Following the great firewood processing of 2025, I was left with some junk wood remnants: rotten chunks, un-splittable end pieces, wood that absorbed too much mud over the years, etc. So I carefully stacked them into a pile and ended up with a…
No, not a haphazard pile of junk wood. A stumpery!
No really, this is a thing. The great Monty Don – Britain’s most famous master gardener, told me so.
And no, I’m not making this guy up either. The Brits are weird. He’s on Amazon streaming. Look it up.
The premise being, a pile of large chunks of wood can add visual interest to an otherwise over-manicured garden. Maybe, or it might just end up looking like a pile of junk. Which is why I’m attempting to inoculate it with mushroom spores.
I did successfully grow a mushroom patch last year, though the mushrooms themselves weren’t very tasty.
But for the purposes of the stumpery, I intend the mushrooms to be more ornamental than edible.
These packets are interesting. Little wooden plugs coated in mycelium, meant to be inserted into logs.
We shall see.
–Simon