Garden, The Third

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Hélène and Louise : We didn't forget our blog's name, but life's unexpected adventures (including a change in the ownership of the aforementionned garden) have postponed greatly the creation of this superb little garden, a raised bed vegetable garden made for a first floor apartement, that completely receive the south sun.

Right at the start of it, it was established that the garden would need protection from foot (and paw) traffic. The solution was to make use of comfortable high-raised beds since it's within the neighbors and guests' reach. Furthermore Geneviève, the new owner, has a big dog that's sometimes very clumsy. Let's not understate the soil itself, a very poor soil that's mixed with too much gravel and that passed most of the last 20 years under the shadow of a giant wood deck. Constructing raised beds - wood boxes made of cedar boards, as it turned out - makes it possible to move the garden elsewhere should the owner move. Considering all this, it was easy to decide on wooden raised beds even though it is more costly in terms of materials and time. Here's the evolution in a couple of pictures.

This apartment had a huge deck that was in dreadful condition. Once it was removed, we salvaged some of the wood, like the railing you can see here that was used to support trailing plants. The wooden raised beds are made of brand new cedar boards. The biggest one measures 4x4 feet (you can see it in the middle of this picture). We also salvaged cement slabs, whole or broken. The whole ones were used to make a tiny terrasse and a floor for the bottomless wooden boxes, while the broken ones were used to make stepping stones around the raised beds.

The central raised bed is now in position on top of its cement slab. The raised beds against the wall measure 4x2 feet. The one under the window is the bottom part of a gymnastic apparel while you can see the top in the foreground to the right. These two elements were finally replaced by two other cedar boxes because the angles of the walls made it too hard to dress them like the others : with a salvaged swimming pool liner. Indeed, all the boxes are lined with such a liner up to half-height. The boxes were then filled with the salvaged gravel. A white PVC pipe was positionned vertically in a corner to permit easy watering to the bottom. By imprisonning gravel within a liner like this, it creates a reservoir that can hold lots of water. On top of the gravel, there's a thick layer of dead leaves to prevent soil sifting through the gravel in excess. Finally, everything is topped-off with a mix of good soil, compost and sheep manure. This mix stops at 10 cm under the top of the walls.




Even though the yard is very small (9-10 by 28 feet), it can still accomodate a good gardening area. There are 3 medium boxes against the wall, the big one in the center, 2 other boxes with covers that allow storage for gardening equipment and work also as sitting benches, and 2 small boxes of 3x2 feet that support an arch made of three portions of the old deck's railing. This last element is placed at the garden entrance and frames a small sidewalk that leads to the sliding door of the apartment.

This picture shows the white PVC pipe used as a "chimney" to see through the bottom of the box : one look and the owner quickly knows if water is needed. This way of watering also prevents the soil from being compressed by repeated waterings and thus the roots of the plants remain undisturbed (besides the unavoidable - and necessary - rainfalls). You can also glance in this picture the stepping stones path.

Like any construction work, this one took longer than expected, so some of the tomato plants, the eggplant and cabbage plants used were already sizable transplants, else there would have been no harvest! Most of the rest as been planted from seeds, however.

Three Sweet Berry Honeysuckle shrubs (Lonicera Caerulea, a species that produces edible berries in the middle of June - before strawberries - and can reach 6 feet (180 cm), but they can be pruned if necessary) and one dwarf cherry tree have been planted on the outskirt of the garden, they will do a bit of shade for other plants when mature.



The delicate eggplant flowers.

Once well established, this garden produced a surprising amount of food! In the picture above (taken in August when the season was already well advanced), from left to right, nasturtium leaves can be glanced (the round leaves) next to the cucumber vine; in the two background boxes, tomatoes already have achieved a respectable height. In the center one, there are dwarf beans called "Soleil" ("Sun" - a yellow variety), the immense plant parading green-blue leaves is a cauliflower and the barely visible purple leaves are those of eggplant. There's another eggplant hidden in there, a green-leaved variety (the flower is pictured here, at your right) and a couple of bell pepper plants.





