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Paresthesia
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Registered: 07/02/08
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Loc: Texas
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"Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit
#9236385 - 11/13/08 09:45 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Pictured above, you will find leaf lettuce, marigolds and a very leggy heirloom tomato plant, this variety known as "Krasnodor Titan." (I think that is right. For a Russian tomato variety, it sure is a slow grower!) The focal point of each of these crappy camera phone photos is a small fruit of the Elm Oyster mushroom. My very first! Oh, and yes, I'm harvesting tomatoes in November.
The procedure is more or less lifted from Mycelium Running. I had some extra plug spawn left over from inoculating logs, so I placed them between sheets of pasteurized cardboard and let them sit in a plastic grocery store bag for a couple of months. Once they were thickly colonized I laid the sheets down directly over the soil in my bed, which had about a 6" clearance from the top of the bed frame. (The soil used was mostly sandy topsoil mixed with wood mulch. The organic material I worked in last Spring was mostly eaten by tomato plants I put in then.) This was covered with a layer of mulch with dowels mixed in, the soaker hose, and another layer of mulch.
The tomatoes had been there for a few weeks already and benefit from having substrate covering the stems, as this plant naturally puts down roots where it touches soil. Same with marigolds. The lettuce went in later, and it seems quite happy with its neighbors, too.
When they grow horizontally they resemble shoehorn oysters, which is kind of odd. How big should I let it get before I pick it? If I water my bed regularly, can I trigger another flush? A real flush?
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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denger
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9236665 - 11/13/08 10:45 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Paresthesia said: this variety known as "Krasnodor Titan." (I think that is right. For a Russian tomato variety, it sure is a slow grower!)
That should be Krasnodar Titan. Where Krasnodar is the city in the very south of Russia, on the Black sea cost. Which might explain why it doesn't like cold : its about the same latitude as Texas.
Congrats on the oyster! You sure do have a green (whats the mushroom thing is called?) thumb!
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: denger]
#9236825 - 11/13/08 12:00 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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You totally missed the bad pun. "Russian" rhymes with "rushing." Is Krasnodar a Russian word? It has a lot of vowels in it!
The tomato plant is probably small because its being shaded by a faster growing neighbor, "Arkansas Traveller." It's even more heat tolerant than the KT. I think I'm still crowding my tomato plants.
My background is gardening. The whole idea of growing mushrooms indoors seems kind of alien to me. You start your crop indoors where you can regulate the environment, then take it outdoors to get it to maturity and harvest. Growing outdoors stresses the seasonality of things, which is something people in the US have lost touch with. Food isn't something that comes from the Earth anymore. Fresh tomatoes are something to look forward to in the spring, and get sick of by late summer, not mealy, tasteless pink rocks that come in plastic bags.
Oh yeah! The plants were inoculated with the FP water soluble mycorrhizal product. This stuff contains Glomus and Rhizopogon spores, and the endospores of several beneficial species of bacteria. The last two seasons I've been growing tomatoes, they've been attacked by powdery mildew. Not these! I think that seeding beds with fungi and other root dwelling microbes forced out fungal competitors, and having what is effectively six inches of mulch is doing a great job of keeping the soil moist, which reduces root stress.
I've heard of people growing cubes or other mushrooms in flower pots. I think I'm going to try this next Spring when I repot my plumerias and other ornamental plants, but I'll use secondary decomposers like the Agaricus subrufescens spawn I have on order for March.
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
Edited by Paresthesia (11/13/08 12:22 PM)
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worowa
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9237787 - 11/13/08 03:01 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Lovely work there.
I bury all my spent elm blocks, in old pots with spent soil(coir and sand), or straight into the garden, and they almost always fruit. The ones in full sun go a lovely copper color.
My outdoor eryngii usually have huge caps and much smaller stems. And the rats (I'm assuming) love digging through the woodchips to nibble the mycelium.
-------------------- We are all in this together. Visit my site, forestfungi.com.au, let me know what you think.
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: worowa]
#9238364 - 11/13/08 04:19 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Whoa, is that last picture the eryngii? That's crazy! I guess the tiny caps and elongated stems are caused by CO2 buildup. I'd love to find some pictures of them growing in native habitats. That, and P. ostreatus var. columbinus. If I just had Google to go by, I'd think that blue oysters' native habitat was the sawdust block in someone's kitchen, and the only guide I've found them in is Aurora's Mushrooms Demystified, which just gives them a passing mention.
