the new fungal bodies (mycelium) really party hard.  They reproduce sexually, swap DNA and eat and eat and eat.  The new fungi will continue to grow in their substrate, digesting until the substrate until they run out of substrate.  Once the food is gone, the party is over and the fungi may die of starvation so in a last, desperate attempt to survive they form an actual mushroom and release more spores to start the party again in a different medium.

The faster the mushrooms eat, the faster they run out of food and push up a mushroom.  There is not all that much food in straw and wine caps are hungry so they run out of food fast and push out mushrooms.  Wood will take longer to digest and therefore longer to produce mushrooms but will leave more excellent compost behind.  Really hard, heavy woods will take a long time to produce mushrooms and will leave even more compost.

A perfectly reasonable approach could be to make a wood chip bed out of a variety of hardwood and softer non-conifers.  This will give the fungi something to eat quickly and something to chew on for some time.  You could even put some straw bales on top and inoculate those as well to give the wine caps a sugar rush just to get them started and maybe even get some mushrooms for your efforts.

These are just my thoughts and take or leave them as you see fit.

Good Luck and please keep us updated!

Eric

Scott,

I missed s portion of an earlier question.  Bamboo is not all that great a growing medium for wine caps.  In fact, bamboo usually gets broken down by bacteria instead,

That being said, if you have a little bit of bamboo, give it a try in a corner of your bed and see what happens.

I actually recently asked this very same question.  I have this strange obsession with growing my own wood destined to go through a wood chipper and into my gardens.  One idea that floated through my mind was a bamboo grove.  I asked about this idea an was told that bamboo probably would not work.  Too bad as it grows so fast.  If I do take on this project it will be with poplar which is easily consumed by wine caps.

Sorry I missed that point in your question.  I was typing and reading while exhausted!

Eric

Thank you again Eric. I apologize once again for my prolonged absence due to work. I do not have a chipper unfortunately. I have been collecting wood and using pruning shears to cut them up. Some of the pieces are larger than I would like but that may be ok.

Scott,

No need to apologize.  If you have to work then you have to work.  Part of the nice part about having a forum like this is that we can have long term discussions.

Good Luck with your wine caps!!

Eric

Found this from a few years back.

Why can you not use pine chips ??

Hi Joe,

From my understanding wine caps don’t like the presence of pine sap.  Apparently the sap impairs the growth of the fungi.  When I first ordered my spawn, the seller was very keen to suggest I avoid pine at all costs.

All that being said, I have never tried to use pine wood and maybe pine relatively free of sap would work.  I did have a conversation somewhere on these threads that suggested that wine caps were being used in Alaska on black pine simply because that is what they had around.

I think it would be interesting to see if wine caps can indeed grow on pine wood, maybe as a part of a mix.

I hope this helps,

Eric

I am a super newbie growing wine caps for the first time. I cannot chip my own wood. Can I use commercial grade wood chips, and also can I use hardwood chips that have been dyed brown? The only unprocessed chips that I could find are from trees and branches and may include conifer branches so I don't want to use that.

Hi Abe.  Welcome to Permies!

Great questions about substrate products and I totally understand your situation where you are not able to chip up your own wood.  I will try to answer your questions more directly and give you an option or two that might also work.

Firstly, I would think that the wood shavings would work.  Do you know what species of wood these would come from?  If you were getting something like aspen bedding litter (my daughter uses this for her rabbit), I would think you would be in very good shape.  Pine shavings *Might* work, but generally conifers are to be avoided with Wine Caps.  My understanding is that the sap inhibits the mycelial growth, but the pine shavings might be relatively free of pine sap.  Honestly, I just don't know as I have never used pine and I don't know the actual condition of the shavings without actually looking at them.  I would also avoid cedar chips.  But if you can find just about any other non-conifer chip (again, aspen or poplar would be great here) I think you would be in great shape and these do come in big bundles that can be purchased at a farm supply store.

Secondly, I would suspect that Wine Caps would in fact grow on dyed bulk wood chips, I just don't know what is in that dye, what gets into the mushroom, nor if it is toxic to you if you want to eat them.  Maybe you could find out what is in the actual dye.  But I do know from experience that fungi will grow on that very type of wood mulch you are mentioning and if some types of mushrooms can grow there, then I think that Wine Caps would certainly grow there.  My experience (which does not include pine or cedar) is that Wine Caps will ravage just about any type of wood!

So a couple of other options you might consider:

1)  Can you get a good hardwood log and inoculate with pegs instead of sawdust spawn?  This is the more traditional way to grow mushrooms--inoculating a log as opposed to inoculating chips.  It might take a bit longer to colonize, but make no mistake, that log will get obliterated by the Wine Caps and the left overs will make great compost.

