Growing mushrooms from a mushroom kit is not hard, in fact, mushrooms are one of the easiest crops I have grown. Anyone, even a child, can grow their own mushrooms. Eat them fresh or preserve them by canning them, dehydrating them or freezing them – whatever you do with your home grown mushrooms it is sure to be a hit!
When your mushroom patch arrives you will notice it is covered in plastic. This is the incubation bag. The patch will look like a bunch of white popcorn that has been melted together with some brown patches on it. The brown patches are future mushrooms.
The first step in the process is to find a saucer large enough for your mushroom patch to sit in. Once you have done that, remove the mushroom patch from the incubation bag.
Put thesaucer in the humidty tent which is the plastic bag with holes in it that came in your kit. Sit the empty saucer with the humidity bag in a dark, cool spot.
Put the mushroom patch in the saucer and fill it with cool rainwater. Do not use chlorinated, filtered or distilled water!
Put some skewers, chop-sticks or knitting needles into the top of the mushroom patch. Pull the plastic humidity bag up over the mushroom patch and fold it down. Fasten the top of the bag with clothespins or paperclips.
Several times a day you will need to open the bag to mist the top of the mushroom patch and the sides of the bag. Use rainwater.
Within about two weeks you will have mushrooms. This process can be repeated several times by allowing the patch to dry out, then repeating the entire process. Some mushroom patches can then be incorporated into logs and established in your yard.
Filed under Exotic Gardening, Year-Round Gardening by on Jan 7th, 2010. 1 Comment. 
During the cold, snowy season, I like to share with my readers photos of some of my favorite plants from the previous season. I think it gives everyone a chance to escape from the dreary cold outside their window and helps all of us plan our garden for the upcoming here. So hang on tight to your chair and let’s see what the stars of 2009 were!
Tulips say spring to me in a way no other plant does. I really enjoy seeing them come up and bloom. I wish they were a bit more prolific here like daffodils, but hey, at least a few seem to come back year after year.
I love the dark colored flowers of Akeiba. Some years it blooms, other years it doesn’t. This year one vine bloomed and the second one did not. You need to vines for cross-pollination to get fruit. So far I have not had any fruit set on my vines, but I am sure it is just a matter of time.
The common name for Akeiba is chocolate vine. It is said the vine emits a chocolate scent when in bloom. The flowers do have a slight chocolate scent, however it is not a wafting scent. Of course, as stated above, both vines have not been in bloom nor has either vine ever been in full bloom, so I will keep waiting and hoping. A wafting chocolate scent would be fantastic!
Ah, what would an exotic garden be without exotic plants? Best of all, this one is perfectly hardy here in Indiana. Dracunculus vulgaris is the scientific name of this beauty. The first several years I had it, only the leaves came up, then in the summer of 2009 this beautiful flower formed.
This dark beauty is Zantedeschia ‘Edge of Night,’ a fine introduction from Dan Heims at Terra Nova Nurseries. Dan comes up with the coolest – and I do mean coolest – plants. Don’t take my word for it though, visit his website and take a look at the unusual plants there that just beg for a place in your garden!
While it is true there are not as many photos here as usual, the summer of 2009 caught me inside writing several books including The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Year-Round Gardening. So, that is it for the photos now. I hope you enjoy them and find some new plants for your garden in 2010!
Filed under Chocolate Colored Plants, Chocolate Scented Plants, Exotic Gardening, Flower Gardening by on Jan 1st, 2010. Comment.
It’s official – Amazon is taking pre-orders on The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Year Round Gardening. Order your copy today so they are not sold out by the time the book is released in February 2010.
This book is so cool because it tells you, no matter what hardiness zone you are in, how to garden year round. It doesn’t matter if you have a heated or unheated greenhouse, garden indoors, use frost covers or cold frames, you can defy nature and grow many varieties of fresh produce year round.
Here in Indiana we have been successful with a variety of produce – lettuce, peas, radish, turnip, carrots, to name a few. In 2008, using season extending ideas like you will find in this book, I planted tomato plants on April 1.
Don’t miss your chance to own this fantastic book. Even seasoned gardeners are sure to learn something – and don’t let the name fool you, The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Year Round Gardening should be on every gardeners’ bookshelf!
Filed under Exotic Gardening, Year-Round Gardening by on Jan 1st, 2010. Comment.
It is a cold, snowy 16 degrees F here today. As you can see from the picture above, my little unheated cold frame is not in a protected area. Behind it is the towers of the city water company. Last fall I planted some Wakefield Cabbage in there as well as some lettuce, spinach and radish seed. The lettuce and spinach seed did not germinate for some reason, but the radish seed germinated and grew just fine. Today, January 1, 2010, I was able to harvest fresh radish from inside the cold frame.
I did not use frost cover inside of the cold frame like I should have, nor did we get the bottoms and ends secured. If we had done both of those things, I am sure the harvest would have been better. Some of the smaller radish were frozen and soft, so I put those in the compost pile. The cabbages have faired pretty well, although I suspect they will bolt come spring.
I closed the cold frame up too early last year which meant the inside was much warmer than what cool crops like it. I was in a hurry and not really thinking about venting it on warm days.
After harvesting the radishes and pulling any tiny weeds that were trying to sprout, I used my handy circle hoe to work the top of the ground. The soil was quite dry and easy to work.
The next thing I did was water the raised beds. I did not drench the soil, I just gave it a gentle watering with a watering can. The top half inch or so of the soil is damp. That should be damp enough to allow the seeds to begin to germinate. In another couple of days, I will go back out and give the soil another sprinkling of water.
There are two beds inside of this particular cold frame. One is half filled with cabbage and the other half of that bed is where the radish were. I left that area unplanted for now. It will be the next area I plant, but for today, I chose to use the bed where nothing had been growing. I chose seeds from Renee’s Garden. Today I planted Romeo Round Baby Carrots and Asian Baby Leaf Gourmet Mesclun Salad. Both of these should do fine. I do not expect the seeds will germinate immediately, but we shall see.
We are in Indiana, zone 5/6. So as you can see, with a little protection is is possible to have a year-round garden, even in a cold climate. Want know more? Than check out The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Year-Round Gardening by Sheri Ann Richerson and Delilah Smittle.
Filed under Exotic Gardening, Vegetable Gardening, Year-Round Gardening by on Jan 1st, 2010. 1 Comment.
