GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Category: Gardening

Grow Mushrooms In Your Yard, Backyard Oyster Mushroom Spore Inoculation

Growing mushrooms in my yard, instead of having to go foraging for mushrooms, is a goal of mine. Mushroom growing is not rocket science, but for mushrooms to grow, the environment must be perfect for that particular kind of mushroom. On our hike yesterday, I came across a dead oak tree full of oyster mushrooms, but the mushrooms were way past their prime, they were falling apart.

I cut off about a third of the mushrooms and put them in a paper bag. Today, I went in the back yard-woods, and all while constantly tossing two tennis balls for the Labradors, I looked for a dead or dying deciduous tree.

Oyster Mushrooms from a dead oak tree

I have a number of mature birch trees in my yard, a few of which are dying, they have large woodpecker holes in them. I leave dead trees standing, to allow cavity nesting birds to have homes. Woodpeckers peck out nests in dead trees, then other birds use those nests after the woodpeckers have left.

So today I had the paper bag of oyster mushrooms with me and I tried my hand at inoculating a dead birch tree with mushroom spore. My method was not very exacting, I didn’t drill holes in the tree and put spore in the holes, I placed pieces of oyster mushroom in between the bark and the wood of the tree where the bark had split open.

Wedged the mushrooms between the bark and dead wood

What was really cool was inside the paper bag the oyster mushrooms has released a bunch of spores, so I took apart the paper bag and rubbed the spore on the wood of the trunk.

white powdery mushroom spore in the bag i had been keeping the mushrooms in

It will take a few years to see if our mushroom spore inoculation project is a success. If you are interested in learning more about mushroom identification, I have posted photos of mushrooms I have identified in our Mushroom Identification series here on the GardenFork.TV site.

Do you have some mushroom growing or mushroom spore inoculation suggestions? Please let us know below:

Charlie Pup waits for me to throw her tennis ball again.

December 18, 2011
Don’t Dump Me, Bro’

106 bags of leaves

You can hear the discussion I had with Eric on “Tom Sawyer Composting” here on Gardenfork Radio.

Here’s the leaf composting bin I created just yesterday. 106 bags of leaves (mostly 30 gal. bags) gathered from around my neighborhood, shredded with a mower. Add a bit of high nitrogen fertilizer before the rains this evening and it will be cooking by morning.

If I’d had the time, I’d have been able to build 3 more yesterday, based on the number of bags at the curb in my neighborhood. They’ll all go to the dump today.

Pity. All that good nitrogen and carbon going to waste in the dump.

Don’t Dump me, Bro’.

(and yes, I garden and compost in the front yard. That’s the edge of my winter garden to the right of the compost.)

November 29, 2011
Hotbeds

A couple of weeks ago Eric and I were talking on Gardenfork Radio about his new DIY Cold Frames video, and I mentioned winter gardening in hotbeds. I’d seen some hotbeds in the garden in Colonial Williamsburg, where they still garden the way colonial people did.

3 feet deep and lined with bricks to hold and distribute the heat.

Hotbed are like Eric’s cold frames with glass on top and all, but deeper. Last weekend we went up to the Williamsburg Farmers Market for their big pre-Thanksgiving holiday market and I took some pictures of their hotbeds to show Gardenfork readers.

What makes hotbeds particularly attractive to the DIY organic gardener is that you get a twofer. First, you use the otherwise wasted heat of composting to get an early start on Spring. Second, you have fresh, finished compost to spread on your garden.

A hotbed needs to have a mass of at least 1 cubic yard to be effective. That’s because what you’re building is a compost pile and compost needs mass to really cook. So these beds are deep:

— It helps to line a deep hotbed with plastic sheeting or weed block fabric to aid in cleaning it out in the Spring.
— Layer in browns (cabon): dry leaves, leaf mold, spoiled hay and bedding from a stall.
— Layer in greens (nitrogen): kitchen waste, fresh manure.

Hotbeds are an excellent use for chicken manure as well as horse manure, which can be “seedy” in the compost otherwise. Cattle manure is good too.