2)  Another thought:  Can you get straw bales?  Wine Caps will grow VERY fast on straw bales--far faster than on my wood chip beds.  I am tinkering with the idea of trying some straw bale experimentation this fall just to try out the idea.  I did once have a straw bale that got accidentally inoculated from wood chips that had been inoculated with Wind Caps.  The Mycelium had to expand about 4 feet to reach the straw bale, but in year one of accidental inoculation, the bale lost half its volume.  But year two, the bale was reduced to being about 1-2 inches tall but still vaguely recognizable as where a bale had once been.  After year 3 I could see no trace of the bale whatsoever.  Straw bales yield up quick mushrooms but don't last terribly long.

3)  The hybrid model.  This is something like a Frankenstein hugel bed.  Maybe you could lay down some logs on the ground and lay straw bales on top.  Possibly the bales would decompose very quickly giving you the mushrooms you want quickly, while the logs (oak is best, but just about any non-conifer will do.  I use a LOT of Autumn Olive) would give you a longer supply and more compost.

These are just a few ideas and if they help, Great!  If you still have questions, Fire Away!

In either case, once again, Welcome to Permies!

Eric

First time mushroom grower. I just received my order of mushrooms, which includes two varieties of oyster, and wine cap.

I don't have a wood chipper, but do have pile of prunings and "compost browns" as well as sawdust and small chips/splinters from chopping wood. They come from dogwood, honeysuckle, forsythia, euonymus, ash, chokeberry as well as fallen branches from silver maple (mostly colonized by lichen), sugar maple, kentucky coffee and willow. I also have some cedar and spruce that I can avoid. The compost browns include pine needles, dried grass and other dried plants, leaves, spruce cones (I can remove those as they have sap), as well as chopped yew and english ivy. I was planning on putting the winecaps in the vegetable garden where I'll be growing cucurbits, tomatoes, peas and beans. The borders raised bed walls were made from chopped wood and chopped roots from deciduous trees (forgot what kind).

I also bought some straw that I'll use to kick start the winecaps. I could put down cardboard and throw some partially finished compost in as well.

I asked the arborist that was working down the street about wood chips but he said he was mostly cutting black locust, cedar and a bit of pine and maple, so I told him I'll take a pass. What's the main issue with black locust?

Also cedar is evergreen, but I don't think it has too much sap compared to spruce and pine? Also I think pine needles have relatively little sap in them? I have some wild mushrooms growing under my spruce and pine trees.

How about other evergreens like yew and euonymus?

I'm still on the list with another company for a wood chip delivery once they have a job in my area, but they don't know what kind of trees they'll cut. We have a lot of hardwoods, but it's often the evergreens that people like to prune, unless some hardwood fell down or they want to cut it for a construction project. Our neighbourhood also has a fair bit of black walnut, would those be bad?

My mum has a very healthy looking patch of wine cap mycelium under a horse chestnut tree. I gave her some freshly chipped willow, birch, alder to get them started, but mostly it's just growing in the leaves and chestnut husks from the tree.

Thanks for all the insights Eric! Have you ever tried shredded tanoak and alder leaves as a substrate? I have those more easily available than chips, but I also have a few raised beds mulched with tanoak chips (with shredded leaves mixed in as they just tossed the whole tree in a chipper). These tanoak chips were cut and spread in January, so it seems like they might be pretty good for winecap spawn I just received. I will add some straw as well. I also love the idea of growing winecaps on straw bales I will use to insulate my chicken coop (pressed against the outside of hardware cloth walls.

As for cedar, I am obviously no mycology expert, but cedar and redwood are prized for its longevity due to antifungal tannins. Pine is not so weather proof, but still produces tannins that are antifungal.

Interestingly, the more antifungal the wood in a forest, the more fungal biodiversity one finds as it takes more specialization and consortia of those highly specialized fungal alchemists to unlock that immense potential food source. Redwood forests have the most fungal diversity of any place on Earth, with over 100,000 species to be found in as little as a cubic meter (if I remember the unit of volume correctly). It seems like wine caps are generalists, and work on a different edge of the evolutionary strategy spectrum than those specialized redwood and cedar eaters (and many of those fungi are symbiotic with the tree, getting food another way).

Dyed wood chips sold at big box stores are often chipped up pallets from countries with environmental protection/toxicity standards so low that they will not be accepted by US landfills. Basically its too toxic to be garbage, so it is then sold to unwitting homeowners!

