This and That and the Vegetable Garden

Some years ago a visitor noticed we had some mushrooms growing under our fruit trees. We hadn’t paid them much attention since we know nothing about mushrooming, but when he asked if he could have some we became curious. It turned out they were Parasol Mushrooms – a real delicacy. So we picked a couple for ourselves and I breaded and fried them…

They were so delicious! Since then we have occasionally seen some on the edge of the woods, past picking, but they never returned to the orchard.

Fast forward. The other day I looked for a shady spot in the garden to bury some mycelium in substrate that I bought online. Parasol mushrooms/ Macrolepiota procera can be grown in boxes, but you are much more likely to succeed with them in the garden. The instructions were simple: dig a hole, 30 x 30 cm, 20 cm deep.

Put the substrate in it and place the grass sod back on top, a maximum of 5 cm thick.

Wait for six months to a year….

Well, we will see. We are hopeful!

(Here’s an image from the internet of what they look like)

Another nice project recently was making my own nettle plant feed. My Man of Many Talents has made vast quantities of this before, which we used for our trees when they were first planted. But I wanted just a smaller amount for my vegetables.

I filled a 20 litre bucket with stinging nettles – we have plenty growing under our hedges – and then chopped them up into smaller pieces.

I covered them with water, put a lid on top, and placed the bucket in a sunny spot (note to myself for future reference: not too near the house as it smells awful!) for a couple of weeks. You need to stir it every day ( I took a deep breath before I did this! ) and when it stops bubbling it will look like this. Pretty yucky!

Then you can strain it off into a container for storing. This is a smelly and messy process, but it will be worth it!

I have given this nitrogen-rich feed to some of my newly planted vegetables, which are pretty stressed by the temperature swing recently… diluted 1:10 for watering in. I read that beans and peas don’t like too much nitrogen, so they will only get a splash.

Talking of vegetables, they are looking pretty weedy still. Shell-shocked I think is the word! On May 17th I still had the heater on overnight in the greenhouse as temperatures dropped to zero. I planted them out on the 18th and a week later it was over 30°C!

But in a week or so I am sure they will settle in. One zucchini is already forming at least, and most of the beans have germinated. The onions are growing like mad. The strawberry plants are filling out nicely too. (I sowed salad leaves in between and we have had loads so far.)

Time will tell how my new raised beds will do. After my old vegetable garden was dismantled to make way for the greenhouse build, I was unsure what to do; the wooden beds were already rotting after only five years. In the end I decided on these fairly cheap metal raised beds.

Early May, before planting

They are simple to assemble, but it is very time-consuming. They also vary considerably in quality, as I purposefully used different brands and sizes to test them out.

If you are considering them, be aware that the larger ones will be a bit wonky. The smaller ones are much more stable. The two higher ones are 45cm tall, while the rest are just 28-30 cm tall….thankfully, as I also found that they are bottomless pits when trying to fill! Luckily we had a pile of topsoil left over from last year that went into the bottom, and then several (lots of!) sacks of raised bed soil and compost were added.

It all amounted to being a much larger project than I had anticipated, but having found the perfect spot for them next to the greenhouse I was glad I had invested all that time and energy into soil-shovelling. And I immediately mulched them once they were filled, as they will dry out rapidly otherwise (especially in this hot weather).

Finally, the cucumbers were planted out on the patio just before the heatwave too, and they are loving it! In a day or two I’ll pick these two.

I’ll talk about the greenhouse in a future post, and the lessons I am learning there. Have you had any interesting gardening projects this spring? Do share!

Thanks for reading

and

Happy Gardening!