Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Hoophouse, mushrooms, and tulips

We have been going to market now for four weeks with produce and flowers from the hoophouse.  This weekend we will have beautiful turnips and broccoli raab as well as some salad mix.  Yesterday we planned out the hoophouse plantings through June.  It's really tricky trying to figure out what we can put in here when things get hot; we think we'll get a shade cloth if we can find one at a reasonable price cause if we have a hundred degree week like we did last June things are going to get fried.  
Stuart cut down some sweet gum trees yesterday after we realized we would need more logs for mushroom production.  We plugged oyster mushrooms yesterday and later this week we'll do the shitakes.  We're trying to have four times the amount we had last season.  Stuart built this great mushroom cultivation site behind our cooler where we'll set up a sprinkler system to keep the logs wet.
Here are some blue dolphin tree oyster mushroom plugs.  You just drill an inch hole every four inches into a log then hammer in one of these plugs.  This strain was particularly heavy in mycelium growth.  
This is a picture of bad anemone blooms.  So sad, I know.  The week it got down to 3 degrees here ruined so many of these blooms---I only single covered them and now I know they need a double cover for those temps.  Live and learn.  Luckily the tulips have started coming on.  My favorite bloom right now.  Next year we'll do some parrot tulips for something different, even though the bulbs are outrageously priced.  

2 comments:

Randy Emmitt said...

Hey those turnips sound great! Are they the small white ones, my favorite. Didn't know you could buy stuff to grow Oyster Mushrooms, we have plenty of them here naturally on downed or dying Tulip Poplar usually, rarely have I seen them on Sweet Gum, but if it works what the heck. In fact if you like I have a cut up poplar that produces more than we can handle and it needs to be removed it's yours if you want it? We are out in Rougemont.

Anonymous said...

beautiful!!!

now i feel totally behind.

i don't actually have a greenhouse, so really, i'm not behind, but now i'm really craving green growing things!