Hélène : Tomatoes companioning with marigolds, which have the reputation of
warding off certain nematodes because marigold roots produce
sulphur-containing substances called thiophenes that kill these nematodes
when released into the soil. However, note that tomatoes are not known
to attract these specific nematodes and according to some specialists,
for the marigold to be efficient, you would have to make a rotation
between these two plants; so marigold one year, susceptible plant the next.
Yes, companion-planting is sometimes complex. Personnally, although
I appreciate the advantages of rotation crops in the garden, I'm not
fond of monocultures.

The tomato plants have been tied to the railing as
they grew. And grew they did, to an astounding speed,
like the garden overall, actually. This success is due to
2 or 3 things : First there was no compromise on the quality
of the soil and amendments (compost and manure). Secondly,
the water reserve at the bottom of the boxes kept an acceptable
and constant level of humidity. Finally, this garden benefits
from an exceptionnal microclimate, favorable for fruit plants
like tomatoes that were thriving against the warm brick of the wall.
However, this is no good for vegetables that require cool conditions, like
lettuce which died quite fast.

At the beginning of the season, here's the box containing the cucumber plants with fellow companions marigolds and nasturtiums, both having the reputation to ward off pests. Nasturtium leaves, flowers and seeds are edible and the plant itself can be used as a sacrificial plant - also called a trap crop. The nasturtium is one of the favorites for the aphids and by sacrificing her to them, the aphids will not bother other crops (or barely). The white PVC pipe for watering is very visible in this picture too.

For the best cukes, a soil rich in organic matter is a must : the fruits
of that labor are evident in this picture.

The cucumber vines climbed the railing rather well,
helped by the gardener, as the tomatoes were. They too
enjoyed the warmth of the brick wall, especially at night.
It's called thermal mass : By day the wall accumulates the
heat of the sun ; by night it releases it ever so slowly, creating
a temperature that's much more stable throughout a
24 hour period.

The corner next to the door and under the second floor balcony is more shaded than the rest of the garden ; consequentially, shade tolerant plants were placed there. The rhubarb and strawberries are only in their first year but will occupy the entire place soon enough. This spot is not an area where people and dog thread either, so a box was unnecessary, direct planting was sufficient. If you have pets that eat plants however, be warned : rhubarb leaves are poisonous. Luckily, Geneviève's dog has never shown interest in munching plants.

The arch is surrounded by flowers like begonias, purple coneflower (Echinacea), black-eyed susan, blazing star (Liatris) and marigolds. This arch was the perfect spot for pole beans. Two varieties were seeded on site : Blue Lake (green shelled) and Trionfo Violet (purple shelled).
Both climbed the railing by themselves.
At the end of the season, the structure was entirely covered by these vines.

One of the many harvest of cucumbers and "Soleil" bush beans.

A rainbow of tomatoes and Blue Lake and
 Trionfo Violet beans. This last variety is easier
to harvest than the previous because its
purple beans are easier to spot through
the green foliage.

This garden definitely had its share of challenges, from a clumsy dog to the restricted space; creativity was indeed needed to surmount them. But as this tiny garden can attest too, it's possible to have abondance. Not to mention this was Geneviève's first garden! This little piece of heaven gave her such a bounty she could share it with neighbors and friends and freeze part of it for winter use. And after all, isn't this one of the magics of gardening, getting people together and making friends along the way?

Boredom

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Hélène : 

December is a wonderful time we use to put on decorations, meet family and enjoy good food. But comes January and especially when the decorations are taken down, I feel the cold, the monochrome color of the snow... and my deep boredom from wanting to garden and seeing plants sprout!

 Of course, even in those times some gardener's tasks keeps me occupied. But once the magazines have been perused until abuse, seeds have been bought, garden plans have been made and old seeds have been tested - what is left to take this boredom away?

Well luckily, in the seed tests this year, a happy circumstance gave me the necessary inspiration! My lettuce seeds of last year are not only viable, they are vigorous! It took only 2 days for them to sprout. 

So to cure my boredom I prescribed to myself a solid dose of gardening. Everything was already in place anyway : My Grow-Light kit just needed to be turned on, my sprouting material was just asking to be filled with good soil and so my very vigorous lettuce seeds were planted the 16th of January. All of them were out by the 19th, 3 days later! February 9th (3 weeks later), I was replanting them in bigger, individual containers.

