I hope you are having a blessed Thanksgiving. I scaled my Thanksgiving menu back and it made the day much more enjoyable.
Cornish game hens, green bean casserole (with some okra from the garden), cornbread stuffing, and homemade cranberry sauce.
God bless,
Pam
Yesterday I was planting collards and mustard greens in the garden I had seeded with oyster mushrooms. Every time I pulled the mulch aside I discovered a thriving network of mycelium. There was even a baby mushroom, albeit very beaten up by Hurricane Nicole.
I am thrilled and very surprised by how easy it is to incorporate mushrooms into the garden; not only to eat, but to overall increase the health of the plants and the soil.
Later I was walking by the mushroom bed I started for shiitake mushrooms and saw a yellow oyster mushroom peaking out. I had attempted to grow yellow oysters inside without success, so I threw the leftover spawn into the old mushroom bed. Surprise!
I am like a little child when it comes to these mushrooms. I think that by experimenting with something new it has added a fresh excitement for gardening and dispelled the ennui that comes from repetitive tasks. So, try something new in the garden this year.
God bless,
Pam
P.S. I order my mushroom spawn from Northspore. Use this link and use my coupon code: FRUGALMENNONITE for a discount.
Due to my ongoing fascination with fungi, I was thrilled to learn that seeding a garden with Wine Cap or Oyster mushrooms can make your garden plants resistant to root knot nematodes. Here is a YouTube link to a video from Northspore about growing mushrooms in your garden.
I was advised to keep the Wine Cap mushrooms and Oyster mushrooms separate from each other. I have two vegetable gardens, so I dedicated each to a separate type of mushroom.
The larger garden (above) is dedicated to the Wine Cap mushrooms.
And the small garden (above) is dedicated to the Oyster mushrooms.
It very easy to do. First I raked back the mulch, broke up the bags of spawn, scattered the spawn throughout the garden, then recovered the garden with the mulch.
The large garden is usually mulched with pine straw, which works well in Florida, because our soil can be very alkaline. If your soil isn’t alkaline just use regular straw. The small garden is mulched with a layer of wood chips, then a layer of pine straw. It also has decomposing oak roots from some oaks my neighbor had removed.
A couple of weeks after spreading the mushroom spawn I pulled back the mulch in the small garden and was quite happy to see that the Oyster spawn was already spreading.
You can purchase these mushroom spawns from Northspore. Use the coupon code: FRUGALMENNONITE to get a discount.
I’ll keep you updated on the mushroom bed progress.
God bless,
Pam
