In article et,
"Ken Moon" wrote:

I find that things spalt nicely if left lying on a forest floor - figure
all the right fungi (and it is fungi, not bacteria - the spalt lines are
the chemical warfare defining the boundary of one fugal colony and the
next) are living right there. If not having a forest, leaves would
presumably help. If you had the time and energy, turning things once in
a while might even the process up a bit.

Sometimes you can see marks on the end of the log, and often there are
fruiting parts (ie, a visible tree fungus growth). But it is somewhat of
a crap shoot - keep checking with an icepick, and pull stuff in to turn
if there's much sign of softening on any piece in a batch. Before it
softens, you pretty much need to cut or turn a piece to see how its
coming along. If not so much, I guess you could put the piece back for
more fungus time.

--
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