If done right, enough heat will be generated to kill all seeds, worm eggs, and pathogens. In fact, hotbeds have been known to combust and smolder if too big. Obviously, you don’t put compost worms into a hotbed to help with the composting unless you want them to cook.

add 12 inches of rich growing soil onto the top of the fresh manure.

— Add about 12 inches of good soil for growing.

— Carefully manage your glass frames so that your plants don’t overheat.

Hotbeds are an ancient method of sprouting seeds and growing plants during the winter, Aristotle mentions the Egyptians using compost piles to sprout seedlings. Europeans imported hotbeds from Arab countries after the Crusades.

In fact, the colder and more sunless your winters, the more hotbeds will help you get an early start on the spring garden and bridge what was called in early colonial America the Starving Time, January to March, after harvest stores from the previous fall had run out but before plants would grow in the frozen fields.

Hotbeds don’t have to be buried, either. The Romans had hotbeds on carts so that they could be moved under cover when it rained. In medieval Europe, hotbeds were frequently just dung heaps that people planted vegetables into over the winter.

Manage your hotbeds like a coldframe. Overheating is as dangerous to your plants as freezing.

But regardless of how you build your hotbed, proper timing is important. Few plants or seeds can tolerate the intense heat of an early hotbed. So start your hotbed a month or two before you plant. So plan to plant or seed on the backside of this period, when the hotbed is warm but not hot.

And remember, you have to manage the moisture content of your hotbed, just like a compost pile; neither too wet nor too dry.

And when you hear on the news that a place is a “hotbed of political activity” you’ll know what they’re full of. ;->

November 21, 2011
OMG – What Have I Done?

You’ve signed a two-year lease on what? Have you taken full-moon-French-leave of your senses…again?

I can tell…She, Who Must Be Obeyed, is intrigued with the idea of my going into business for myself.

“Well…technically I’m extending my Melissa Bee Farms business into new areas, opening new markets, joining the green revolution,” I counter. “Besides, last year we both agreed I needed a bigger beeyard. I’m outgrowing the backyard. I’ve got plans! ambitions! projects! I need ROOM.”

“And MONEY, lots of money. Besides, WHAT bee business? You mean that expensive soup kitchen for bugs-in-a-box, that bee business? Businesses make money; you’ve got another expensive hobby, not a business.”

“Reminds me, I need to pick up another 20 pounds of sugar for syrup,” making a note in my iPad.

“Again? Already…?”

“er….want to see some pictures of the new project, she’s a beaut?”

green house from rick kennerly on Vimeo.

my new green house rehab project

And so it begins. Secretly, I know She, Who Must Be Obeyed, is right: I’m in over my head…way over my head. The tape in my head is looping: Oh, My God – What Have I Done? I feel a bit sick and a little panicky. It’s put-up or shut-up.

So, what should I do with this green house? (Yeah, I got some space for a beeyard in the bargain.) The owner’s still clearing it out, but it’s mine for two years. That’s two years of lease payments, two years of electricity payments, two years of water payments, two years of buying supplies and materials. I have to make this pay…and I don’t have a clue.

Sure, I’ve been through the Master Gardener classes and I can talk a good game. I grow a pretty good vegetable garden, but what do I know about Growing for Market? Running a green house? Hydroponics? Aquaponics? Marketing?

I need your help. I need reading resources, web sites, advice, suppliers, ideas. If you’ve got experience growing for market, chime in.

First order of business, making it weatherproof. First freeze is predicted for tonight.

November 17, 2011
Can You Eat That?

She, Who Must Be Obeyed, wanted “a-big-mess-o-greens” last night…and cornbread.

“Fine. You pick’em, I’ll cook’em.”

So a while later she comes back with a big-mess-o-mess.

The leaves of many garden vegetables are edible

“What have you done?,” I ask as I sort through the bale of leaves She dumps on the counter. Collards, fine. Chard, fine. But what’s this?

“Honey, that’s one of my califlowers,” cut off in it’s infancy. And these are the tops of my radishes. And this looks like kohlrabi.

“But they’ll make greens, right?”

