Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

Dump the florescent tube. Mushrooms do not need light, as they do not use photosynthesis to create energy to grow. Miracle grow potting soil is also not the best. What they need is decaying matter. An aged piece of wood, kept moist in a dark place, is best. Under the kitchen sink is ideal.

Start by getting a mushroom kit sent to you on the internet. It will have everything you need. Then you can start expanding by finding your own nurse logs, and collecting spores as you gain experience.

An old log, in a cardboard box, lined with plastic, under the sink, is all you need. Cover with plastic loosely to keep moisture in, but don’t seal it. Mist daily if the humidity seems low.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Currently growing beetroot, pumpkins/squashes, tomatoes, maize, olives, goji berries, curry leaves, parsley, mint, rosemary, aloe vera, purslane, strawberries and eggplant. Have grown other things in the past, including beans, kohlrabi, mustard, rocket, potatoes, capsicum and chillies. Tried growing mushrooms, but didn’t succeed.

It would be nice to be able to be self-sufficient, but what we’re growing wouldn’t cover more than a tenth of what we eat. So, we still have to keep buying fresh, frozen and canned produce from the supermarkets and grocers. It also helps having friends, family and colleagues who grow lemons, oranges, grapefruit, kiwifruit, berries, etc. Or who have a surplus from *their* friends, that they want to share.

GardenersCardiff answers:

You can cut a fragment of a fresh mushroom in sterile conditions, and place it in sterile substrate. That is how mycologists start mushroom spawn, more often than using spores.

Mushroom spawn costs about $20. If you can create a sterile lab setup, you can keep the spawn running indefinitely. You can create a semi- reliable setup with alcohol and a pressure cooker.

Paul Stamet’s book “growing edible and medicinal mushrooms” is the advanced manual for the field; there are probably simpler methods, but I don’t know where to find them.

Button mushrooms, paddy straw mushrooms, and shiitakes can be propagated with natural, low tech methods. Stropharias in wood chips will keep producing as long as you keep adding fresh wood chips. I’ve grown these; I don’t like them much.