Hi all

I'm new here. Last year we had a great success growing wine caps within our vegetable beds. The vegetables thrived, and the mycelium created beautiful soil.

I have never exclusively used pine/conifer wood on wine caps, but in some occasions I have had mixed woodchips with pine/conifer, and it turned out just fine. My theory is, that over time the resin in the pine will break down, and the mycelium running on other type of wood chips eventually will jump over the pine chips. I used all kinds of wood, and i'm not too worried about using pine/conifer wood as long you mix in enough other types.

I was wondering if someone would have certain experience with some of my questions:

1) can you endlessly regrow wine caps just by adding new wood chips every year? Or will the flushes diminish gradually to a point you need to buy fresh spawn? Has anyone kept their original spawn going for more than a few years?

2) Does anyone know the effect of wood ash on wine caps mycelium? I'm thinking of putting a thin layer of ash on the top of the beds gradually. Slugs love to dig in my wine cap/mulch beds and lay thousands of eggs. I found out some mushrooms flourish on ashes, but was wondering if someone had any experience with adding ashes to wine cap beds as a top layer.


Thanks in advance!

Hi John,

Welcome to Permies.  Great questions, unfortunately I am pretty new to mushrooms myself.

Hi all, also new to posting here, though I've learned a lot reading over the years. I'm trying to source free woodchips in my city (Toronto) to continue expanding my wine cap mycelium started last fall. I've got a source of mixed maple, pine, and honey locust. John Thai's post above indicates some pine mixed in is okay, hopefully it's not too sappy. I'm wondering about the Locust though - I'm seeing the warning against black locust, and am wondering if anyone can chime in with whether honey locust would also be advised against?

Hi Lou,

Welcome to Permies.

Hi Lou,

If at all possible, I would try to keep the Black Locust out of there.

A thought I had was to maybe incorporate a bale or two of straw in the mix of chips.  I have not tried this with pine, but maybe you could get enough fungi growing that it would not be deterred by the pine.  On top of that, I have heard (but not actually seen) that chipping the pine reduces the effects of the sap.  Apparently there are more ways for the little fungal strands to get access to the consumable wood.  Finally, pine that has dried and therefore has no running sap apparently has a minimal effect on Stropharia.

I hope these pointers can help you.  Feel free to ask more questions if you have them.

Eric

This was good to read!! So from what I am reading I can use moringa tree chips and palo verde chips. I hope so because that's what I have and where I am from typical hard wood chips are not easy to come by. So I am hoping since they are not pine they should work... 😃 correct?


She-She

Hi She-she, and welcome. Those should probably be good chips for growing wine caps. From what I remember of palo verde wood, it's quite soft and decays readily, unlike its cousins mesquite and ironwood.

Hi John,
With a few years of growing under your belt do you have any personal insight on your questions below, I have similar curiosity. Thanks!


I was wondering if someone would have certain experience with some of my questions:

1) can you endlessly regrow wine caps just by adding new wood chips every year? Or will the flushes diminish gradually to a point you need to buy fresh spawn? Has anyone kept their original spawn going for more than a few years?

2) Does anyone know the effect of wood ash on wine caps mycelium? I'm thinking of putting a thin layer of ash on the top of the beds gradually. Slugs love to dig in my wine cap/mulch beds and lay thousands of eggs. I found out some mushrooms flourish on ashes, but was wondering if someone had any experience with adding ashes to wine cap beds as a top layer.


Thanks in advance!

J Rowe wrote:Hi John,
With a few years of growing under your belt do you have any personal insight on your questions below, I have similar curiosity. Thanks!


I was wondering if someone would have certain experience with some of my questions:

1) can you endlessly regrow wine caps just by adding new wood chips every year? Or will the flushes diminish gradually to a point you need to buy fresh spawn? Has anyone kept their original spawn going for more than a few years?

2) Does anyone know the effect of wood ash on wine caps mycelium? I'm thinking of putting a thin layer of ash on the top of the beds gradually. Slugs love to dig in my wine cap/mulch beds and lay thousands of eggs. I found out some mushrooms flourish on ashes, but was wondering if someone had any experience with adding ashes to wine cap beds as a top layer.


Thanks in advance!

Slugs have been a problem for me too, I have to pick my mushrooms rather quickly. I started my winecap bed in April 2022, had it flush in summer/fall 2022, again in spring 2023, then moved to a different property and shoveled the mulch into a few bins and used that to start a new bed at my new property and added more substrate. I got some small flushes in 2024, we'll see if I get more this spring. They usually flush in late May/June in my climate, and then against in September.