Which is an interesting question. Will they? Most cooks in the kitchen focus on what they’re after and compost the rest. If they’re after broccoli or cauliflower, they’ll lop off the leaves and toss them, keeping the florettes. Same with radishes and beets. But those leaves are all edible plant parts. If you don’t want to eat them now, save them for a mess-o-greens or a caldo verde, or wilt them into an omelet for breakfast.

It’s easier, in fact, to list off the leaves of plants that are not so good to eat: tomatoes & eggplants (alkaline) are in the nightshade family, rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid. There are probably others, but they’re not common in the garden. As always, check if you’re unsure. Here’s a list of “Secondary Edible Parts of Vegetables“ to get you started.

BTW, Eric’s recipe for DIY recipe for Baking Powder works great! The cornbread was a success. Well, off to find and dig up those radishes She lopped off last night.

November 15, 2011
Free Leaf Compost, Thank You Neighbors – Rick’s Column

Tomorrow’s trash day and metal scavengers are already circling the neighborhood, but I’ve found GOLD! Gold, I tell ya’. My neighbors do all the work of sweeping and bagging these leaves for the trash guys. I just roll around the neighborhood picking up free compost material.

Mulch, then re-bag with the mower, and 6 bags of leaves make one nice compost pile (older woody stuff in bottom, a few limbs stuck through sideways for ventilation).
Cage is an end length of rabbit fencing and 3 old stakes. Should have some nice leaf mold by Spring.

November 2, 2011
Homemade Garlic Planting Tool Makes Planting Seed Go Faster

This homemade garlic planting tool helps if you are planting more than a few rows of garlic. Planting a few rows of garlic in your home garden is pretty straightforward. To plant garlic for a market grower is a bigger deal. I was asked by a neighbor who sells garlic to help him plant seed garlic before the coming snow storm. The storm dumped 20″ of snow on this field a few hours after we finished planting garlic. Watch our How To Plant & Grow Garlic video here.

While we were planting garlic I took photos to show you all how a market farmer plants garlic. This garlic field is not large enough for heavy equipment, so while the garlic is planted by hand, this homemade garlic planting tool might help small farmers reading this.

All the seed garlic bulbs are broken apart by hand, I don’t know of a mechanical method to do this, though I’m sure a machine exists for large scale garlic growers.

Seed garlic broken up by hand

First of all, the field is tilled with a small disc several times to turn over all the weeds and cover crops, then the rows of garlic are staked out with string. Each row is 5 plants wide, then there is a 24″ wide space between rows. This space should be the width of your rototiller, so you can till under weeds that grow on the walking paths between the rows of garlic.

disc rig gets the garlic field ready

The holes the seed garlic is placed in are made by this homemade garlic planter rig built by the farmer. It has 5 metal tips on it, with two pieces of wood jutting out perpendicular for proper spacing between rows. Two people move the garlic seed hole maker along the row. When pressing the rig into the soil to make the holes, each person places a foot on the rig to make the holes. The rig is rocked back and forth to firm up the walls of the holes.

Metal Tips on Garlic Planter, note row spacers sticking out side of rig, just above hole making tips

Garlic Planting Tool In Action

holes made by garlic planter rig

The seed garlic is put in each hole by hand – be sure to use knee pads – you’re on your knees a long time in this process.

The rows are then raked over, the soil filling up each hole.

I bet there are a few planting rigs farmers have made to automate this process more, my friend likes it this way, and his garlic field is not huge.

Raking soil over seed garlic

raking soil over seed

Do you have some tips for planting garlic? or better ways to plant garlic? Let us know below:

October 31, 2011
How to Deer Proof Your Yard : GardenFork Radio

If you want to keep deer from eating your plants, plant plants that the deer don’t eat. Ruth Rogers Clausen, author of 50 Beautiful Deer Resistant Plants, joins us to talk about how to keep deer out of your yard by choosing plants that are deer resistant or deer proof. Did you know that acorns attract deer? That fact is just one of the ‘aha’ moments I had when reading about how to deal with the deer problem in the garden and yard. The book is full of well done photographs and in addition to the 50 Deer Resistant Plants that are the main theme of the book, Ms Clausen lists additional companion plants to fill out your deer proof yard and garden.

