growing slowly
do not be afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still – chinese proverb
The exciting (and very tardy) conclusion to the Mushroom Log Saga
So the mushroom log sent up a whole bunch of little spires which I hoped would turn into nice little shiitake mushrooms. Instead they all shriveled up and I got ONE. ONE!!!!! After all that! One mushroom! Very disheartening. The log has officially moved into its new home: the garden. If some little shiitakes start appearing anywhere I will be thrilled but totally shocked. I think this mushroom growing business is more difficult than it first appears. I hope that someone else out there has more successful experiments than mine. Maybe one day I will try my hand at it again.
For closure: here is a picture of my solitary mushroom. Since I don’t even really like mushrooms I fed it to my vegetarian friend Dez along with some potatoes and onions. She said it was delicious.
It’s fruiting! It’s fruiting!
July 2, 2010
After weeks of complete neglect of my little mushroom log I decided to attempt a “cold soak” to see if it could be salvaged. I put it in a Tupperware container and filled it up with water then put some plates on the log to keep it submerged. I left it in the fridge for one week (it took up a lot of space and was pretty annoying) but a few days after it came out LOOK! It’s fruiting! It’s really fruiting! YAY! At least, I think that is what it is doing. For all I know it might be about to ejaculate its mushroomy spores into the air so that it can breed a population of mushroom people to destroy all life as we know it on earth and replace everything with sludgey mushroomy goo. Hopefully it’s just fruiting.
an update…
June 17, 2010
My mushroom kit …. died. It was totally my fault too! AH! I sort of forgot to spritz it for about a week, as opposed to the 4-5 times a day the package recommended. So now it is a dehydrated log of white and brown crusty fungal goo. I am attempting a “cold soak” which involves submerging the log in the refrigerator overnight so that it rehydrates. Keep your fingers crossed and send me some mushroomy thoughts. I hope it is not too late to save the log!
As far as my little (big) planties are concerned: IT HAS TO STOP RAINING!!!!!! DAMMIT! Can we please have more than two days of sunshine every week and a half? Please? Preferably on my days off so that I can actually get gardening done? PLEASE!!!! Seriously though, almost everything got in the ground without dying. This year has (so far) about a 60% better survival rate than previous years. I’m getting better at this! Slowly! We’ll see how the peppers and eggplanties fare in their planters though. They haven’t been looking very happy with all this rain. That, and I really don’t know if I should put eggplanties in planters. Guess we’ll see how it goes.
I have not done any of the landscaping that I had hoped to get done by May. It’s been rather pathetic. I still have a bed to dig Bishop’s Weed out of and my patio continues to be surrounded with quartz stone rather than useable garden. There’s always the fall I suppose. It is not stressing me out as much as it was. I think I may have given up a few months earlier than normal. Life has just been crazy lately. Maddy is one and a half and man oh man she is sure a handful. Teething lately. Very clingy. And screamy (and please don’t tell me what frozen things or cold things or chewy things worked for your children. I have tried everything and she won’t even give it a shot. We’ve moved on to baby Tylenol with occasional orajel usage).
The side garden has been lovely this year. The irises were gorgeous for about four weeks, the day lilies are just blooming, my peonies are happy in their cages, and the creeping jenny adds a splash of color. I put in some foxglove, dutura, and shasta daisies. They haven’t shown much growth unfortunately. I also laid down seed for some california poppies and some black-eyed susans. The black-eyed susans are nowhere to be found, but the poppies are coming along nicely. I may have put in some sunflowers also. I should check on them one of these days. They’re behind the irises so I really don’t know if they are doing much of anything.
Money spent on garden this year = $0. Depressing, isn’t it? I had my eye on a pair of hanging baskets full of fushias for the front entrance, but someone grabbed them before me.
That’s the garden report! Pictures to follow if it ever stops raining!
it’s out of control!
