We don't live in the same climate, but this topic was apropos to me. I just ordered my plug spawn from fungi perfecti and inoculated my oak logs today. (2 of 4 species compete today)
I live in North Texas, and we've had a shitload of rain in the last 4 days!
I ordered shiitake, pearl oyster, blue oyster, and I wanted to try lion's mane. FP had a special discount ~ 34% off order if I ordered 3 or more bags. 100 count.
I've never grown food mushrooms before, although I may have
experience growing another species of mushrooms.
I chose to inoculate now, because: 1) I was excited about getting it done. 2) I had a little extra $$ to go ahead and place my order now. 3) The nice lady at FP said I could inoculate now, so long as I give the spawn at least 30 days before a hard freeze. In North Texas, that's no problem this time of year. Unless a freak storm blows through, we probably won't have a hard freeze until Jan/Feb.
Now that I've received the plugs, and read the instructions thoroughly, I may not have been as rigorous about sanitation as I should have been. I got the cut oak logs from my dad's place in Muskogee, OK and the logs have been piled up in my
yard for a long time now. I didn't realize I needed to keep them up off the ground. I did see some native mycelial growth, but not too deep. At least, that's my hope. Also, I didn't have food grade wax. I just used some candles that I bought from Wal-Mart. Paraffin wax, no doubt, but it was all I had, and I couldn't justify spending the extra money on beeswax. Also, the instructions, as I read later, indicated that I needed to wax the end cap of the logs. I didn't do that.
It's a pretty labor intensive process; I ran out of time today. By the time I got two species of plugs done (200 plugs; 4 logs) I ran out of time.
I'm hopeful that the spawn will inoculate the logs and overcome any deficiencies in my processes.
I'll keep you posted.