Mushroom post 2 - detailed instructions

As I wrote in the first installment of the mushroom post, a few weeks ago I purchased an indoor mushroom kit (king oysters). I intend to propagate this kit, so that I can enjoy these mushrooms as long as I possibly can forever.

Reading up, I came across several approaches to mushroom propagation. I'm not 100% sure which will work best for me, so these are the experiments I will set up:

1. Stem butt propagation - to make new mycelium from a single mushroom, follow this video or the     step-by-step instructions in this webpage. Should work well for oysters, king oysters, and morels.     While in the video the mushroom is peeled and the stem is sliced, most websites (and the Russian       folklore) tell you to use the very bottom of the stem as-is, rather than peeling it. If this works, the       next step is just as described for the mycelium propagation approach below - new substrate,   

  humidity.           

  This step requires only corrugated cardboard and an air-tight container.

Morel anatomy. From http://www.waldeneffect.org/

2. Propagation of the mycelium - as opposed to the previous approach, where the actual fruiting body     of the mushroom is used, this approach uses the mycelium itself. This is the      

    stuff growing inside of the mushroom kit. Once the first flush of mushrooms passes, I will take out     some of the mycelium from the mushroom kit, and will inoculate a new container filled with     

    pasteurized substrate (see #3 for substrate choices). The general approach seems to be 500 g    

    spawn for every 2.5 kg of moist substrate (based on here). I will be using the bucket approach.   

    Here is another bucket tutorial, on coffee substrate. Don't have buckets? Use any other container 

    with existing holes (like a laundry basket) or pre-drilled holes, and place it in an intact tote, or even     a large plastic bag. Beautiful pictures with step-by-step instructions here, just click on the "+" 

    sign of each step. And yet another tutorial, covering growing mushrooms on straw, with step-by-       step instructions, using only plastic bags.

3. Substrate choices - from what I have read, oysters (and king oysters) will be happy on coffee    

    grounds and straw; shiitake (unless specifically the straw strain) will want a mix of hardwood    

    sawdust and straw, and cinnamon caps will require sawdust. 

Since I have available wood shavings, and should also be able to find straw, I'm planning on setting up four growing experiments: 1) stem propagation on corrugated cardboard, 2) mycelium propagation on coffee grounds, 3) mycelium propagation on straw, and 4) mycelium propagation on a mix of wood shavings and straw. In the next few weeks, I should be able to start all of these. I will be taking pictures to record progress on all four, we'll see how it goes!

A beautiful, and completely unrelated king bolete. But look how gorgeous it is! From photonaturalist.files.wordpress.com.

Growing mushrooms at home - post 1, general approach

I've been wanting to grow my own mushrooms at home ever since I have come across this picture.

Oyster mushrooms, growing in a bucket on a kitchen counter. From www.milkwood.net

Imagine that, gourmet mushrooms, available whenever you feel like it, fresh, and inexpensive! Growing up in Russia, mushrooms were a huge thing. Everyone picked wild ones in the fall, and most people could identify dozens of edible mushrooms. 

Long story short, a few weeks ago, a few of my friends and I bought mushroom kits for indoor growing; these were shiitake, cinnamon cap, oyster, and king oyster kits, from Wylie Mycologicals, a Canadian company.

The kits come with very simple instructions - for most, the buyer has to do nothing, until small mushrooms are seen inside the bag. Then, a slit is made in the bag, and the mushrooms are allowed to grow bigger. Once they reach desired size, they are cut off the bag and used as needed. The bag is then resealed, and another flush of mushrooms will be expected after a few days. This process is repeated, until the bag feels light, as the substrate feeding the body of the mushroom, the mycelium, is spent. 

King oyster kit. How cool is that? (image from http://static.webshopapp.com/)

The magic part is that if you keep feeding the mycelium, it should, if all goes right, keep on going forever. So, for the initial price of the mushroom kit, one should, theoretically, be able to have a lifetime of free mushrooms! After reading (a lot), these are the general rules:

1) The new substrate can be made of combinations of straw, used coffee grounds, cardboard, grain, wood chips, and sawdust (usually hardwood, NOT softwood), depending on the species - different mushrooms need different foods.

