the fungus amoung us and other news from the garden

we don't wander around with arrows on our heads saying that we are a bunch of wild and crazy guys (think steve martin and dan akroyd in the old saturday night live episodes...) but we do make an effort to try all kinds of stuff in the garden.  even crazy things like growing mushrooms.  for this adventure, we turn to darry.  for 20 years now, he has been involved with wild mushrooms.  when we lived in san francisco, he would go on forays regularly and he was a member of the mycological society.  nashville does not have a chapter and the climate is so different that mushrooms, at least the choice edible ones, are hard to come by although this year he did find morels for the first time.  to satisfy his need for shrooms, he turned to the folks at fungi perfecti after attending a lecture about mushrooms from the folks at "the farm" in summertown at the home and garden show this past march.  he now has a small king stropharias mushroom garden here at the demo garden and next month at the horticulture for homeowners field day, he will demonstrate how to inoculate some logs with shiitake spores.  

the new king stropharias live in a raised bed of hardwood mulch.  darry topped this bed with some sterilized mulch.

here he waters it down, mushrooms need plentiful moisture to grow.

next he added the spores by broadcasting them over the sterilized mulch.

and you guessed it-he watered it down again.

finally he covered it with cardboard to allow it the time it needs to grow the mycellium.  that is the actual plant, the mushrooms are simply the fruit that the mycellium plant produces.

lately, my posts have consisted of our progress with the rain garden build out.  if you were to walk around the demo garden, you would see that it really is a demonstration and research garden for UT.  there are several botanists that use areas of the garden for plant trials.  we don't always know what they are working on but we do get to see the progress.  if you have lived in tennessee for a while, you may have noticed the growth in wineries here.  this has led to a trial with grape vines.  i am interested to see them grow and become mature plants-we have visited many vineyards in napa and sonoma, california and having one here will be nice even if it is small!

the old color wheel is shaping up, this week we were able to begin planting the herbs in place of the flowers.

david began filling in the liner with river rocks, next comes the landscaping on the banks of the stream bed.

today, 5/17, we were surprised with some new faces!  nancy, class of 2009 came out and was lucky to spend some time working with david in the shade beds.  here she is planting the annuals that david selected to add some color to the mostly green beds.

remember all of that liriope that we had to dig out for the stream bed?  well we are now planting it around the base of several trees.  here betsy is planting it a handful at a time as gayle (not in the picture) used a mattock to break up the ground.  darry and i also helped with this and the large circle took about 3 hours for the group of us to complete.

if you find yourself with some free time this week, come on out to the garden!  david plans to be out there two afternoons this week so email me if you would like to join in on the fun.  otherwise, plan to come on out saturday and sunday-we will be there.  and if all goes well, maybe i will bake another coffee cake since the one i brought this morning was such a hit!

garden4groceries@bellsouth.net