Here's the first batch of blueberries my kids just picked this morning...probably ate just as many as they picked them. 
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Can i start a vegetable and herb garden thread?
- Thread starter Subway
- Start date
That's amazing.
Can you explain a bit the coffee grounds mushroom growing method?
I know Google exists but I like to hear it from the erBB expert.
1) Better instructions?
2) Oyster mushrooms are very aggressive and can fight off 'infections' from other micro-organisms a little better than other mushrooms .
2a) First step is getting a good strain. For the hobby types like me, easier to buy some fresh mycelium. I like Fungi Perfecti, but other sources are probably fine.
2b) Then you need coffee grounds. Fresh "spent" is best, so no going to Starbucks and getting a 5 pound bag of spent grounds unless you have a good pressure cooker at home to do a halfway decent sterilization attempt on the 5lb bag. If you have a home espresso bar, you're set for sterilized spent grounds. If you have a French press, you're almost as good to go, same with a perculator. Drip, well, yeah, not so great....you want to have boiling water/steam killing germs that live on coffee, not little drips of almost boiling water.
2c) Once you have drunk you coffee and let the grounds cool, dump the lot in a clean container. Should be moist/damp, but not wet...yeah, that is vague, sorry, but I don't have a measuring device to know actual % water in the spent grounds, so, moist it is. I use a 3 gallon canning pot because, well, because I have one. Then add the mycelium. I stir it the stuff in a little, but remember, mushrooms/mycelium breath oxygen (they aren't plants), so no covering them up. Then keep adding grounds daily...and don't cover all of the growing mycelium! Put lid on the container and store at room temp.
2d) At some point, you're going to wonder, is this stuff growing what should be growing or what? And is this other stuff really what I want to grow? Well, with time and some looking at pictures on the internet, you'll start to figure out which is good fungus and which is not. Sorry, you are just going to have to figure this out and pictures really help ID the right stuff. Scrape out the bad blue-green algae or mildew or any number of other common names for the gazillions of different type of microbes out there that will want to grow on your nutritious (now that a lot of the bitter alkaloids are gone) grounds. And use your nose. Edible mushrooms smell good. I fit smells like baby sick or goat crap, well, something has gone wrong. Remember to open the container daily to give it a fresh breath of air....no anaerobic growth please.
2e) Then one day, your container will be half coffee grounds and then the next day, completely white with mycelium...now you want it to fruit.
2f) Fruiting to mushrooms means you have to stress it a little, so take it out of the container. If you've done well, it should come out in a single mass. I had a full pot of grounds, so I just took the lid off and the things jumped out of the pot in the next few days.....3 gallons of coffee grounds is a lot of energy so I got big ol' honkers. I also left it out overnight in the rain and overcast day because I wanted sunlight on them to make the mushroom 'defend itsef' against the elements....was told it adds flavor/texture and degree of anti-oxidants (but I don't know about this for certain). A smaller mass will create fewer mushrooms at fruiting.
2g) Fresh mushrooms can be prepared any way you like, but you'll probably have a lot, so dry the rest on a cookie sheet at very low temps, like 125 or so. I advise reading more on this yourself.
2h) A block of coffee grounds can fruit multiple times, lots is dependent on water content. As they fruit the block dries out. Rehydrate with non-chlorinated (or other treated water)...that stuff is in water to kill micro-organisms and it does a good job of killing delicious fungal lifeforms meant for your skillet..
3) You can always buy a block of mycelium at some specialty markets, once those get 'used up', break it up, add some water, then start putting spent coffee grounds on it, and see if you get some new growth. If so, follow above directions.
4) Oyster mushrooms grow super easy on coffee grounds, not much luck for me with other types.
5) Good luck, and yeah, shitake dowels in oak limbs that are laid in the ground so that only 15% of it is above ground works great. And if you don't do this, put it outside where it stays damp, like a shady spot by ferns or moss covered fence. Careful of raccoons and other critters.
Thanks Mr.D! That's a lot of typing. 
I'm a little confused on #2c)
Are you supposed leave it uncovered for oxygen access or put a lid on it?
Also, stir the mycelium completely into the grounds, or just ¼ inch under like you would seeds?