Picture taken when I was transplanting. You can recognize Oakleaf Lettuce by its form hinted by the name, it's also a paler green than the other two. However, between "Cimmaron" and "Merveilles des 4 Saisons" (Marvel of 4 Seasons), both of them tinged red, I don't yet see the difference and since I omit from tagging them, I'm at a loss. Maybe later on they'll develop distinctive qualities that will make them easier to recognize.

My gardening prescription was a thoughtful process (even if I forgot key part of it, like tagging the plants). Lettuce is a fast grower : Oakleaf only takes 40 to 50 days to maturity, I will have 3 heads of them around the first of March. Marvel of 4 Seasons, according to Solana (all these different lettuces come from them, by the way), will reach maturity between 45 and 55 days, so they will be ready at the beginning of March too, a tad later than Oakleaf. Finally, the last one, Cimmaron, will arrive at 70 days, pushing itself at the end of March, the exact time where I'm supposed to start my tomato plantings.

Not only that : Having such an easy edible plant to grow in the middle of winter is such a boon for the bored gardener! It reminds her she still have her green thumb just waiting for the weather to warm up!

And now...

Part of those lettuces are ready!

The 3 heads at the back are the Oakleaf; the next 3 ones, Marvel of 4 Seasons and the last one at left is Cimmaron. Oakleafs are ready, Marvels too!

Successes and failures 2012 - Part 2

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This pretty ice vegetation, spreading across a window in our old house,
reminds me I should already have recounted what happened
this past season.

Louise :

I almost skipped the writing of this article, because even if the season hasn't been a complete disaster, some of my usual successful harvests have been disappointing and furthermore, I made some costly mistakes... This situation kind of sapped the enthousiasm out of me when came the time to write about it. I should know better, considering my age and experience : unexpected results are an inherent part of gardening.

So let's start this right away with the big failures :
 The firsts were the climbing beans. They were part of an experimentation of mine that didn't work. I made the mistake of trying to maximise the utilization of a specific space and planted climbing peas first, thinking that by the time beans would be ready to plant, pea harvest would be over with. What happened instead was that the peas took so much time to produce, they delayed the plantation of the beans so much so they yielded during only a couple of weeks before the autumn colds settled.

Then the apples I usually collect in the abandonned orchards in my region were simply absent. It seems these trees didn't produce anything this year probably because their blooming had been compromised. Same for the grapes that climbed on those trees; apparently, they endured the same faith. Worse, the grape plants have been invaded by hops vines, so I have no idea what I will find there next year... (Note with this example how gardening keeps us in suspense).

Then the juneberries - like Helene's - lost their flowers too and so didn't produce any fruits. The black raspberries dried on their stalks, a sad repetition of last year's failures. The elderberries too  barely made fruits. They are usually so faithful. Luckily, I still had one jar of elderberry jam from my 2011 harvest, so I still had a little treat to eat! It's simply because in the spring of 2012, I noticed that my elderberries produced so few flowers that I wouldn't have enough berries to make a harvest at the end of the summer. So I rationned myself, since elderberry jam is so much better when savoured on a cold January sunday morning. While eating it I contemplated the wisdom in putting aside a small portion of plentiful harvests for those days when Mother Nature is less generous.

The absence of cucumber and squash however, is entirely my fault : lacking energy and time at the beginning of the gardening season last year (and isn't that the time when you actually need both of these assets in the garden?), I simply didn't sow anything. 

And then, there was that painful mistake:

My Pantano Romanesco tomatoes,
one of the varieties I let outside
 a bit too much. We had to eat them
fast so not to loose them. 

I got a lot of delicious tomatoes. We ate lots of them to satiety, gave some and brought inside the rest of the harvest just after the first days of frost; I did take care of covering the plants on those first cold nights, of course. But I think I pushed my luck too far, since a good portion of my green tomatoes harvest - once inside and allowed to resume its ripening process - didn't preserve as well as usual.


Cherry tomatoes Sub-Arctic plants,
a determined variety
that thrive in containers
even in cold summers, is one that
produce delicious fruits in 
abondance in hot summers.