2) The substrate should be pasteurized, and the container, your hands, and all the tools should be thoroughly cleaned with soap, vinegar, or peroxide. Easiest approach for the substrate - fill a large pot with water, bring to 80C, take off the burner, add the substrate, and let it sit for 1-2 h (to pasteurize, it needs to stay above 60C for 1-2 h). Let the substrate cool, strain, and you're good to go.  

3) Humidity - lots and lots of it. The new substrate should be thoroughly moist, but not soaking - the mycelium needs air, and can drown if there is too much water. While the mycelium is colonizing the new substrate, humidity should also be high. 

                                       Oyster mushrooms, grown in a laundry basket. From http://velacreations.com/.

For details an step-by-step instructions on how to make it happen, check the next mushroom post!

50 shades of brown

I think it was Geoff Lawton who said something along the lines of "the only way for truly sustainable farming is to build soil, so that you have more soil when you're done than when you started". This is a stark opposite to the common slash-and-burn practices and the Western favourite "soak depleted soil in pesticide and fertilizer" approach. To those who aren't sure what's wrong with using fertilizer - the health of the plants is based on the health of the system the plants are living in, and first and foremost - the health of the soil. This encompasses the mineral and humus content of the soil, AND, just as important - the multitude of organisms that are the soil life. These include fungi, bacteria, worms, insects, and whatever else. This network of living things is what makes it soil, rather than dirt.

Keeping all this in mind, I was itching to get started making our soil a thing of beauty. As soon as we got a truck, we have started compiling our sources of organics. Main concerns were price (free, please), compatibility (you need both nitrogen-rich and carbon-rich materials), and versatility. One thing that people often miss is that currently soils are more often than not deficient in some things (due to long-term growing/grazing and selling elsewhere that removes the nutrients). Different soils will have, of course, different deficiencies. However, if you compost all of your home-grown leftovers and apply them to your own garden, thinking that you're solving your soil's issues right there, you're completely off-target. Each garden will have a different mineral content. Since you're applying a mineral-deficient compost to the same-mineral-deficient soil, you're still left with deficiency. To do fine-scale, targeted adjustments of mineral contents, it's super important to have soil tested. The broader approach is to get inputs from as many different sources as you possibly can, and hope that they will cover the spectrum of specific needs of your soil.

Piles of free wood chips, courtesy of a tree service company not too far away 

Which brings us to the name of the post - the more different manures, the better! Currently, we have a pile of alpaca manure, horse manure, and we should be able to pick up some chicken manure in a couple of weeks. These will be our nitrogen sources. Since different animals uptake different vitamins and minerals, the manures should have a fairly variable composition. Carbon sources will include cardboard from recycling bins, free wood chips from a tree service company, and fallen leaves from anywhere we can get them.

Mmmm, manure... Horse in the front, alpaca in the back. Josh on the truck ;-)

Our approach will be build raised beds using sheet composting (aka lasagna beds) this fall and next spring. Currently, we're waiting for the house construction to be over and all the heavy equipment to be gone. Once the house is built, we will put together a few raised beds. In them, we'll layer cardboard on the bottom, a layer of mixed manures, a thick layer of leaves, a bit of top soil from our own site (scraped off during driveway and house construction), and wood chips on top. All pathways in between will be mulched using cardboard and wood chips. All this good stuff will be left to overwinter and decompose, so that it's ready for planting in the spring. One of the beds will be made using compost from the stuff Josh's relatives are supplying us. I really hope it does well, so that they see what you can achieve with the power of garbage :-)

Starting from scratch

It's a very odd feeling to come to a piece of land, and realize that it's an empty canvas and you're in charge of making it look the way you dreamed. It's almost impossible to run a full list of things to do, since that would make my brain explode. Let me see: build a house. Create a beautiful, yet functional and reliable food system. Not kill each other. Hmm, shorter-term goals are probably the way to go here :-)

So instead we're trying short to-do lists for when we spend 2-3 days at the property. In our first week, the things to do included: mow down the clearing, till garden patch, limb driveway trees and stake the driveway and house. Done, done, and done...

