mushrooms on a log

On October 18, I attended a mushroom-growing workshop put on by Gavin Hardy and Nick Thompson, two guys from Sackville New Brunswick who started a company called "Bay of Fungi" . They explained how they are growing and selling oyster and shitake mushrooms at the Sackville Farmers Market.  Business is so good, they sell everything they can grow.




Check them out here:
https://www.facebook.com/bayoffungimushrooms/timeline

 I came home with a plastic bag stuffed with wet straw that had been sprinkled with blue oyster mushroom spawn.  I brought it home, stabbed a few holes in the plastic, and hung it in my garage, where it shared space with my son's punching bag.

I checked it occasionally, and noticed that green shoots were sprouting from the holes.  I guess that was seeds from the straw.  But this morning, to my surprise, the mushrooms are sprouting.

Here is a close-up of the biggest bunch.  I'm told I need to watch out, because they grow fast once they sprout.

 A small clump is growing on the other side of the bag.

jerusalem artichoke

Well, it's not from Jerusalem and it's not an artichoke.
It is from the sunflower family, but instead of a fibrous root system, it produces lumpy tubers that taste like a cross between a potato and a mushroom.  In some circles, it's been renamed "sunchoke".

The tubers can be harvested after the frost kills the tops, or they can be left in the ground all winter. They will still be as fresh and crisp in March as they are the previous November.

And the flowers are pretty, too.  They bloom quite late, after everything else is done.

It's November 22, just a few weeks later, and winter has hit PEI.  A heavy frost transformed those beautiful tall plants into dry sad sticks.

Last year, I waited too long to dig the tubers - the sticks had broken and blown away, and it was hard to know where to dig.  So this year, I decided to do the job while I could still see the sticks.  The first 6 inches of soil were frozen, but it was not too hard to dig through and find what I was looking for.

All in all, the 10 plants netted about 19 pounds of tubers.  Unlike my other root vegetables, there was no sign of wire worm damage or any other problems.  I think we need to make this unknown plant a whole lot more popular!

not so shrinking violet

Ahh - the violet.  So delicate, so ephemeral.
Well, that's what I thought before I accepted a donation from a gardening buddy down the street.  Now, a few years later, they have morphed into a huge, impenetrable mat that chokes out anything in its path.

I have let these invasives get out of hand.  I should have done away with them a long time ago, but now I'm in the mood for battle.  The mats are very firmly anchored to the soil, and I have had to pry up each clump using superhuman strength I didn't know I had.

These violets have spread in three different flower beds, so I have lots of work to do.

There is also a patch of lily of the valley that is an unsightly mess - that has to go as well.

Meyer lemons

This scaggy, almost leafless tree, barely a foot tall, is loaded with 6 nicely ripening Meyer lemons.
I'm surprised it's not buckling under their weight!

Last year, I ordered a lemon plant through mail-order, and before it arrived I saw some at Home Depot, and couldn't resist.  So there are actually two plants combined in this pot.  One has 2 fruit, and the other has 4.

The flowers of the lemon trees were amazingly pure white and very fragrant.  And the fruit is such a bonus.  I'm reluctant to pick and try them, because they have been such a long time coming.

turning from green to yellow - almost ripe

A few weeks later, I've been enjoying the lemons, and there are just three left.

here is some info from Wickapedia:

Citrus × meyeri, the Meyer lemon, is a citrus fruit native to China thought to be a cross between a true lemon and either a mandarin or common orange. It was introduced to the United States in 1908 by the agricultural explorer Frank Nicholas Meyer, an employee of the US Department of Agriculture who collected a sample of the plant on a trip to China.

The Meyer lemon is commonly grown in China in garden pots as an ornamental tree. 

Citrus × meyeri trees are 2 to 3 m tall at maturity, though they can be pruned smaller. Their leaves are dark green and shiny. The flowers are white with a purple base and fragrant.