I have yet to experience rat problems. The problems I have are with eastern gray squirrels. Don't get me started on my sworn enemy.
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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worowa
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9240517 - 11/13/08 08:47 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yep, last 3 pics are eryngii. The block that spawned them grew the usual big fat white stems, like this one, which is growing on rolled oats.
-------------------- We are all in this together. Visit my site, forestfungi.com.au, let me know what you think.
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: worowa]
#9242585 - 11/14/08 05:06 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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They're supposed to be much smaller in the wild, so that would make sense. Still, this isn't quite the same as what a "wild" eryngii would look like, is it?
To get that, I'd probably have to grow sea holly plants. If you want a sea holly plant to grow a nice, meaty tap root, it has to be planted in sandy soil with relatively high salinity. Not a good option for me.
There are other thistle plants I could try that are less fussy, like carrots or asparagus. Asparagus and eryngii go together like peas and carrots on the plate, so why not the garden?!
Okay, if you couldn't tell, I'm more interested in growing contained agricultural systems than mushrooms and vegetables. I think we're headed towards a food crisis in our post-industrial society. People are going to have to start growing food themselves, and I'm interested in methods that can be done to make this process more efficient. If I'm growing mushrooms in a raised garden bed, it could make labor intensive practices like tilling less necessary. Fungi could also be used to accelerate composting, so waste materials like straw or sugarcane bagasse can be returned to the soil quickly without wasteful and damaging practices like burning.
Okay, rant over. There's a local organization here that teaches sustainable growing practices. I need to get into contact with them.
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9247927 - 11/15/08 08:04 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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So I went out and checked on some stuff this morning. The spot where I buried a contaminated eryngii had apparently fruited a few days ago. I found two big fat mushrooms! Slugs ate them. My new mortal enemy is the slug.
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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frankenstoen
Registered: 01/26/08
Posts: 385
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9248573 - 11/15/08 11:11 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Slugs are my enemy too! How I despise the slimy little nasties... They ate all of my outdoor King Oyster grows. I would gladly allow the slugs to eat a couple of adult mushrooms if only they left the rest - but the slugs simply devour the pins as fast as they can grow.
The squirrel problem though - I wonder if you could use the squirrels to do your planting for you, just as the oak trees use them to plant their acorns - you could inoculate nuts with mycelium of many different species, and give them to the squirrels to go bury throughout the woods - this might be an efficient vector to spread desirable species of fungi.
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: frankenstoen]
#9249783 - 11/15/08 03:02 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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The two king oysters I found looked really nice! I think I cloned a good strain.
A few people I talked to at the farmer's market mentioned beer traps. I also discovered that diatomaceous earth does a number on them too, and that doesn't wash off in the rain. I'll be trying that for sure!
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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worowa
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9254937 - 11/16/08 01:34 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Coffee is also great, gives them a heart attack, apparently. Used coffee grounds or spray with coffee.
-------------------- We are all in this together. Visit my site, forestfungi.com.au, let me know what you think.
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robanero
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: worowa]
#9258586 - 11/17/08 05:10 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Do you use straight coffee ground for the block, or what ratio of other substrate do you use for those.
Roban
-------------------- 310 open cap Hawaiians grown a 1 pint WBSF cake. SPAWN RATIO CALCULATOR My Little Hawaiians Spawn Bag Tek
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Paresthesia
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: robanero]
#9258626 - 11/17/08 05:44 AM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Uhhh...
What block? This is an outdoor bed! I believe coffee is being mentioned as a means to control slugs.
I've grown oysters using grounds several times in the past, and I'm currently experimenting with growing pioppino mushrooms on a 50/50 coffee/paper animal bedding mix.
-------------------- "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." - T. S. Eliot
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worowa
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Re: "Polyculture" Raised Garden Bed; First Fruit [Re: Paresthesia]
#9259986 - 11/17/08 12:38 PM (15 years, 4 months ago) |
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Yes, sprinkled around the garden for slug control.
Using it in the substrate might also kill any slugs that dine on it.
-------------------- We are all in this together. Visit my site, forestfungi.com.au, let me know what you think.
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