May 8, 2010
Slow down little planties! SLOW DOWN!!! I’ve been reading about pruning tomatoes. I never really thought about it before, but since these little fellers grew six inches in a week I was wondering what to do. I read some interesting articles online about how to get the best fruit from your tomato planties but pruning certain shoots and by letting less fruit grow on each plant at a time. Apparently there is more to it than just plunking them into a hole in the ground and watering them all the time. Nifty. Y’all should look into it yourselves. I am still trying to figure out if I should just lob the tops off of the plants in an effort to beef up the bottoms and make them a little bushier. I’m a little worried that they might not recover in the way I hope though. If anyone has suggestions let me know. I had to stake the wee beasties to keep them from toppling over. I was hoping to avoid doing that until they were planted outside at least. I just finished pinching a few flowers off my tomatoes and squash plants. Crazy plants. I’m planning on reorganizing the table full of garden so that some other growing things have an opportunity to see sunlight. Hopefully the baby doesn’t get too interested in pulling the pots off the table. My peppers and eggplants are also just about ready to go into larger pots too but I am out of space! I need a bigger window! Or just some kind rich stranger to build me a greenhouse in my backyard. Or both, ideally. I could also use some landscaping assistance as I have not quite done as much as I had hoped to by this time of the year. I have to clean out a lot of bishops weed from the bed surrounding my patio on the far side of it. I wanted to pull up the quartz stone and landscaping fabric that someone put down on the near side of the patio. I don’t understand why people do that. It’s always full of dead leaves and twigs and is just a breeding ground for insects which then somehow end up in my basement…. gross. Note to self, install a bird feeder in that area soon. Maybe they can deal with the pill beetle infestation in that part of my yard. I had also hoped to turn up the beds in the front of my house. Looking at them now though I think I may need some more dirt there. There is some erosion just under the basement windows which face the street. I have been thinking about what to plant in those two front beds. I might try to put in some astilbe and goat’s beard (aruncus) and maybe a couple of hostas. Those gardens are on the north side of my house under an overhang and get no direct sunlight. If you know of (or have) any other shade loving plants let me know. They also have to be dear proof, since I live in Charleswood…. and such. Oh, I took my shiitake mushroom log out of its bag and erected its humidity tent. It’s stinky and looks pretty crazy, but I think I may possible see some mushrooms soon. Fingers crossed everyone! Fingers crossed!
my indoor garden
May 4, 2010
My indoor garden really needs to go outside soon. I know, I know…. I still have about a month to go. It is just getting WAY TOO HUGE! I transplanted my tomatoes and squash into larger 4″ pots a few weeks ago and they exploded! My squash keep putting out flowers in a misguided attempt to be pollinated and produce fruit. The tomatoes are way too big. They’re actually too big for themselves. They’ve been getting a little top heavy. I need to figure out if I can cut them back a little this late in the game. Maybe encourage them to send their growing energy into root production and bushiness rather than height. I don’t know. I’m taking suggestions everyone.
On another note, my mushroom kit looks crazy. No mushrooms yet, but I hope to see some soon. I’ll post pictures later this week hopefully of both.
my mind just blew
April 2, 2010
Ok. So. Here’s what has been getting me more and more and more and MORE excited all morning long: Straw Bale Gardening! Have you ever heard of this? What an absolutely brilliant thing to do. I won’t go into specifics, you can find a ton of descriptions online for the concept. But wow! Oh boy! You should definitely look into it!
Ever since we moved into this house (about two years ago) I have envisioned building a raised vegetable bed along the fence in the backyard. It’s really the only place that gets a decent amount of sun in the whole yard, front or back. Our house faces North and we have a lot of trees and such to contend with. I spent our first summer here digging up all the bishops weed which was planted as a low maintenance groundcover over the bit of garden that surrounds my patio. Remove all the roots and shoots and every little bit of the stuff was a ton of (back-breaking) work. I have a little bit of it left to remove this year on the far side of the patio along with some scrubby shrubs that didn’t do much all summer and just end up looking haggard. I’m hoping to put in some nice flowers in that bit, foxglove, shasta daisy, night scented stocks, maybe some tomatoes or something as well. I can also pull up the quartz stone and landscaping cloth that surrounds the rest of the patio, but I see that taking a long time to do as well. I just cannot afford to build the beautiful raised beds of my dreams for full-on vegetable production. Even just to buy the wood and get someone to put it together into some nice squarish frame to hold the dirt is WAY beyond my means. And to then get the dirt trucked in, and haul wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow full over to the beds and fill them…… it is a daunting task. I just couldn’t see it happening within the next five years or so…… and I really wanted a proper vegetable garden. I put in double dug gardens into the yard in our old house. I didn’t feel like spending the huge amount of time (not to mention crippling my back) on that style of garden in this house. Basically I had a dream, and it was completely unattainable. Keep in mind that this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about too…. I just couldn’t figure out a way for it to work, at least not any time soon. BUT THEN!!!! For some reason or another I ended up reading about straw bale gardening and lasagna style gardening and as I did I felt my mind expand and expand and my perception of reality shift. The more I thought about what I had read, the more excited I got. I can do this! I can do this…. this year! I can do this right now! I can have a real garden WITHOUT having to build anything… or dig up any grass. I can have a raised vegetable garden. Oh boy!
