Pandemic Garden Club
Feb. 10th, 2024 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scrubjayspeaksWelcome to the February edition of Pandemic Garden Club! Growing good things in strange times!
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
My main birthday gift this year was a set of three mushroom growing kits. They’re all from Forest Origins, and I got the combo pack of white, brown, and pink oyster mushrooms. I unboxed and prepped them as directed on January 30th. By the 4th, five days later, they had pinned overnight:
I knew they could grow fast, but I was not expecting them to explode from one day to the next. I grew a shitake kit once many years ago, and I remember them being much slower to start and to progress. The oysters looked like this on the 5th:
And here they are on the 8th, nearly ready to harvest:
I harvested the white and brown today, eleven days after starting them. I’m going to give the pink ones another day or so. As you can see, they lagged behind the others from the start. I’m not sure if they’re going to get much larger or if this is it.
There are instructions for how the rest the bricks (which come out of the packaging looking distinctly cocaine-ish) and get a possible second flush of mushrooms.
I’m going to cook up some of them tonight. I am actually overwhelmed by mushrooms at the moment, because I had an opportunity to buy some a week ago and stockpiled. I’m hoping they keep about as well as store-bought in the fridge so I can spread them out over the week.
It was delightful fun to grow them. I almost wish they had been slower, just so I could enjoy the daily status checks for longer. This just makes me want to get more involved with home mushroom cultivation. I don’t have the best climate for it--we’re hot and dry for so much of the year, I would need to do a lot more climate control. But it might be worth it. I could basically live on mushrooms, and you don’t get much more instant gratification than something that grows fast enough to watch.
Oh! Oh, I wish I could film them and get a time-lapse of their growth. *rabbithole*
I also, as a birthday activity, finally planted the new chaparral currant. Which was, yes, a birthday gift last year. *headdesk* I am a travesty.
One of the manzanitas out on the northern line of trees and shrubs has been blooming. Very pretty. This variety was something of a rare find for the nursery, and we’ve been very happy with it.
Anyone is welcome to comment with what they're growing right now, things they would like to try, problems they're encountering, and questions they have. Share resources, answer questions, shout encouragement.
As for myself...
My main birthday gift this year was a set of three mushroom growing kits. They’re all from Forest Origins, and I got the combo pack of white, brown, and pink oyster mushrooms. I unboxed and prepped them as directed on January 30th. By the 4th, five days later, they had pinned overnight:
I knew they could grow fast, but I was not expecting them to explode from one day to the next. I grew a shitake kit once many years ago, and I remember them being much slower to start and to progress. The oysters looked like this on the 5th:
And here they are on the 8th, nearly ready to harvest:
I harvested the white and brown today, eleven days after starting them. I’m going to give the pink ones another day or so. As you can see, they lagged behind the others from the start. I’m not sure if they’re going to get much larger or if this is it.
There are instructions for how the rest the bricks (which come out of the packaging looking distinctly cocaine-ish) and get a possible second flush of mushrooms.
I’m going to cook up some of them tonight. I am actually overwhelmed by mushrooms at the moment, because I had an opportunity to buy some a week ago and stockpiled. I’m hoping they keep about as well as store-bought in the fridge so I can spread them out over the week.
It was delightful fun to grow them. I almost wish they had been slower, just so I could enjoy the daily status checks for longer. This just makes me want to get more involved with home mushroom cultivation. I don’t have the best climate for it--we’re hot and dry for so much of the year, I would need to do a lot more climate control. But it might be worth it. I could basically live on mushrooms, and you don’t get much more instant gratification than something that grows fast enough to watch.
Oh! Oh, I wish I could film them and get a time-lapse of their growth. *rabbithole*
I also, as a birthday activity, finally planted the new chaparral currant. Which was, yes, a birthday gift last year. *headdesk* I am a travesty.
One of the manzanitas out on the northern line of trees and shrubs has been blooming. Very pretty. This variety was something of a rare find for the nursery, and we’ve been very happy with it.
