plants-with-benefits

 Recently we purchased a couple of  mushroom starter kits. One oyster and one button mushroom. Both were reasonably easy to grow and made for some very tasty meals. Fried mushrooms on vogels mmm.  As you can see there's not mushroom inside   You can expect to get at least 3 flushes of fruit. This is our first crop. After taking the 3 bigger mushrooms out to make room for the others, it only took two days for the smaller ones to catch up. You get your first crop at day 60, then again at day 80 and 100.  It may be an expensive way to get your mushroom fix but it's a bit of fun and very educational. Probably a good way to get kids to eat mushrooms instead of McDonalds. The kit gives you information on how to grow your own culture. As well on ways of cloning mushrooms, finding wild mushrooms and recipes. The only drawback is, I need to try and find time for another hobby now.😬              

 I know it's not  the 30th of April, but that is when this post was due, so let's just go with it eh! 👍 FLOWER TIME Finally after 2 1/2 years of growing turmeric, I'm getting somewhere. This is the first crop that has produced the awesome flowers I've been waiting for. In the past I have been able to produce a good amount of turmeric per plant, but one of my main goals was to get the plants through to flowering. If starting from a small rhizome, this can take a few years of growing on while still harvesting the smaller rhizomes (or fingers) for consumption or to replant. The other important factor is they need 10 months of warm soil conditions. I have managed so far to get over this hurdle by starting them off in a glasshouse in early August before transplanting into 10sqm garden boxes. As the temperature drops again they are protected by a polytunnel set up. Next year as the crop expands again, I will be looking at heating the soil through a series of pipes heated by ...

I have been accused of being a little over protective of my goji plants. But I'm also one of the few people who have had any luck in keeping them alive, so it can't be all bad. Mind you, it's way too early in the piece for me to start getting cocky. Of the 200 plus plants growing, less than half of them are 12 months old. But with trials of different nutrients and growing media, we're definitely getting somewhere. The key is to create a growing medium of  bark and organic matter composted down with plenty of fine lime to try an reach a Ph level of around 7.5. Then mix with a coarse sand and slow release rose fertilizer. Then I follow up with a liquid tomato food, that I came across, with high levels of phosphorus for root development. Without giving too much away, that and plenty of Bio-Seaweed that I have access to, is about it. Oh yeah, and mothering. Not too much, but for the first winter they get the comforts of a glasshouse.  Enough jibber jabber, I've got a sh...

  Time to cover the turmeric beds. Still enough heat during the day to keep the humidity up with the help of some light mist sprinklers. Should be a good crop this year, so we can get more of.....                                                                                  More detailed blogs coming after Easter. 

Ok, I'm a bit pressed for time so long story short. A new batch of goji seedlings on the way. And more being repotted over Easter. More yarns next week. And maybe a quick bleat tomorrow.  I think this one likes me.  

I feel like there's a Goji train coming, but not everyone is on it yet. So I thought I should get onboard early, just incase. The problem with this, of course, is the lack of Goji growers in the area, who's brains I can pick. The first seeds I sowed in mid sept. 2020. In an organic seed raising mix, a lot more corse and barkier than your usual mix. My first thought was that my tiny, minute, grain of sand sized, little seed would get washed to the bottom of the seed tray only to rot and die. So here's where I got clever. First I take a sieve and remove the heavy material, leaving just a fine dust to sow my delicate wee seeds in. Then I filled half of my seed trays with my new and improved mix (cough cough) and half with, what we'll call the proper mix.  And here's where I learnt my lesson. I didn't improve the mix, obviously it has been developed to do a job and all I did was remove nutrients and it's water retention capabilities. So, first lesson, don't ...