gardening is fun!

this is a blog entry i've been working on for weeks, but then the inty was sooo slow it took hours to upload all the photos and then i got distracted by other things. so the news is not quite up to date, but the ideas are still exciting. enjoy!

(it also seems to be all underlined. bother.)

PART A: MUSHROOMS

the mushroom bag was in disgrace for a while there, cos all my promising mushrooms shrivelled up and bits of the organic material went mouldy. thus:


so i just left it alone for a bit and look what sprung up, pretty much overnight:


isn't it exciting? this mushroom got bigger and bigger over the course of a week (maybe less), and another smaller one sprung up below it (you can see the sequence of its growth in these photos too). so cool!


i picked it when it started to completely dwarf the bag. it left the plastic covered in a white spore-y stuff.


i made the pair of them into linguine sauce, with some oyster mushrooms i got at the farmers' market. it was deee-licious!

the underside of my baby, taking up my whole hand:


and me pretending to be a yee olde farmer type (pre-hair cut):


that is the history of the shiitake mushrooms. i left the bag for a bit and it didn't do anything, so i put it through the re-activation process (soak in cold water for 4+ hours, drain overnight, thump hard on a table, place back in habitat) and after a few days there was a mass of little white buttons. now i have a dozen beautiful little mushies growing like beasts all over. i'll post a photo soon. i luuuurve them.


PART B: SEEDS

i am also growing stuff from *seed*. ooooo! look - this is my selection of basil pots, back in the day before they sprouted. waiting, waiting. . .


this? this is my lemon-scented gum seeds. they still look exactly like this, many weeks later. i have the spring of gum leaves above them to give them a role model. it's not going so well. i found another germination method on the internet. it's very complicated, but i'm committed to growing a gum tree cos i miss them so. at the moment i'm temperature and humidity testing various parts of the house to find the best place to start the seeds. also, the nuts on that spring spat seeds everywhere so i'm going to try germinating them as well. wish me luck!


now i have a strawberry plant as well (c/o miriam) which is growing like a weed. tiny strawberries! on my desk!

you can tell how much work i'm getting done from the state of my study space. . .


after two weeks of waiting, the basil seeds suddenly did this!


now they look like this, all twelve of them! aren't they adorable? i am going to have so much basil and miriam's going to teach me her pesto recipe.


stay tuned. there's tomato plants in the works. . .