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When making shiitake logs, is it better to use coarse wood chips or fine wood chips?
2025-07-13
When making shiitake logs, is it better to use coarse wood chips or fine wood chips?
The sawdust used for making shiitake mushroom sticks is pure oak sawdust. Oak, also known as
zuo mu (Chinese cork oak) and oak wood, has hard wood and rich lignin content, which enables the grown shiitake mushrooms to be large in size and thick in flesh.
Even for the same pure oak sawdust, the lignin content varies due to different climatic conditions indifferent regions, so it is necessary to ensure the quality and purity of oak.
The oak from deep mountains is processed into sawdust, then made into shiitake mushroom sticks.After 120 days of constant-temperature cultivation in a constant-temperature cultivation room,mushrooms can grow.
For the same pure oak sawdust, is there any difference in the choice of wood chip size?
1. coarse wood chips take a long time to decompose lignin, release nutrients slowly, and have
lasting effectiveness. Therefore, they are more suitable for long-mycelium-age shiitake
varieties, or for regions where shiitake logs over-summer, with long cultivation cycles and
long fruiting cycles.
2. coarse wood chips have good air permeability, which makes the mycelium grow more
vigorously, with whiter color and easier formation of tumor-like substances.
3. coarse wood chips can store more moisture, so the shiitake log made are heavier, which
provides more energy for fruiting in the later stage.
4. Generally, coarse wood chips are not prone to excessive shiitake mushroom bursting. The
grown shiitake mushrooms are large in size, thick in flesh, and not easy to open their caps.
Coarse wood chips have a disadvantage: there may be many small holes when bagging. Therefore,
the wood chips need to be pre-wetted and softened in advance, and the piles need to be turned
over during fermentation.
The advantages of fine wood chips are that the contact area between mycelium and wood chips is
relatively large, so the mycelium decomposes the wood chips, absorbs and transforms nutrients
more quickly, and the fruiting is relatively concentrated.
However, fine wood chips also have disadvantages. Due to poor air permeability, the growth of
mycelium will be slightly slower, and the water retention is also poor. Under the same water content,the wood chip shiitake logs are prone to water accumulation. Because the decomposition of woodchip mycelium is relatively fast, the first two crops of mushrooms will be more concentrated, while the later two crops will lack sufficient nutrients, which will affect the yield and quality of the later two crops.
If it is for factory - made shiitake log, constant - temperature cultivation, or summer mushrooms
and autumn - planted shiitake logs made by farmers, since the mycelium cultivation time is limited,
it is better to choose small and medium - sized wood chips with a size of 0.5 - 1 cm.
If it is for spring - planted shiitake logs with a long mycelium age that oversummer, try to choose
medium and large - sized wood chips with a size of 0.8 - 1.5 cm. Because the mycelium cultivation
time of spring - planted shiitake log is long, the wood chips do not need to be decomposed so
quickly. Using medium and large - sized wood chips can also avoid the excessive decomposition of
wood chips by mycelium caused by long - term mycelium cultivation.
PS: The shiitake in Biyang(Henan province) generally use large wood chips,
as Biyang shiitake substrate are generally filled into bags before and after Chinese New Year, they
have to survive the summer in the middle, and start fruiting in autumn, and continue fruiting until
spring of the second year. The cultivation cycle and fruiting cycle are very long, and the nutrients inthe shiitake bags can be fully released, so that not only the shiitake yield is high, but also the quality is good.
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Henan Joconn Machinery Co., Ltd. is an enterprise specializing in the production of mushroom equipment. It is engaged in the development, production and application of machinery and equipment for mushroom growth production lines.