But the worst was yet to come! I put in storage around forty green tomatoes in perfect condition, of a variety called "Long Keeper". This tomato has the reputation of preserving well for a long time (about 3 months) remaining in its green state as long as it is kept in the dark in a cool location. You can take them out one at a time to let them ripen in the warmth and light of the kitchen. However, as our basement has a dirt floor, I chose to put my tomatoes in a metal container that would prevent rodents from getting to them (we occasionnally catch some that manage to escape our cats and sneak through cracks of the stone walls or right under them).  But I didn't think that one through when I closed the container with a wooden lid; they sweated and rotted regardless of their paper wrapping, so I lost them all...

In my defense, I may mention that I'm a newbie at preserving fruit and vegetables in a cold storage room environment...

Of course there were some good harvests : 

Strawberries, rhubarb, blueberries and gooseberries yielded abondantly and reliably (well, gooseberries were a failure last year, they dried on the plants; in my experience, this is a rare happening, gooseberries generally being of a generous nature).

A great Christmas gift!
We have mentionned it in another article,
but never forget that Jerusalem artichokes
can cause flatulences and belly aches. 
Luckily, this isn't a problem in my family.
However, it seems that there is a trick 
to prevent this :  
eat them as fresh as possible,
right after you harvest them. 
Only harvest what you need and leave
the rest in place.

Jerusalem artichokes cultivated in containers provided me with the happy circumstances of harvesting some at the end of December, right when the soil is frozen solid outside. I brought one of the containers inside just after a couple of hard frosts and I let them thaw. 
This particular batch has been sowed hastily last Spring, when I found a handful of tubers in the recesses of my fridge, small miserable things they were. I planted them right into a bag of garden soil (what can I say, I'm a lazy gardener, at times). This bag was perforated in a couple of spots to make draining holes, then it was squeezed inside a big empty plastic pot (to give it strucural support and for ease of transportation). 
And then, over six months later, I had such fun digging in this beautiful black dirt, a couple of days before Christmas. It was like a gift to me from me! Apart from that harvest, I still have a nice amount of tubers left outside in the ground that I will be able to dig up next spring, in a period when harvests are close to non existing (the "hunger gap").

Eggplant "Slim Jim", a variety that gives small fruits.
As I kept two of these plants inside all through the winter of 2011-12,
they started producing almost as soon as
 I put them back outside.

Potatoes gave me a moderate yield. But when I take in account the Jerusalem artichokes, those two vegetables together made a nice quantity and a good diversity.

A small portion of my
potato harvest.

Beets gave me a yummy and beautiful harvest, right out of plastic containers ! Sweet peppers and eggplants produced generously, on last year's plants that I had kept inside for the duration of the winter.
My edible perennials were of course up to the task: daylilies (shoots, flowers and seeds), leaves and flowers of Viola (a short lived perennial that reseeds itself readily under suiting conditions) and goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria).

There was also lime leaves and flowers (Tillia), from a parc in my neighbourhood. The small raw leaves are excellent in salads. The flowers make a beautiful herbal tea - one of my favourites, actually.

Daylilly shoots harvested last
spring, blanched and ready
for the freezer.
I used some in an omelet lately.

Furthermore, I must not forget to mention my winter gardening. This autumn, I managed to continue growing a couple of different vegetables inside, in containers. So we do occasionnally eat cherry tomatoes (we harvested more than 200 since the end of October) and Oyster mushrooms, on a log, just like Helene's. I didn't restart my "vertical garden" (my Windowfarm), because I plan to make a modification to my installation. I should stop delaying, because therefore I could harvest bush beans in a matter of weeks with this. Also, a couple of herbs found shelter inside for the winter and they make themselves available in profusion : fresh parsley, oregano, laurel, rosemary and mint all add a magical touch to any winter meal. I even brought in some stinging nettle this winter, so it keeps on providing me with plenty of good leaves that I can dry.

There was a nice surprise in my vermicompost container too : Onions are starting to sprout from it! Check this picture and the comment below.


I discarded small onions bulbs in my vermicompost a month ago,
because they had been forgotten and looked dried up to the point
of being unsalvageable. And here they are showing green tips this week. I don't know if the bulbs themselves will grow to make nice onions, but anyway, I can always eat the green stems. Lately I've been wondering if there would be a way for me to grow things directly out of the vermicompost, if it is covered with a thick enough mulch, like here. At the very least, I will now have the privilege of observing that phenomenon...

What lessons should we take from all this?

