Baby Herbs EVERYWHERE!

Happy Monday [ 😥 ] everyone!

Eugin here and I wanted to give you guys a quick update on the progress of our herb garden/ shiitake bed.

If you guys forgot, just a few weeks ago, I had built a container garden out of a few wooden pallets I had been hoarding. I filled it with a bunch of organic matter + compost and this is what it looked like when I was done:

Nothing too exciting here just yet.

Since then, I sowed a variety of herbaceous seeds into the pallet and now this is what it looks like now!  
The buckwheat has been sprouting like mad and it is adding a nice flush of green to the once empty space. I am hoping that the deep tap roots will help to aggregate the soil and give the microorganisms a nice place to call home. Its actually kinda crazy, just how much water these little guys hold on to! I was watering the same soil mixture in other containers but much more frequently. These guys hold lots of it!

Here is a close up of the smaller guys, waiting to burst forth.

Not too sure which ones are shown here in the picture because they were tossed kinda willy nilly but we will find out soon enough! I will definitely need to do some fine tuning to possibly weed out the overly sown areas. We will see what I choose to do when that happens. Any suggestions? Please feel free to leave it below!

Here is a view of our soil thus far:

The camera does not do the image justice but the soil is alive!
The soil itself practically shifts with the movement of microorganisms! I dunno, I’m pretty proud of it! To think that it is all in an old wooden pallet from behind our business complex?

Also, we got our first tomato!

I don’t think it was completely ripe just yet but I seriously couldnt wait.

They say you haven’t tasted a real tomato until you’ve tasted your own.
Today I tasted my first tomato and it was incredible.
Why don’t they sell them like this in the grocery markets?

Amy wants to make fried green tomatoes with a few of the others. We will let you know how that goes 🙂
As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, or suggestions. We really love hearing from you guys 😀 😀
And also be sure to subscribe for future updates from Me and Amy

Till next time, hope you guys have a nice evening !
-Eugin

E dit:
Sorry guys, I am still pretttty new to WordPress so I have a quick question for you veterans:

How do I add a photo to be featured for the post?
Also, does anybody have tips to sync to Google Analytics?

Inoculated Spawn, my first shot

Hey guys,
just wanted to share my first steps in mycology with the rest of you folks.

Here is a view of our shiitake bed/ herb garden that we have outside with our bonsai. With our natural farming approach to our herb garden, I am hoping that the saprophytic fungi benefit from the increases in organic matter from the herb garden. Similarly, I want to see if the saprophytes may somehow benefit the living herbs in the garden. I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated on that one 😉

But before we started the outdoors project, we started with our little indoors project.  Here is a view of how it currently looks (sorry, I should have taken pictures when i first started, shoulda started the blog sooner!)

Not very exciting eh? I think not!
What you see here is Pleurotus eryngii mycelium, otherwise known as the King Oyster mushroom, running through straw substrate.
This was a project of many firsts for me. First of all, I was reading Paul Stamet’s Mycelium running and I was all jazzed up about mushrooms. So this was my first time working with inoculated spawn, first time pasteurizing sterilizing anything, and first time incubating….well, anything at all. I really hope I didn’t mess it up!
All i used for the process was
-a bottle of hydrogen peroxide
-cotton balls
-stovetop
-plastic bags

after about 3 weeks of incubating, this is how it looks!

In this picture, you can see the two inoculated specimens sitting by their humidity bowl. for one of the specimens, i used a plastic bag and for the other i used a mason jar.
Everything here, including the container was sterilized heavily with hydrogen peroxide to prevent any form of contamination.

It looks like it is colonizing fairly well wouldnt you think?
I’m hoping for a pound or two of delicious king oyster mushrooms.
Aargh I can’t wait!

Be sure to subscribe for more updates on our organic container garden, mushroom farming, bonsai, and other exploits.

Thanks for stopping by!
-Eugin