Sunday 14 November 2010

Mushrooms and miserable weather

Yesterday I had to spend all my time at the plot re-building the greenhouse that had been wrecked open arguably by the strong winds over the week - sunset was beautifully red, but did not manage to pick me up after the event: I should be buying new greenhouse panels - they did not last that long and at the moment I cannot afford them.

And just to end the weekend on a high note, when I went to try and get some mushroom spawn on manure in the propped-up greenhouse today, I got so wet, bucketfuls of rain...

Anyway, it should hold up for a while, and I got my spawn scattered. Instructions said you need a bed of at least 25cm with strawed manure, under wet newspaper. You should take all the creatures that can eat the spawn, including worms, but that seemed a bit of an overkill, and impossible to achieve anyway: my greenhouse is no sterile environment!When the newspaper gets covered in white filaments, it's time to layer on some compost and chalk... getting chalk definitely no probs this side of the world, but the procedure seems quite elaborate - this time I will tring doing it by the book. I really hope they do grow, as the handful I managed to eat last spring were really delicious, tasty in a buttery sort of way.

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