We planted this year's garden with soldier beans and potatoes. We're treating this garden plot as a "year zero" experiment (as Josh calls it), or "throwaway year" as I call it. As in - if anything grows, great. If not, we're not going to be too sad about it. The soil in the clearing is mostly clay, since the clearing has been cut for (likely) many years now - the organic matter has been repeatedly stripped from it, leaving not that great a soil behind. In comparison, the soil in the forest not 20 feet away is much richer in organic, darker, and crumblier.

In that first week we also planted black currants - we brought 2 currant plants with us from BC. I bought them from a Russian lady in Castlegar, who was swearing to me that they were special, "from Siberia". There are 3 berries on one of them, and they are darkening up fast. We'll see how special it is in just a little bit! In addition, we planted 3 rhubarb plants and a bit of mint.

<-- rhubarb, happily growing in its new spot


Black currants working on getting ripe        -->











Since that first week, the list of small, yet important accomplishments got longer: moved a wild rose plant from the river, where they grow by the dozen, to our property, moved three baby trees (one goosefoot maple and two beeches) from the driveway, where they would get trampled by heavy equipment, to the edge of the clearing, made vertical potato boxes and planted them with late potatoes, built a compost bin, and filled it with a whole pile of fallen leaves left behind by Arthur, and planted pole beans, peas, arugula, and kale. Most of this work was done by Josh while I was trying hard to maintain my full-time work schedule.

<-- vertical potato planter. Yes, they did get covered (and mulched) one the picture was taken.


First-year compost bin. Will get more elaborate with time, but good enough for now    -->






In the meantime, the builders just about completed the driveway to our place, which means that now we can actually drive up the driveway all the way to the house site, instead of hiking out with all of our gear. What a concept!

<-- driveway in the making



Local wildlife coming out after the rain. Unrelated to this post as such, but very cute :-)                          -->

One couple, 2 gardens

Garden 1 - BC
We knew we'd be moving from BC months ago. Therefore, we knew we wouldn't have much of a garden at our current place. Still, I wanted to eat some fresh, home-grown things, so I planned for early-crop vegetables. On the plus side, the garden was all set up, I had seed-starting equipment, and I was eager to get going. On the downside, I really had to stop myself from planting things like tomatoes and such, since they would never make it in time for our move...
We planted early, when most BC dwellers were only ordering seeds or starting to think about wrapping up their skiing season. We used plastic to protect the little guys overnight, and it worked quite well. The peas were flowering as early as May, and we even got a bunch of pods before we left! I was hoping for more, but we didn't continue with the plastic-overnight protection, so plant growth was on the slow side. That said, we've been enjoying fresh arugula, mustard greens, radishes, sorrel, chives, and thyme from the garden for several weeks now, and it's been wonderful. Before we left, another crop of arugula, kale, mustard greens, and radishes were ready, so we were able to them with us on our travels.

Picked about 5 minutes before leaving Castlegar, BC

Garden 2 - NB
On the other side of the continent, the summer is so delayed in comparison to BC, that we actually will be able to pull off an almost-full growing season once we get there in late June. The planting list is fairly short, since 1) we don't know what we're doing, 2) will be busy with the whole building a house thing, 3) won't have 100% of the growing season. What made it on the list are potatoes (late), soldier beans as homage to Josh's grandfather, who grew them on the Kingston peninsula, beats, turnips, greens (arugula, kale, and such), and peas.

Soldier beans

On the cons list, the garden is completely unprepared (= hay field), we won't be able to set up much of an irrigation, the site will be busy with building crews, and we won't have time to start our own seeds. On the pros side, Josh's parents (thank you, thank you, thank you) are buying and starting seed potatoes and beans for us, and will be able to help us to till the garden prior to planting. Side note - yes, we're planning on tilling. Once. After that, we will be using the no-dig approach.

Yay, gardening for everyone!

Gardening, version 2.0, part 1 of ?