More often than not, 
the Anna Russian tomato 
takes the shape of a heart. 
This can be used as a metaphor to
express my love for gardening, 
in it's ups and downs.

First and foremost, that gardening is, by its definition, an adventure into the unknown, but also that half-successes, mistakes and failures are as much a part of the harvest as any basket filled to the brim with fruits and vegetables. 

These failures' yield is... experience! They force the gardener to cultivate precious things such as patience, wisdom, humility but also perseverance, creativity and resourcefulness.

Strategies used in permaculture to minimize the failures' impact on our gardening:

Lovage is a perennial that is easy
to grow. It ressembles celery leaves 
and has a very similar taste.
One can grow it in lieu of celery,
which is a lot more finicky.
To add to any meal the taste and aroma
of celery, one can cut some of the stems
anytime, use them fresh and then
freeze the surplus leaves for later use.

- Repeat your best successes. When you find a plant that works well in your condition, you should take note and invite it again. Make it a classic of your garden. This plant could become the recurring success that cheers you up when you would otherwise feel down about gardening in difficult periods. Indeed, some vegetables are always there, year after year for you. 

- Diversify! If fifty different harvests are aimed and located on the four corners of your garden, odds are only some of them will be affected either by a bad season or a localized catastrophy (like this family of groundhogs which recently moved right under your garden shed).

- To diversify, don't think solely of annual vegetables, but bring in fruits and perennial vegetables and if you have the space, some producing shrubs and trees. By the way, most of these are easy to care for. Weeding, mulching, adding organic fertilizer as needed, sufficient moisture, these are the main lines of your care program. 

Then, comes the time of harvest (in reasonable quantities, if you are after the sap, the leaves or the stems, in order not to weaken the plant or tree). Here are examples of perennials : Jerusalem artichoke, rhubarb, asparagus, strawberry (when you grow it as a ground cover), fiddlehead fern, viola (flowers and leaves), goutweed, lovage, walking onion, chives, horseradish (leaves and even root, but take care to leave a chunk of it in the ground and the plant will come back), mallow (Malva - leaves). There's also a lot of greens and herbs like the leaves and flowers of Violas, goutweed, lovage, egyptian onions and chives. 

For shrubs, you have brambles like raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries and elderberries (to name a few). Even a a few trees don't ask for much care and will give you a harvest. Think of maples for their syrup and lime trees (tillia) for their leaves and flowers. And we haven't even talked about the regular fruits trees, albeit these often take a lot of care.

- Always with the goal of diversification, mix edible and decorative plants because while beautifying your yard, it will make the whole system more resistant to disease and less inviting for pests, since these will have trouble finding their food in such a place. We won't go into detail but some plants are great companions for each other, helping each other out. There is a lot of advantages and beauty to discover in a diversified system. 

- Diversifying is also valuable for annuals: a warm and dry summer may be good for tomatoes (if they have enough water) but not for lettuces. Varieties also have a role to play out: one given variety of squash may be very good for a specific soil or for the specific climatic conditions that happen to bless your garden.So, you see, there is a great boon in trying new varieties, finding heirloom seeds (that used to grow without chemicals, contrary to some of today's seeds which may depend on them) or arranging seeds exchange between gardeners of same climatic regions.



Wooly thyme and Johnny-Jump-Up,
2 beautiful perennials, make a superb
ground cover together, just another
example in the beauty of diversification.

- Finally, vary and adapt different culture techniques. For example, spreading out the sowing of beans will give a longer overall harvest period, and  furthermore the chances to have a harvest at all throughout the unexpected rough patches is a boon. For another example, maybe a mulch in dry weather conditions is a great idea to keep moisture in the soil for your plants but the same mulch in a very rainy season may be a further incentive for slugs to feast on your bounty.  







 

When a harvest didn't deliver what was promised, in the following season, we can remediate to the situation in different ways : 

- Try it again, if you think the season wasn't optimal; maybe next year it will be;

- Forget about this type of harvest all together (sometimes, you can't help it, especially if you are aware that the minimum requirements for any given plant aren't met in the environment you can provide it for).