I guess at this point I should start googling so you don't have to spend an hour doing it for me.
I'm a little confused on #2c)
Are you supposed leave it uncovered for oxygen access or put a lid on it?
Also, stir the mycelium completely into the grounds, or just ¼ inch under like you would seeds?
I guess at this point I should start googling so you don't have to spend an hour doing it for me.
Thanks Mr.D! That's a lot of typing.
I'm a little confused on #2c)
Are you supposed leave it uncovered for oxygen access or put a lid on it?
Also, stir the mycelium completely into the grounds, or just ¼ inch under like you would seeds?
I guess at this point I should start googling so you don't have to spend an hour doing it for me.
I put the spent grounds in a big pot, drop the broken up mycelium on it, give the mass a single stir with a spoon so that some of it gets "underneath" the grounds, but overall, looks like you did a crap job of mixing chocolate chips into the cookie dough. You know, like this:
Then I cover it with a lid to keep new floating micro-organisms from landing on it it during the day and infecting the grounds.
Next day, take lid off, add more spent coffee grounds and waft the lid over the pot to get some CO2 out, O2 in...mushrooms need to breathe like animals. They are not plants, wrong kingdom. When done, cover.
Repeat.
How do you keep squirrels from eating all your fruit? We have trees and vines laden with fruit but the squirrels have easy access to them via fences and roof. Our apricot tree is bursting with fruit and the squirrel(s) are already eating the unripe ones.
After last summer's pear annihilation, we sprayed our a apple trees with a cayenne pepper spray.
It seemed to work at keeping them from eating them.
Have started mixing it up to spray on the pear tree this year.
Am still considering a live trap though.........
It seemed to work at keeping them from eating them.
Have started mixing it up to spray on the pear tree this year.
Am still considering a live trap though.........
Did it leave a residual taste? I have "Repels All" that I'm spraying on the fence and the trunk, but it says not to spray it directly on edibles.
These ones are marionberries. I also have a boysenberry which produces super tasty berries, but they fall apart when you try to pick them. No trellis, we have a couple of poles in the ground with wires running back and forth, kind of like a clothesline, that the vines grow along.
We rig up nets for our smaller trees to keep the critters out, the big trees are just a free for all. We've got lots of rats and birds love to eat our fruit. I've killed tons of rats with traps over the years but haven't put a stop to them. I'm looking into building an owl box and putting it up in the yard...hope we can attract one and have a new resident pest killer.
We washed the apples before eating them and didn't notice a thing.
There are various 'red pepper squirrel' mixtures out there you can Google, but ours was a little soap, a little veg oil, lots of cayenne and water. We didn't lose many apples.
We haven't experienced any problems with the birds. One little warbler even found his way in under a net on our blueberry bush on the patio. We watched the little thief fly in under the net, grab a blueberry and fly back out several times before fixing bottom of the net.
We've been using a live trap.
A little bread near the entrance & a little in the back of the trap with a little peanut butter.
We've caught 6 of them in the past week
My "Corpse Flower" is starting to bloom!
While not a true Corpse Flower, as this one is much smaller and blooms much more frequently and only smells like someone barfed up a steak meal, it does look pretty neato. It is in the foreground plastic pot (so I can bring in during the winter), in the partial sun (so it mimics the Indonesian jungle), and just starting to open...can you see the "pink meat" of the flower towards the top where the skin is peeling away? About 18-20 inches tall:
While not a true Corpse Flower, as this one is much smaller and blooms much more frequently and only smells like someone barfed up a steak meal, it does look pretty neato. It is in the foreground plastic pot (so I can bring in during the winter), in the partial sun (so it mimics the Indonesian jungle), and just starting to open...can you see the "pink meat" of the flower towards the top where the skin is peeling away? About 18-20 inches tall:
tried that but re-release and transport verboten so one is stuck
with release or murder which not cool so the pesky buggers win in the end.
Old-Fashioned Squirrel Stew Recipe - Game & Fish
Downright delicious, this squirrel stew recipe allows for a lot of creativity in the kitchen
www.gameandfishmag.com
I went to the green waste facility Friday to get a truck full of mulch for my garden. Mother's Day weekend workout...spreading nearly 1,200 lbs of mulch.