This will be my second gardening year. I'm still the first to admit I know nothing about it, and this will be the case for many, many more years, I'm sure. However, last year I knew even less, and it still worked better than anyone could have expected (left to right: tomatoes, peppers, mustard greens)...

Gardening seems like a never ending learning curve. You never "know everything", and that's great. From my first year of gardening, I learnt that you can plant a lot of the things you buy in a grocery store (like pepper seeds and dill, cilantro, and mustard seeds from the spice aisle). A lot Most of the things I learnt were from making mistakes - the tomato cages were too short, plants needed more water than I realized, carrots take a long time to mature (so don't pull them out when the radishes are ready, Sima), the spaces between rows were too narrow (some of us, cough, Josh, cough, have size 13 shoes), and so on, and so forth...

This second year of my gardening experience has already seen its first errors. I used the rolls from toilet paper rolls as seed starting containers. The idea is actually really good - it lets you replant the starter into the garden without disturbing its roots. In my case, two things happened - 1) I overcrowded the rolls and they got very fungus-y, and 2) I made no bottoms to the rolls I was using (as opposed to this), and the roots simply went on a little tour of their immediate environment. So while the pea starter was about 2 inches tall and the toilet paper roll was about 3 inches tall, the trailing roots hanging outside of the roll were about 8'' long. That's why the peas got kicked outside and are now in the garden, in a makeshift greenhouse...

What did I learn from this? That if you use paper-based starting containers, you don't overcrowd them, and that starting containers need bottoms. Will I use rolls again next year? You bet. I like that it's reusing basically garbage, I much prefer cardboard to the plastic (or peat) seed pots, and I do like the idea of not disturbing the roots.

Another thing that I learnt this year (already, and it's only April!) is that given 10 mins of Internet research, some imagination, and a bit of luck, we're actually pretty good and making stuff ourselves and for free. It may not be a thing of beauty, but there's a chance that it'll actually work... Here's our makeshift tepee for things like peas and cucumbers. Made with sticks (picked up for free) and leftovers of crocheting twine I bought 3 years ago for a macrame project.

And it already has its first inhabitants (cue the extra-rooty peas from 2 paragraphs ago). Look at the cute little things!

Food security - what does it even mean?

I was born in a Jewish-Russian family in the USSR, early '80s. We were lucky that my parents decided to leave the USSR and managed to do so in the very early '90s, just before the collapse of the USSR. People that stayed had to live through a very tough period of time, when they were not paid for months (despite performing their work as usual), and even if they were paid, there was hardly anything to buy. Many had to grow vegetables at their cottages, if they had those, or in random forest or abandoned city lots just as a means to survive.

Even growing up, before the actual collapse, there were continuous shortages of food. To be fair, a lot of those shortages began in the '80s, when I was born. Nothing we thought of as abnormal, since that was all we knew. Mandarins were available only around Christmas time and were considered a delicacy and one of the "must have" presents for the kids. I remember loving bananas, probably mainly since they were not freely available. Come fall, we would make huge batches of sauerkraut, buy and put away in the root cellar a whole whackload of potatoes for the winter, pickle tomatoes and cucumbers, pick berries and make jams, pick mushrooms and pickle and dry them. Even living in a large, industrial city (Yekaterinburg, formerly Sverdlovsk, formerly Yekaterinburg), having that root cellar full of vegetables and preserved food likely meant a less stressful winter.

In Canada, people have been lulled by the constant presence of huge amounts of food. Here people don't think about how they're going to go through the winter, because there's a constant supply of produce from around the world. While that gives one peace of mind, it also means that we eat out of season, amply support the oil industry, and can get swept away by the effect of globalization on supply and pricing, which also drives the smaller farmers out of work globally. One example is the sharp increase in food price in general, and rice price in particular in 2007-2008. As an affluent country, Canada probable didn't really notice, but others certainly did. How long will this buffer of affluence protect Canadians from fluctuating and rising food prices?

One of the things that reminded me of this recently was the price of almonds. I used to buy them in large bags, ~ $11/1 kg, which is outrageously cheap. Overnight, those bags became $22. It took me a while to figure it out, but then I remembered that California provides a staggering 82% of the world's almonds, and California is having a VERY rough time. And almonds are just a very small example.

