Shitake Mushrooms!

Last May I innoculated a log from a Maple tree that I chopped down in the back yard.

I used shitake plug spawn that came in the form of short dowel rods.

I drilled holes in the log and drove the dowels in with a hammer. I was supposed to put melted wax over each of the dowel holes but I didn't do that step.

I wasn't sure that they were ever going to produce any mushrooms but today we got our first shitakes to my amazement! People throw around the term "set it and forget it" a lot, but this was truly that. I had totally forgotten about the inoculated log.

So about ten months have elapsed since the log was inoculated. We only got three good sized ones today, but there are some more that will probably be ready in just a couple of days.

This was pretty exciting considering it was totally unexpected. Shitakes are damn good sauteed in butter!

Tomatoes & pepper update

Here is a shot of some Roma paste tomatoes I started back in February.

They've been outside on a few nights that dipped into the high thirties and seem to be withstanding it fine.

Here is a shot of the Olympus F1 peppers we started at the same time as the tomatoes.

The eggplant was doing very well, but I left it outside and it got hammered and gave up the ghost.

The remaining bing cherry tomatoes are still growing but haven't done as well as the peppers and roma tomatoes.

Tonight it is supposed to get down to twenty-five degrees.

Build it and they will come...

Just more than a week ago I was bemoaning the fact that I hadn't seen an actual frog in over 20 years.

I don't mean toads, but actual frogs.

As if summoned by fate, an actual frog appeared today, literally on the front door.

I collected him, without any struggles he allowed me to carry him through the house into the back yard and down to the pond.

There I sat him upon a granite rock. Where he seemed to blend right in.

Where I grew up, near the Okefenokee Swamp, the frogs were always green. And abundant.

This is the first time I've ever seen a grey frog. I hope he hangs around and multiplies.

The pond is his if he'll have it.

Grapefruit Blooms

It took a while for me to realize what I was smelling in the den. The grapefruit tree has been blossoming but now it has many blooms and they are extremely fragrant.

If there were any insects about they would surely be drawn to the fragrance. As it happens, it's only me that can determine whether we have citrus or not.

Grapefruit flowers are perfect, meaning they are both female and male and can therefore pollinate themselves. Bees would do this by default except that it is February and there aren't any bees and if there were it wouldn't matter anyway since the tree is inside.

I tried to act as a bee and hand pollinate the flowers myself.

The kid at the hardware store told me when I bought the tree that they had gotten one grapefruit the year before. I doubt they knew it needed a little help and one managed to get fertilized either by the wind, the pot being moved, a wayward insect or just plain happenstance.


Whatever the case, I am endeavoring to fertilize as many buds as possible. It would be nice to get fresh fruit off of an indoor plant.

Snow Time in ATL

More Snow, sorta..

Early this morning it began to sleet with a little snow mixed in. It's mostly ice very little snow.

A huge limb already fell on the fence, of course!

They preemptively closed the schools so it hasn't been near the magnitude of the last event which was a fiasco.

They also oversold the predictions because they were so petrified from the last event. Everyone stayed home.

Maybe we should just start school in spring and end in the fall, skip winter altogether.

Starting Seeds

Roma Paste Tomato

Bing Cherry Tomato

H-19 Little Leaf Cucumber

Olympus F1 Pepper


Moon First quarter

Synodic: 
This is a good time to sow vegetables that produce internal seed bearing fruits. Tomatoes, beans, peas, peppers, chillis, pumpkins, courgettes.

Biodynamic: 
Moon in Aries: This is a Fire sign. This is a good time to sow Fruiting plants like Broad Beans, Cucumber, but it would not be a good time to sow Leaf plants like Cabbages, Celeriac, 

Sidereal:
Moon in Taurus: This is a good time to sow Root vegetable crops especially when hardiness in drought conditions is needed.