The Meyer lemon fruit is yellow and rounder than a true lemon. The skin is fragrant, thin, and deep yellow with a slight orange tint when ripe. Meyer lemon fruits are sweeter, and less acidic than the more common Lisbon or Eureka supermarket lemon varieties. The pulp is a dark yellow and contains up to 10 seeds per fruit.

Meyer lemons are popular as ornamental plants due to their compact size, hardiness and productivity. They are highly decorative and suitable for container growing.Citrus × meyeri is reasonably hardy and grows well in warm climates. They are also fairly vigorous; a tree grown from seed usually begins fruiting in four years yielding thousands of lemons. While trees produce fruit throughout the year, the majority of the crop is harvest-ready in winter. Trees require adequate water, but less in the winter. For maximum yield, they should be fertilized during growing periods.

blight

My tomatoes started out beautifully.  Three different kinds - and such tender skin and buttery insides. And then leaves started to die, and before they ripened, their skin became scabby.

Blight!  What a shame.  Prince Edward Island has ideal conditions for growing a great crop of blight. Lots of rain, and lots of potatoes, which also support this fungus disease.

Blight is an air-borne disease, and without an arsenal of fungicides that the home gardener can't get hold of anyways, there is nothing you can spray that will stop its spread or cure a plant that has become infected.

There is only prevention.  I've heard of spraying leaves with baking soda and water, or milk.  It's supposed to change the pH of the leaf surface.

Good air circulation helps.  I planted two tomato plants across a 4-foot bed, which is too close .
Next year, I swear I will smarten up.  I will put just one row of plants in the bed, three feet apart, and I will nip off the lower branches and mulch the beds well. I promise.

It's important to get rid of infected plants and fruit, because the fungus gives off spores that can travel a long way and infect other crops in the same family, such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplant.
PEI potato farmers want us home gardeners to be mindful of the health of the millions of dollars worth of crops in our fields, and get rid of the offending infected vines and fruit as soon as possible.

I spent the afternoon pulling the plants and putting them in the garbage.

Growing tomatoes is not for the faint of heart.  All that work preparing the soil and growing the plants from seed, all wasted.  Oh well - there's always next year.

bald blue jay

It's not really necessary to feed birds in the summer and fall.  There is plenty of food out there for them.  But if I didn't put out peanuts and sunflower seeds, I would never have discovered this poor guy.  I thought maybe it was a full-grown chick that started filling out from the bottom up.  Or that it was a bird with a big problem.  When I posted the picture on the Nature PEI facebook page, someone suggested it was moulting. It's been a few weeks, and this guy's feathers have come in, and he looks just like his brothers and sisters now, so all is well.

As much as I love watching the bluejays, chickadees, and goldfinches that trek to the feeder all summer, there is one down side.  If I don't bring in the seed feeder and the hummingbird feeder every evening, racoons invade.  They dump the seeds, and yank out the bee guards form the hummingbird feeder and guzzle the sugar water.  I can hardly wait for winter, when those masked bandits finally hibernate.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

This medieval town was founded in 1170.  The architecture makes you feel like you have stepped back in time.

Sky blue morning glories climb an ancient wall.

The city is surrounded by an ancient wall that protected it from attack.  Now this tree from outside the wall is invading the town.

As we walked the narrow lanes, we heard a loud clatter.  Looking up, we saw two storks - the kind that bring babies to the house.

Hohenschwangau, Germany

This castle is where King Ludwig II of Bavaria grew up.  My first impression is that it seems much more friendly and lived-in than Neuschwanstein, the castle he spent 20 years building.  Why was he not satisfied with this one?

The walls are a warm pale yellow, the gardens are lovely, and it is much more accessible to the town below.

This arch is built right into the mountain, and offers a lovely view of a second arch.

This fountain actually has three lions supporting a large bowl, with a view of the rugged peaks behind.