- Try again but this time, make things different. This isn't a solution for lazy people since it demands investigation, reflexion, research, counsel, etc. But it's the most effective one when you wish to learn. This way, you can try replacing the faulty plant by a close relative (trading onions for garlic or chives, for instance) or change the variety (tomatoes originating from Russia are better adapted to cold spells than those from Italy, obviously), or change techniques (widening the distance between plants can make a great difference in poor soil for some vegetables) or the culture conditions (plant your cucumbers in a warmer place that receives better sunlight, for instance).  

- Read about new varieties. Maybe a new cultivar will be on the market, one that's capable of adapting to your conditions better than the previous itterations (that's the case for the tomato "Red Robin", a dwarf plant capable of growing in a container and indoors, under artificial light or right on the windowsill). A lot of very old varieties resurface from gardeners who kept their grandparent's seeds, these often have forgotten qualities that aren't available in modern varieties. These discoveries and rediscoveries are numerous thanks to a lot of passionnate gardeners!

In conclusion, my advise to any gardener who wants to hear it (and I repeat this advise to myself standing very straight in front of a mirror): it's always useful for a gardener to get a good dose of optimism!

Our most venerable maple looks frozen in time in winter. In a couple of weeks, we will be able to start collecting the sap for our yearly supply of maple syrup. However, in the middle of January, someone else is already hard at work collecting a meal under the bark of the slumbering giant. Check the next picture...

Two special winter harvests

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The fruit of the Beach Rose or Apple Rose (Rosa Rugosa) and Dog Rose (Rosa Canina) is called Rose Hip. It's actually the floral receptacle, the true fruits being the achenes inside it.

Hélène:

Let's have a follow-up on last year's winter discoveries with 2 new types of harvest in the middle of an unlikely season. Old recipes from Europe mention harvesting rosehips in winter, the idea behind the timing is to soften the fruit with one or multiple freezes (depending on the recipe, some state only one is necessary while others swear it's better to harvest them in January or February). A soft fruit is easier to prepare but beware harvesting them too late when the rosehips loose their vibrant red-orange color and turn black, rendering them inedible.

 

In January 2012, I would have liked to make this harvest, but we had so much rain in November and December (and no freeze), that the fruits became black. Luckily this year, freezes arrived early and thus created good conditions for this kind of harvest. On the 2nd of January 2013, I walked right into the 45cm of snow we had received earlier on December 27th and made the harvest. I must say these flamboyant orange-red orbs are a beauty to behold in the otherwise blinding white landscape. With so much snow, I couldn't reach everyone of them unfortunately. Anyway, considering I lost a mature plant last spring and I close-to butchered a second one (it's also buried to the top in snow),this left me with only one plant to harvest!

Cute berries but what do you do with it? Harvested in winter, these babies are great for jellies. Some recipes marinate them in a white or red wine before boiling them and passing them through a sieve, others omit the marinade part. I'm taking some as I write in a superb herbal tea : A fruit cut in half (take out the seeds and the hairs), with boiling water makes a delightful pink tea that doesn't taste like perfume but is reminiscent of its origins. I'm betting it would be beautiful in a duo of herbs, possibly combined with dill seeds or raspberry leaves or maybe with a very light touch of spearmint.

If you have an apple rose (Rosa Rugosa, Rosier Rugueux in French), the fruit is so big some people eat it just like that, as long as the seeds and hairs are avoided (the hairs are very iritating - in fact, they are used to make itching powder). This is an aspect of all types of roses producing these fruits. Simply cut the fruit in half and scoop out the seeds and hairs with a spoon. 

Louise's sidenote : The rosehips contain an astounding amount of vitamin C, even higher than oranges! Some sources claim that apple and beach roses give bigger fruits but dog roses, wild roses and non hybridized roses give tastier fruits. 

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Skewers have been planted through the still-wrapped-in plastic
mushroom log. All that's left to do is cover this with the see-through perforated plastic tent.

Here's a mushroom log - oyster mushrooms specifically, from Richters. We have already talked about wild mushrooms, but this is about making them grow on a controlled medium with a multiple harvest goal. If you want to spice up gardening (especially in winter), I do recommend you try out a mushroom log, but there is a couple of things to know before jumping in that kind of endeavour.

Log installed inside its tent.

