How to turn oak branches into substrate

K

KICritters

L1
I have a bunch of dead oak branches in my yard that we cut down a few months ago. What is the best way for me to go about breaking them down and making them into a substrate for d. tityus?

 
Simply dead wood isn't useable--technically all wood is dead, since only the outer layer of a tree is alive. You want wood that's been attacked by fungus and broken down enough that it can be crumbled by hand. If you can't process it by hand, it's not ready for use without milling it into sawdust and fermenting or composting it.

 
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If they're still green under the bark (just scrape it a bit to check it out), you could try inoculating the larger branches with mycelium plugs from any number of vendors. It takes a few years for the logs to become useful for beetle breeding, but in the mean time you get to eat loads of fresh mushrooms, and the end product is perfect white rotten wood.

Daniel Ambuehl made a video detailing the whole process:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TjSQUZpEBFE

 
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