Shade Gardening

A number of years ago, Dan built me a hoop house. 

Photo from December 2015.

I hoped to extend my growing season and experimented with it to see how well it could do that. It didn't work out as I had hoped because during mild winter weather, the plastic covering made the interior of the hoop house too warm. All my cool weather crops bolted and went to seed. 

In summer, the raised beds dried out quickly, even with shade cloth. 

Photo from spring 2017

I had other problems with the shade cloth too. One of our cats clawed it climbing to the top of the hoop house. I would remove it in winter and store it in the garden shed, but there, it would become infested with ants who loved to lay eggs between its neat folds. What a nuisance!

All of that was somewhat discouraging, so the hoop house hasn't been used as much as it should. Two and a half years ago, I added a narrow raised bed on the outside.

Photo from January 2019.

Like the hoop house beds, I found that this little bed also dried out quickly in hot weather. Not wanting to give up, I started to wonder about using the hoop house for a trellis. Early this spring, I planted that bed with ground nuts (hopniss) that were too small to mess with for eating. Later, I transplanted tomato plants there, many of which turned out to be Matt's wild cherry tomatoes. This is what it looks like now.

Tomato and ground nut vines growing on the hoop house.

From the outside, it looks like a wild mess! But on the inside, it's a shade garden.

Strawberries are in the first bed, and seem quite happy with some shade.

The second bed contains Malabar
spinach and Hale's Best cantaloupes.

For the spinach, I hung a small section of paneling from the
hoop house arch. Can you see the baling twine tying it up?

The spinach had no trouble finding it and seems to like the shade.

Behind the spinach are the cantaloupes. 

The cantaloupes are a little slow in the shade, but seem happy to be protected from the morning sun. In both of these beds are ollas, which helps. As has the adequate rain we've been getting lately. 

Of the six little beds in the hoop house, those are the only two that are planted at the moment. This winter, I'll pull all the wiregrass and sheep sorrel out of the others and plant next spring. I think I'll also add a second little bed on the other side of the hoop house, so that next summer I can have shade from both morning and afternoon sun. 

It's always nice when an experiment turns out well. In fact, it's encouraged me to give the hoop house some much needed TLC and get it  back in production. 😌

Shade Gardening © July 2021 by Leigh 

at http://www.5acresandadream.com

Mushrooms

Something I've eyed in seed catalogues over the years are mushroom kits. We love mushrooms, but the price for kit always held me back. Sow True Seed, however, sells both kits and plugs. The price of plugs is reasonable, and since we already have all the things we need to plant them, this was a good way to go. I bought two kinds - shiitake and white oyster.

Shiitake and white oyster mushroom plugs, 100 of each.

The plugs are set into live logs, so we scheduled our planting session for February. This is the month Dan designated for a job on our pasture improvement goals - trim low branches overhanging the edges of the pasture.

We invested in a pole saw for this job. Much safer
than climbing a ladder with a large chain saw!

That raised the canopy along the pasture fence line, plus gave us the logs we needed for the mushrooms! According to the excellent instructions provided with the plugs, white oak is recommended as the best. That's exactly what needed to be trimmed back.

Oak limbs in 4-foot sections.

Holes for the plugs are drilled 1 & 1/4 inch deep with a 5/16-inch drill bit. They are spaced six to eight inches apart in rows three to four inches apart.

The plugs are inch-long pieces of dowel that have been scored and inoculated with mushroom spawn.

They are pounded into the drilled holes.

And then coated with beeswax.

I set up a hotplate in the milking room for waxing the plugs.

I marked the ends of the logs with either an "O" for white oyster or an "S" for Shiitaki. The mushrooms themselves look very different so in some ways it shouldn't matter. But you never know.

The instructions said that logs cut more than seven to ten days previously would need to be soaked for 12 to 24 hours. We skipped that step because ours were still freshcut and green.

I waxed the cut ends of the logs and then stacked them behind the goat barn next to the big rain catchment tank. That spot remains in shade all day and will be easy to water if needed.

Now we wait! I read it can take up to a year for a first harvest.

Have you tried to grow mushrooms? How did it go?

Mushrooms © Feb. 2019 by Leigh

at http://www.5acresandadream.com/