Win a copy of 50 Deer Resistant Plants! Here is how to participate in the giveaway of this great book on creating a Deer Proof Garden

First: Add your name to the drawing by filling out the form below
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Second: Like the GardenFork Page on Facebook, Facebook.com/GardenFork or follow us on Twitter Twitter.com/GardenforkTV , If you are not liking or following GF already > click on the FB Like icon or Twitter to the right >

If you are not on Facebook or Twitter but want to be part of the drawing, please note that in the above submission form

July 18, 2011
Super Seed Potatoes, Growing in the Garden

Last fall I helped a neighbor dig a bunch of potatoes, and we were given a few bushel baskets of potatoes for our efforts. The potatoes were pretty darn simple to harvest, as the garden soil was nice and loamy, it dug easily with a garden fork. The hardest part was not hitting the potatoes with the fork, there were so many of them.

I took our part of the potato harvest and put it in bushel baskets in the basement. I didn’t clean or was the potatoes before storing them, I think its best to leave them caked in dirt for the winter. Pretty neat to be able to walk into the basement to pull our of a basket some dinner.

It ended up we didn’t eat all the potatoes we had harvested, and this spring, I noticed pale sprouts coming out of the bushel basket, aiming for the basement window.

Found this in the basement..

I wasn’t sure what to do with the sprouting potatoes, as I hadn’t planned on growing potatoes this year. Last time we grew them, we had the Colorado Potato Beetle Invasion, watch the video here. Then this weekend I decided to put them in the garden. If you’re wondering how to plant potatoes, its not rocket science, and potatoes are pretty forgiving, which is a good thing, considering I’m the one planting them.

The potatoes had become a tangled mass of sprouted seed potatoes, a giant ball of roots, potatoes, and sprouts.

I dug out part of one of our raised beds, added some time release fertilizer and azomite, a rock powder, and gently planted the seed potatoes.

laying them in the bottom of a raised bed

As I covered the seed potatoes with dirt and leaf mulch, I tried my best to get the potato sprouts to point up thru the soil.

gently covering the potatoes

Not sure what’s going to happen, but I think the potatoes i planted will be good. I’ll mound the potatoes once or twice with mulch or some straw or other compost like material, and I’ll work on the Potato Beetle problem.

We made a GardenFork.TV video about how to hill your potatoes, its the first one we shot with Henry, one of our Yellow Labradors, when she was a puppy. Its fun to watch.

What do you think is the best way to plant potatoes? Let us know below:

May 28, 2011
Our Apple Trees Blossom

This hasn’t ever happened before, but all our apple trees are blooming this spring. Usually there are a few that don’t bloom. At least two of our trees bloom biennially. Here is the oldest tree in a view from our house. Last weekend was rainy with fog, so it looks great in the yard.

May 18, 2011
Jack in the Pulpit appears in greenhouse

I had dug up a few sage plants last fall and managed to get them thru the winter in the greenhouse. The trick I’ve discovered is to not let the soil dry out. Even though the greenhouse is not heated, it can get pretty warm in there on sunny days, so paying attention to the soil worked out.

The sage leafed out again, and then I noticed two other plants growing in the pot. A Jack In The Pulpit and some Lambsquarter. What fun. We have some Jack in the Pulpit growing in the woods, but this is a rare random appearance.

And the lambsquarter is one of the new edible forage plants we talked about in a recent GardenFork.TV video. You can watch our wild and urban foraging video here on How to Eat Lambsquarter.

What happy accidents have you had happen in your garden this spring? let us know below:

May 16, 2011
The Mice in My Greenhouse

It was pretty toasty in my greenhouse yesterday, and while cleaning up I ran across this mouse nest inside a terra cotta garden pot. The mice had moved out, but this shows how industrious they are when building a nest. All sorts of materials in this nest to make it cozy.

What's inside?

cozy mouse nest

April 3, 2011
Still snow in my yard…

But it’s slowly melting. The black plastic will warm up the raised beds quickly. Yours?

