GLIDE, Ore. — Oak logs, each about half the length of a child’s arm, sat side by side on two tables on a paved walkway next to the garden at Glide Elementary School.
Alicia Christiansen took a pinch of sawdust and pushed it into a hole drilled into the log. Then she held up an implement with a thin metal handle and a wool ball at the end.
“The spores for the mushrooms are already in the sawdust. Once I get to the point where that sawdust is almost to the top of the log, I’m going to take the dauber …”
“You don’t think of nutrition and forestry going hand in hand. But it’s been really fun."
Christiansen, an Oregon State University Extension Service forester in Douglas County, leaned into the middle of the table to dip the dauber into a pan of hot wax. She swirled it around and brought it back to the log.
“Once you do this, then you’re going to seal over the top of the hole. The wax cooled so we’re going to let it seal. Do you see how that looks nice and sealed? See that it’s white? That’s how you know it’s a good seal.”
Hands-on shiitake lesson
With that, Christiansen demonstrated how to inoculate a log with shiitake mushroom spores. For the next hour, students moistened the holes with water, filled them with sawdust and covered the holes with wax.
Christiansen taught two sixth grade classes back to back, for a total of about 45 students. The kids stacked their finished logs in the garden, each labeled with a first name in black ink.
If all goes well, the mushrooms will grow out of the logs and be ready for harvest by late summer.
“They should produce mushrooms for several years,” said Mandy Hatfield, Extension nutrition educator for Douglas County, who worked with Glide Elementary to coincide with mushrooms being the featured Food Hero Monthly harvest item.
Food Hero, a statewide initiative of the Oregon Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed), is used in communities and schools across the state, building children’s cooking skills through shared recipes and tastings of new foods.
‘Overheard in the office’ sparks an idea
Before the hands-on activities, Christiansen gave a presentation about mushrooms — their life cycle, how to inoculate logs, preferred tree species and how woodland owners can inoculate their own logs.
Glide is a town of 1,800 in the Cascade Range foothills about 17 miles northeast of Roseburg. The countryside is dominated by stands of oaks and evergreen trees. Many Glide students live on or near wooded properties, Hatfield said.
The idea began when Hatfield heard Christiansen in the Extension office planning a shiitake inoculation class for Master Gardeners.
“I asked her, ‘Do you think you could do this with kids?’ Alicia said, ‘I probably could.’ So, I said, ‘I have a school that would love this.’”
It was the first time Hatfield and Christiansen had worked together on a project. They both said they’d like to do it again.
“It opened the door to find where we could cross-pollinate our programs more,” Christiansen said. “You don’t think of nutrition and forestry going hand in hand. But it’s been really fun. Youth is not an audience that I get to interact with very frequently, so it’s been fun to get out of my norm. The kids are awesome.”
Students take the lesson home
Joe Kercher, one of the Glide sixth graders, said he’s interested in growing mushrooms on logs because his family likes to hike and hunt. Every summer his family has a plant sale. He plans to try growing shiitake mushrooms at home.
“This was really fun,” Joe said. “I can’t wait to see the finished product.”
Previously titled Using logs, OSU Extension teaches kids how to grow mushrooms for food
