A Mushroom Foray!

After several good soaking rains and coolish (but not cold) weather, mushrooms are coming out to greet spring. As I was passing by several logs inoculated with shiitake spawn that we have here at the office, it was easy to notice the large mushrooms protruding from the logs. I was excited! You'd be too, if you found these, take a look. One of 'em is a monster!









We've already found a recipe to make with these things, it's a shiitake and wild rice pilaf. And it is gooooood.....

UK has several Extension publications on growing shiitakes. They are toward the bottom of the page. Check them out.

After Some Brutal Weather

I snapped a few pictures today of my raised beds that have some crops planted in them. The crimson clover cover crop (top picture) is about half dead, but the dead half will certainly make a nice mat of material to plant into this spring (plus provide lots of nitrogen!)

The kale (picture 2) got nipped pretty hard by the brutal cold temperatures, so it's usefulness as an edible is shot. But it will hold the soil and provide organic matter to the bed. Not is all lost.

The third picture down in just a shot of both beds. Clover on the left, kale on the right.

The last picture is of some garlic. It has toughed it out without any mulch or straw or row cover. We'll be thankful for fresh garlic in July!! I've got several varieties planted so we'll make some comparisons later.

Month of meetings

January is the meeting month for me. Actually, even November this past year was bad for meetings. But January is when I learn a lot.

I've been to the Kentucky Fruit and Vegetable Conference. Here's a few things I learned:

• Grafting tomatoes and/or melons may be profitable for some KY growers. Whoda thunk?
• Some onions can be fall planted, overwintered using straw, and then harvested before onions planted in the spring. You might get a full month earlier. And not all onions work. But it's interesting, nonetheless.
• There were SO MANY Farmers' Market producers at the meeting, it tells me there is a big shift away from wholesaling fruits and vegetables to retailing -- no doubt cash-money and retail price is nice, but marketing costs go way up as well. We have about 120 Farmers' Markets in KY (and we have 120 counties!).

I've also been to the Kentucky Nursery and Landscape Association annual conference. Here's some things I took away from there:

• I heard a great presentation on soils, better than I've ever heard before. Soils and soil chemistry as a topic is not very sexy to people. This guy's presentation REALLY made it fun -- I'm sure the presenter had a lot to do with it. He was Joe Boggs with OSU Extension.
• I also learned that we should use more tropicals OUTSIDE!. The presenter was a fella named Irvin Etienne, who works up north of us at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (they have extensive gardens). I saw some pictures of really cool bananas with red veins, some wonderful Cannas (he likes the Futurity series for lots of blooms), Elephant ears, and papyrus. He thought coleus was wonderful. He told us how to overwinter some of these as well.
• There was a lot of sessions on design, which I can't get my mind around. So unfortunately, I really didn't take a lot of that home.

It's supposed to get down to 0 (ZERO) tonight. Thank goodness it doesn't plan to stick around long. Happy January!

Images of Christmas Eve Eve

It took me reading Garden Rant to understand how to make a cool collage of my pictures using Picasa 3. Pretty funny how you can learn other useful things besides gardening things on a website that is supposed to be mostly about growing plants.

Anyway, my clipsabove show what's happening at the office today. Monday (yesterday) morning, it was 4 degrees at my house. This morning, a balmy 20. Nevertheless, the crimson clover (upper left) got nipped. The garlic got a little nipped too, but it's only showing some yellow.

Have a Wonderful Holiday! And Happy New Year!

Green in the Middle of Gray

It has been gray, dreary, and wet over the last couple of days. Just what you expect about this time of the year, although I could have waited til January.

However, I've been thinking and writing a lot about green gardening over the past week. I've been writing my next newsletter and I've devoted it to this green gardening topic. It is full of tips, advice, and preaching.

I truly think we (the American consumer) have come to a point where we have to do something. And we're probably 20 years too late. True, dirt-under-the-fingernails-and-proud-of-it gardeners are mostly sustainable, I believe. They understand all the intricate processes, the delicate balances, the lowly life forms that make it all happen.

It's the pseudo-gardeners I'm worried about who just want things to look good. Weed-free, lush, insect-free (and I mean ALL insects, click here for a scary story)....all those things that we PERCEIVE as being pleasing to the eye. Those are the ' gardeners' who rarely venture out into their gardens to really see what's going on and those who believe that throwing out more synthetic fertilizers and pesticides is the only way to a beautiful landscape.

I'm proud to say I do things as sustainably, as green, as environmentally sound, as I possibly can at home and here at the office. I know I'll get some comments, so go ahead.

Cold December - But Bright Spots in the Garden

We all think that after a good killing frost (or in our case, a half dozen), that's it. Garden's done, no more fun, no more color.

I snapped a few pictures of our garden here at the office just a minute ago and I beg to differ about there being no color -- these photos will prove it!

Red twig dogwood!


American Beautyberry!


Garlic! (among the chickweed)


Ornamental cabbages!


Kale! 'Redbor' and 'Winterbor'


And just for kicks, I found this very large, very weird fungus a-growin' out of one of our crossties. It's obviously done some 'sporulating' as can be seen by the hole in it.


Happy Holidays!

Just a Little Late for Halloween

Here's a tomato that would've scared anyone...with or without a costume!





Seeds have sprouted while still inside this tomato. The word botanists use to describe this is vivipary. It isn't that rare, really. However, this is the first time I've actually seen this where the sprouts make their way through the skin.

There are little 'bumps' on the tomato (you can see them in the picture) -- this is where the seeds have sprouted and are trying to find a way out.

Thanks to Sandy for bringing this oddity to my attention!

Plants are so cool.