Neuschwanstein, Germany

King Ludwig II of Bavaria started construction of this fairy-tale castle in 1868.  It was never finished, and he lived there for only a short time.  His attention drifted to building other fanciful creations before he drowned under mysterious circumstances.  This pile of mortar and stone is set in a beautiful natural setting within sight of the castle where he grew up.

The trek up the mountain from the town of Schwanau is a punishing 45-minute walk up a steep hill.  But the view of this castle and the view of the surrounding countryside is worth the effort.

The water is a milky turquoise, but very clear up close.

Munich, Germany

Munch is  huge city, but it is surprisingly green.  The English Garden is a large park with kilometers of walking paths through mature trees, and a fast-flowing river that people actually surf.

There are flowers everywhere.  Beautifully tended window boxes and flower beds left me gasping.

A statue of Juliette (from Romeo and Juliette) stands in a square. Women who wish for luck in love tuck flowers into the crook of her arm. Men who wish for romance - well, guess why her boob is so shiny!

Munich is the home of the Nymphenburg Palace and Botanical Garden.  The palace was very beautiful (it's the birthplace of Mad King Ludwig II) but what really impressed me was the long long border of colourful annuals which ring every lawn.  The commitment and expense and labour involved in planting and maintaining this border truly staggers the mind.

As I looked more closely at the plantings, I was very surprised to see a metal grid about 10 cm high and 30 cm wide that supports all those plants to keep them upright, and creates a permanent outline of the beds.



Here is a bed tucked into an inconspicuous corner in the back of the palace, but still as lovingly designed and maintained as the front beds.

A grey goose mows the front lawn.

Past the extensive gardens and walking paths and ornamental lakes of the palace grounds is Munich's Botanical Gardens.  It has beautifully arranged plantings of mature trees, perennials and annuals, greenhouses, and even a lovely cafe where you can eat on the patio.

Hallstatt, Austria

My husband and I visited Germany and Austria in July.  Just wanted to talk about some of the amazing flora and fauna we discovered.
Hallstatt is the site of a 7,000 year-old salt mine, the oldest in the world.  It is built on the side of a mountain, and has breathtaking views of old churches, narrow streets, and a deep blue lake.

The most interesting animals we saw were huge brown slugs that crawled along the old stone steps.

This rainbow coloured beetle caught my eye.

Astrantia, which is difficult to grow in my garden, is like a weed in Austria an Switzerland.

Mullein growing out of a crack in a rock.  Those plants are tough!

More plants growing right in a wall.

avoiding unintended consequences

My burning bush, which has never had a pest problem, was inundated by nasty webworms.

They were everywhere on that poor defenseless shrub, spinning their webs and hiding under them in plain sight. They can quickly chew up the leaves of a shrub, curling up those that are not completely munched, and leaving the plant raggedly and unslightly, while they march on to their next victim. Then as they pupate and the moths hatch, another generation of eggs are laid, and we can expect worse things next year.

What to do?  One friend advised I spray bleach on them. Another suggested soapy water. But I was worried about unintended consequences.  I knew that most of any chemical or concoction I sprayed on them would drip down onto something else - earthworms, butterflies, beneficial bugs - things I didn't want to kill. Plus, chemicals never kill 100 percent  of the bad guys.  There are always a few who have an immunity and can survive what others cannot.

If not a chemical solution, then what?  The answer was at my fingertips.  The answer WAS my fingertips.  I put plastic bags on my hands, and ran my fingers down each afflicted branch, crushing the little buggers as I went.  Nothing can survive physical methods of attack.  Crushing gets everything.  They can't build up an immunity to being squished.

rainbow irises

Irises were named after the Greek goddess of the rainbow, Iris, because of the many colours of their blooms.  My bearded Iris are blooming right now, and they are in a rainbow of colours.  Bearded Iris grow from roots that run lengthwise just under the ground.  They like a full-sun location.

Coming up a few weeks later come the Dutch Iris.  These grow from bulbs I planted last fall.