In 2014 when we moved to our current homestead, we had several Oak in our front yard cut down with the intention of starting from scratch with a food forest. The trees were cut down, the logs put in one of our unused pole barns, and the branches burned (unfortunately we didn't think about keeping them for hugelkutlur). The remaining stumps were ground in place into mulch .

This is my favorite pic of the Turkey Tail

Well, last year I started noticing some mushrooms growing wild where the mulched trees were. I didn't inoculate these, also many people nowadays are putting spores of these mushrooms into old logs specifically to harvest these. The two types of mushrooms were Reishi and Turkey Tail.

It's hard to see here but if you look close, you can see where some of last year's dead grass, which grew throughout the mushroom, still exists. It was growing so much through the mushroom I didn't ever see there were mushrooms growing here last year for quite some time because it was almost hidden. I was also unable to harvest it to dry for tea or eat because there was so much growing through it. You can see pretty clearly in front of the mushroom the grass. Not sure what kind of grass it was, but it was that super annoying kind that spreads similar to how strawberries do. I think Bermuda grass, but don't know

This year we had early spring weather for a couple of weeks, followed by really cold weather for a few weeks. After that, we had nice spring weather again with a good amount of rain one day. Before most of the trees and plants started coming out of dormancy, I did a little walk around the yard and was delighted to see that the mushrooms had started waking up.

Another closeup of Turkey Tail. This stump remnant had a pretty extensive area of the mushroom, taking up the majority of the 2.5 foot diameter

Another Turkey Tail closeup

This time they have grown to take over a larger area. Now, we had the trucks ground down, but did nothing with the roots, leaving them how they were in the ground. Some of those roots have started decomposing, which is exactly what the mushrooms like. Old decaying wood of oak trees.

Here is an overview of just one of the old trees where the stump was ground into mulch. There are 4 areas of mushrooms growing out of the 10 trees that were cut down. This particular area is about a 2 1/2 diameter area.

Since the weather went back and forth between sub temps and mildly warm weather, the mushrooms have appeared to go back to sleep. They should come back alive once there is more rain. Also, last year I was unable to harvest any of them because there was grass and white clover growing through them. This year I intend to keep the area weeded as much as possible so I can harvest for medicine, food, and tea, as well as try to inoculate where they can grow without competing with the groundcover plants. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy these pictures.