Plug and Hammer

Meet the plug spawn

Time to bring the log to life. Plug spawn — sometimes called spawn dowels — are short wooden pegs that have already been grown full of shiitake mycelium. They arrive from a trusted spawn supplier, packed in a bag, looking a little fuzzy and white where the fungus has taken hold. Each one is a tiny living seed for your log.

Because they are living, they need care. Keep them cool and shaded until the moment you use them, and always wash your hands before you handle them. Clean hands mean you are not passing other moulds onto the fresh wood.

Hammering them home

Each dowel goes into one of your drilled holes. Here is the routine:

1. Place a dowel into a hole, fuzzy and all.

2. Tap it with a rubber mallet until it sits just below the surface of the bark.

3. Move to the next hole and repeat, all around the log.

A rubber mallet is softer and safer than a metal hammer, but it is still a tool you swing — so do this with your adult beside you, keeping fingers clear of the landing spot.

Why snug is everything

The golden rule is good contact. The dowel must touch the wood tightly on every side. That tight contact is how the mycelium climbs off the dowel and into the log. If a dowel is loose or sticking out, air gets in, the spawn dries, and that doorway may fail.

So tap each one firmly until it is snug and just tucked below the bark line. Not so hard that you crush it — just firm and level. You will get a satisfying rhythm going: place, tap, tap, done.

Work steadily, keep count

Inoculating a whole log is a team job with a nice flow:

• One person places dowels, the other taps — or you swap jobs to rest your arm.

• Count as you go, matching your roughly 50 holes.

• Do not leave any hole empty; an unfilled hole is a weak spot where other fungi could sneak in.

Don't let the dowels sit around in the sun while you work — keep the bag shaded so the spawn stays alive and damp.

Remember why this is safe: you are using a known, cultivated shiitake strain from a trusted supplier, placed into clean fresh wood. This is completely different from wild fungi, which we only ever look at and record — never touch or eat.

Every hole now holds a living dowel. But the spawn is exposed to the air and could dry out. In the next lesson we lock it all in with wax.