So what does food security mean to me, personally? Food security to me means that we know where our next year's worth of food comes from. It means that the availability of our food will not be based on whether grain-exporting countries are supporting biofuel instead of feeding their people or the price of oil. Specifically, Josh and I feel that we have to eat much more locally (otherwise, we fall into the globalization rabbit hole), and that requires some imagination and will power during the cold Canadian winters. I will be buying as much as I can locally (farmers' markets and potentially CSA) and try to grow and put away as much food as I can for the winter. This winter, we had 30 liters of home-made plum jam, 10-20 liters of different salsas, and 20 liters of pickled tomatoes and cucumbers to keep us happy. I hope that as we get better at things, our pantry will look closer to this:

The things we'll eat in the next 5-50 years

Permaculture gardens try to include as much variety as possible. One of the outcomes is that if one crop fails, there are still dozens of others that make it. My combined Russian-Jewish paranoia craves food security (WWII genetic memories, anyone?). The first time Josh saw my (very) long list of plants I wanted to have at our home, he was pretty worried - was this crazy Russian going to waste all of our money on thousands of trees? No, she was not. That said, the back-of-the-napkin calculation of the cost of this preliminary list is ~ $1,600. Considering that I was aiming for $1,500, we're not doing too bad, tree shopping spree or not :-)

The plan is to buy the minimum number of plants from each variety for now, and propagate (by cuttings or seed) the most successful ones. I'm also planning on propagating wild local plants like maples and chokecherries, low-bush blueberries, lingonberries, bunchberries, wild ramps, any amount of wild flowers, and whatever else I can get my little hands on.

The list is long, but the purchase and planting will happen over the course of likely three installments, starting in fall 2014, continuing in spring 2014 and (hopefully) ending in fall 2015. This way we'll have more time to get to know our land and its microclimates and properly prepare planting sites.

So here is the list. If you're curious enough, you can even see where the different trees were planned to go on the preliminary orchard design in my previous post!

Fruit trees -

• Apples (several varieties - yellow transparent, wealthy, Dudley, aurora gold gala, gold russet, and 2 mystery apple trees already present). Most of these (apart from the gala) are heritage varieties. Some are good fresh, some for cooking, some for storing over the winter.
• Crabapples - dolgo and scugog varieties; great for pollination, nectar for bees, and jams and jellies.
• Pears - Ritson and either Northbrite or Clapp or Patten variety.
• Plums - Toka and Superior varieties
• Quince - Cook's jumbo (gotta love the naming!) and Kaunching varieties. Quince are like super-hard apples; they really shine in jams, pies, and stews.
• Chums (a cross of cherry and plum) - Sapalta and Convoy varieties.
• Apricots - EZ pick variety
• Cherries - sour (Montmonercy) and sweet (Stella or some other variety)
• Paw Paw - the best kept secret in North America. It's called a poor-man's banana, is native to North America, and has that distinctive tropical taste to it - a mix of banana, custard, and baked apple, based on what I read.
• American persimmon - the other best kept secret in North America.

Nut trees -

• Butternut - a North American native tree, similar to walnut.
• Black walnut - another North American walnut-like nut.
• Heartnut - a Japanese walnut-like nut.
• Buartnut - a cross of butternut and heartnut; made for resilience and heavier crops.
• Chestnut - both Chinese and either American or American-Chinese cross.
• Hazel
• Pecan - there are cold-hardy varieties, and I can enjoy one of my Mediterranean favourites :)
• Hickory - a North American native.
• Pine - either Siberian or Korean, the best kinds of pine nuts.
• Almonds - there are cold-hardy varieties!
• American beech - a North American native, produces tasty nuts.
• Yellowhorn - a cold-hardy tree that produces nuts similar in taste to Macadamia nuts. Considering that I have actually looked into growing Macadamias in Canada (and no, you can't), this is a huge win for me and Josh. You do NOT want to know how much money I have spent on Macadamia nuts in Bulk Barn...

