Friday, April 25, 2014
Mushroom Equal Soil Life
Spring is here and the weather is warming. All across the property mushrooms are cropping up. Mushrooms indicate a good amount of fungi in the soil. The fungi feed the plants. Dozens of mushrooms are in the mint and lavender patch that is outside our front door. For the last two years I have been laying down bark and pine shavings from the chicken coop. The mushrooms look like Saint George mushrooms and the timing is right for them to appear. Since, I'm not a mushroom expert I am not going to try to eat them.
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Front Berry Bed
Once the trench was dug, wood was buried with a mixture of alpaca manure and soil that was originally removed. The wife was happy to have the wood pile at the end of the driveway gone. The bed was then lined with cement blocks. In theory the cement blocks will hold up to accidents when someone backs into them. Go figure a few weeks after finishing, my dad backed his trailer into it and displaced the blocks slightly.
The cement blocks have 3 x 6 inch holes in them. I tried transplanting some strawberries that went crazy in the garden area in the holes. The strawberries were growing in the wood bark path of the garden. It was simple to get a hand under them , pick them, and keep a lot of roots. I filled the holes with some potting soil and planted about 50 plants. A month later they are doing great.
In the bed itself, 3 rhubarb plants were planted. They are coming up nicely. For bushes I planted three elderberries and three goumis that fix nitrogen.
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