April 3, 2011
Found: The Antique Roxubry Russet Apple

All our apple trees are done for the year. No more fruit to pick or pick up from the ground.

But I was by my neighbor’s house this weekend, and I saw he had one tree that was full of apples, and its the middle of November. I called him and asked if we could take some apples to make sauce. “Knock yourself out” was his answer. click here to watch our How to Make Applesauce video

In less than 30 minutes, I had 3 bushels of apples in my cart. There were a ton of apples on the ground, and most had little insect or fungal damage. Not bad for a tree that is not sprayed.

I started making sauce, and wanted to find out the name of this hardy apple. I took a ride down to see Priscilla, my neighbor who is a true homesteader: chickens, horses, guinea hens, steam engines and a cider press. She knew what is was immediately. Its a Roxbury Russet, a very old apple from Roxbury, Mass. The Roxbury Russet has good disease resistance, and ripens late in the year. Priscilla says the best tasting apples ripen last.

I thought it cool that we had an antique apple tree nearby, and that we even knew what kind of apple it is. Next year I’m bringing Priscilla samples from our other apple trees to see if she can identify those apples.

November 15, 2010
Oyster mushrooms found on our hike

Oyster Mushrooms we found on a hike in the woods. Part of our Mushroom Identification series. For a mushroom identification video click here. Below the photo are some Mushroom Foraging Books I use to identify mushrooms, The Audubon Field Guide
is small enough to put in your pocket while hiking, and then you can cross-reference with the larger Mushrooms Demystified
book, which is also good.

Click Here To Buy From IndieBound

Click Here To Buy From Amazon

Click Here To Buy From IndieBound

Click Here To Buy From Amazon

October 30, 2010
Heirloom Rattlesnake Pole Beans work well in summer heat

I usually don’t plant pole beans, but this year I realized that pole beans are more space efficient than bush beans from a square foot gardening perspective.

I planted Rattlesnake Pole Beans I bought from Fedco Seeds, they took a while to start, but then ran up the trellis quite fast. They stood up well to the high summer heat we’ve had this year.

rattlesnake pole beans from fedco seeds

The Rattlesnake beans have purple lines in the pods which add a neat look to them in the garden and in a salad.

we use sticks and scrap wood to make a trellis

The beans taste good, and even better, they still taste good when they have grown too large and knobby. Most beans, when let to grow large, get all woody tasting. These pole beans kept their flavor and tenderness.

I’ve started a second sowing of these beans in the greenhouse, and will plant them out when these plants start to wane.

What kind of beans are your growing? any suggestions.

August 4, 2010
Japanese Beetle Attractant Plant saves the garden

I was pulling weeds in the vegetable garden this weekend, and came across this weed in the basil patch. I was about to pull it when I realized it was full of Japanese beetles, and there were no Japanese beetles on the basil.

This weed is a good japanese beetle control

This weed was functioning as a Japanese Beetle Attractant Plant, and a neat way to not use Japanese Beetle pesticides and traps. This is one of those simple organic Japanese Beetle controls one can use to deal with the beetles.

I have yet to identify the weed, as the weed identification sites I have visited have yet to yield an answer.

But think twice before pulling up a plant that is full of garden pests, its probably keeping those pests from your vegetable plants.

August 3, 2010
Blueberries, learning how to grow them

I have two mature blueberry bushes in our yard, and a few years back I added some blueberry saplings I bought from a catalog. The saplings are not doing well. Then last week I saw at a local store small blueberry bushes on sale for $9 each. I bought a few. I then surfed the web to see if I could plant these new blueberry bushes properly this time. Here is what I learned.

• don’t fertilize them when you plant them, and in the future , don’t use regular plant fertilizer, use on that specifically says for blueberries

• blueberries like acid soil

• blueberry bushes like wood chip mulch.

I got a bunch of woodchips from the town garage, they have a huge pile there, and mulched all my blueberry bushes.

Is there anything you can add to this so I can learn how to do this right? let me know below:

July 18, 2010