Not only that, but I can’t help but think of the immense possibilities for inner city and urban food production! You can grow like this on cement, on a driveway, on gravel, anywhere you have room to throw down a straw bale. Incredible! Sure, some maintenance is required, and you have to be sure there aren’t any herbicides hiding in your straw but….. the possibilities are astounding! I am reminded of San Francisco’s City Hall Garden (http://www.sfvictorygardens.org/cityhall.html). Amazing!
This could start a whole new gardening revolution you know. I am all about ’gardening for the people’ and this concept could really make that a possibility. Think of it. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s totally compostable. We could develop a new urban landscape. This is the best example of low cost and efficient garden building I have ever heard of. Not only that, but anyone could do it. Anywhere! For those (poor) garden enthusiasts out there, look it up. Check it out. I will let you know how this plays out in my yard this summer.
http://containergardening.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/gardening-in-straw-bales-google-daves-garden/
http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/8453/video-make-a-straw-bale-garden-bed
mushroom kit!
March 30, 2010
My shiitake mushroom kit arrived in the mail yesterday. It looks like it has been pulverized. We’ll see how it goes, but I don’t have a very good feeling about it. I am supposed to leave it alone for 40 days from the 25th of March. I will let y’all know if anything interesting happens in the meantime.
oh boy! little sproutlings!
March 11, 2010
I am totally shocked to see the first little lupins pushing their way up through the dirt in my seedling tray! 20-30 days germination my ass! Although, to be fair, I didn’t totally follow the instructions on the seed packet. It suggested soaking them overnight and then planting them. Lupin seeds are fairly large and have a hard outer shell. I gave them a little bit of a crush with a small bowl (ala cracked peppercorns styles) before soaking them for several days and then planting them. They had already plumped up quite a bit by the time they went into the tray. YAY! I’m pretty excited for these little lupins. I really hope they don’t die before making it into the garden. I figure I have about a 50/50 survival rate for seedlings, although I like to think that I am improving from year to year…..
I am not really a “green thumb” per se….. Everything is pretty haphazard when it comes to growing things around here. But I keep on trying and don’t let the deaths of a few (read: a lot of) plants deter me. I find that the more I garden, the more I learn, and the more comfortable I feel. There are all these little tricks and pieces of information that make gardening viable. All these wee little things that I just had no clue about when I started planting random plants in my yard five years ago. If anyone out there is intimidated by gardening, I totally understand where you’re coming from. Just keep on keeping on though and eventually something will work for you. Probably.
Along with the lupins I had also planted the following: Jacob’s Ladder*, Broad Ripple Tomato*, Yellow Tomato of unknown variety*, High Bush Eggplant, Spaghetti Squash*, Kaboucha Squash*, Mini Bell Mixed Peppers, Watermelon of unknown variety*. The ones marked with an asterisk are seeds saved from previous years, or from produce given to me from friends gardens.
On another note, I am eagerly awaiting the delivery of my mushroom log. I ordered a shiitake log. It is coming from Ontario and I was really hoping to get it this week. I’m excited, it’s going to be pretty cool. I’m not even very fond of mushrooms, but it will be an interesting horticultural endeavour. I’ll put up a photo of it once it arrives and keep y’all apprised of the progress.
seed starting time again!
March 8, 2010
Well it is finally March and seed starting season is once again here. Up until a week ago I hadn’t really given too much thought to the garden. Usually I spend the winter pouring over seed catalogs and looking up different plants in my reference books to try to find the right combination for my yard. I feel like this year is going to be alright. I have some landscaping to worry about before planting too many vegetables. The garden surrounding the patio needs to be torn up. Someone covered it with landscaping cloth and quartz stones. Ug. Good thing my mom gave me a wheelbarrow last summer!
I’m also too broke to really dive into gardening this year. I’ll have to make do with the seeds I saved and have accumulated (which is a fair bit).
I did buy a bag of seed starting mix and some trays though. Damn, I haven’t even cleaned out my seeding stuff from last spring. Man oh man. I get so lazy in the fall. I will try to do better this year.
Ok, so I’m starting some Lupins. Hopefully they work. *fingers crossed* wish me luck!
yeah, I’m totally in awe of the straw bale gardening. i think we need to give it a go this year!