 First off, the whole thing isn't easy and frankly, I'm not sure my first log made me save money versus the grocery price of the mushrooms themselves. My second might now that I know a bit more what I'm doing... Mushrooms are finicky! I started by buying a shiitake mushroom log. Unfortunately, 3 weeks after I started it, it was rotten, moldy and it was crumbling under my touch. I watered too much surely, but maybe bacterias were already present and never gave a chance for the mushrooms to flourish. Richters have an amazing customer's service and so, they offered me an oyster mushroom replacement (they were out of stock on shiitake).

I was more careful about watering but still nothing grew! 3 months after that, at the beginning of September I left the log to it's own device, for a trip of 2 weeks in France. I was so surprised when I came back and the log was fruiting! It's been giving us flushes after flushes until the end of December when I let it rest.

A couple of tips and tricks here : The log itself is in a plastic in which we make incisions in a X pattern, where the mushrooms will sprout (This helps prevent bacterias and other fungus attacking the log since it's still mostly protected in plastic). But there is another plastic that's used to make a tent shape on top of all of this. This plastic is maintained at a certain distance from the surface of the log with skewers to keep humidity high under it. If this plastic was stuck to the log, water would keep there instead of being properly absorbed or evaporated and mold and other problems would happen. And there's the beginning of the great puzzle. You have to figure out the optimal place to insert the skewers so they will keep the plastic tent at bay (but not too much), this tent, when damp from your daily spritzing of water, will have a tendancy to sag or to direct water drops on its edge and ruin the table supporting everything (unless you have a very big tray or cookie plate). When the mushrooms will start to come out of the log, you will also have to reposition your tent so the plastic doesn't come in contact with the fruit, else it will rot. It is a complicated enterprise to say the least. 

The October harvest included mushrooms, the Burgess winter squash,
green tomatoes and dried comfrey leaves (back, right).

Add to all this logistic that you do have to spritz the inside of the tent and the log about twice a day (not too much each time), not spray the mushrooms directly and stay present and vigilant all the time (weeks, months, the time it takes for the harvest to be truly over or when the log needs a break it doesn't need water at that time), makes it an adventure not tailored for everyone. Don't forget the worst. If your log happens to rot, it smells really bad! Even when a log is doing fine, there's a definite mushroomy smell (not bad but if you live in a 1 and a half flat, this might make you reconsider the purchase). I also noticed I did have to rotate my log once in a while to encourage fruiting on the other sides too : If some sides are in semi-darkness, they won't fruit there. Of course, a mushroom log doesn't go in full sun either, indirect light or a north facing window should be fine.

Mushrooms that dried on the log because
of inconsistencies in my watering. 15 minutes in
hot water and voilà! They are usable in a meal,
althought less tasty than mature ones.

The humidity in the tent is very important. If you water too much, you get rot but if you don't water consistently you get mushrooms that dry on the log. Luckily, they are easy to rehydrate but once they have dried, they won't start to grow again : you take them of the log and use them in a meal.

Regardless of everything I previously said, the experience is worth it! It is such a different way of gardening, a way that can happen in winter when I long to be outside in my garden beds. Mushrooms are part of a mysterious and secret world and getting to know them like this makes me feel... alive while everything outside is still and dead.

Louise's sidenote : Mushrooms are not plants per say. Scientists today consider they are not part of the vegetal kingdom, nor algae, because they can't produce chlorophyl or make organic produce like plants do with photosynthesis. The mushroom is the temporary fruit of a fungus from which the permanent part lives underground and is called mycelium. Fungi feed a bit like animals either by consuming dead organic matter, by parasiting a living organism or by forming with another organism a symbiosis that benefit both (we call these last ones mycorhizae). Mushrooms are thus from a different rein, the fungus world. By the way, lichens are part of that rein too (it's a mycorhizal mushroom in symbiosis with an algae). So a mushroom is the fruiting part (edible or not) of a fungus we call superior, by opposition to microscopic mushrooms we call inferior mushrooms : molds, rust, mycosis, mildew, yeast. Scrumptious, isn't it? One thing's clear : we are only glancing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to our knowledge of mushrooms and their essential roles in the ecology of the land.

The garden may be dead, but it can be so enchanting still! I'm closing this article on a picture of my balcony that was definitely visited by the fairies of the movie Fantasia at the beginning of winter.