Small fruit and berries -

• Arctic and hardy kiwi - vines that produce kiwis that are as tasty as the regular fuzzy ones, but without the fuzz. Less work peeling and I can grow them in my yard. Sounds like a win-win to me!
• Currants - red, black, and white. A big favourite in Europe and Russia. Fantastic for fresh eating, smoothies, jams, pies, and just about everything else.
• Elderberries - great for jams and wine, and loved by bees and birds.
• Haskap - I know these from Russia, but they're fairly new in North America. Fantastic berries all around.
• Gooseberries - same
• Raspberries
• Highbush blueberries
• Saskatoon berries
• Highbush cranberries
• Mulberries 
• Sea buckthorn - very popular in Russia for both eating and the medicinal properties of the oil made from the berries.
• Cherry olives - a native North American small tree that fixes nitrogen in addition to making delicious berries full of antioxidants.
• Goji berries - considered a super-food for a while. To me, all berries are super food...
• Aronia berry - also called chokeberry (not to be confused with chokecherry!) - very nutritious berry producer.
• Strawberries
• Hip rose
• And a few native and introduced, small-fruit trees: nannyberry, Cornelian cherry, Cherry silverberry, Sand cherry, Nanking cherry
• Huckleberries
• Cloudberries
• Lowbush blueberries
• Bilberries
• Lingonberries

To seal off this epic list, a few indoor-grown trees:

• Meyer lemon - juicier and sweeter than the regular lemons you buy in the store
• Loquat - a huge favourite of mine from Israel, didn't even know you could grow them indoors!
• And maybe a kumquat, if I distract Josh long enough to make my online order without him stopping me ;-)

Our vision of (NB) paradise

As we were trying to narrow down the list of potential things to do with our land, we were doing a LOT of googling. Orchards, crops, chickens, ducks, bees, herbs, mushrooms, everything sounded like great ideas and was ours to discover. In one of my Google searches about organic techniques and approaches, I happened upon the permies.com forum. Within that evening, three more searches led me to the same site. Reading through the incredible amount of information on that forum, I was soon convinced that permaculture was the best bet for us. A few weeks of excited stories about all the new things I have learned, and Josh joined the permaculture front as well.

What is permaculture? It is a 'science of design', meant to create a truly sustainable living. It is a way to design and implement productive, self-sustaining systems, which do not require drudgery. For a good but short overview, take a look here. If in conventional farming the owners must work very hard every single day of their lives, permaculture farms aim to decrease this modern slavery over time by mimicking nature. With every passing year, a permaculture farm will be more productive and resilient and require less maintenance. The best go-to example is what is called a food forest - a forest made of fruit and nut trees, with a mix of interplanted berries and vegetables. The trees and most of the understory is perennial, and annual vegetables and flowers are allowed to reseed themselves freely, thereby minimizing maintenance. Compare that to a field of wheat that needs ploughing, seeding, and several applications of pesticides to make it through the growing season.

How is this low-work-high-awesomeness accomplished? By a mix of approaches -

• Managing rainwater to provide for future irrigation needs and eliminate soil erosion 
• Not turning the soil (i.e., no digging, tilling, ploughing) and not using pesticides ensures that all soil organisms, whether earth worms, bacteria, or fungi, are alive and well. Successful agriculture requires happy and living soil.
• Mulch, mulch, mulch - both protects the soil from erosion and retains moisture and nutrients.
• High plant diversity (big no-no to monoculture) to ensure ecosystem stability, as different plants provide different services - attracting pollinators, deterring pests, pulling nutrients into the top soil via deep roots, breaking up tough soil using root vegetables, etc.
• And the biggie - observe your own piece of nature and conform to it. Work with nature, not against it her. Arid areas should have mostly drought resistant plants; cold areas should rely on hardy varieties. Growing things that can't make it themselves will mean endless, futile, work for the farmer. 

The principles really appealed to us - planning things well, healing the soil and creating an ecosystem while growing our own food, and ensuring increased yields through decreased work sounded fantastic. I spent a few of the following months reading all I could get my hands on and dreaming about our own Garden of Eden (see below for a preliminary design).