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Experienced gardeners are well aware of this reality and have even come to enjoy the ephemeral nature of their outdoor spaces.
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While growing shiitake mushrooms takes a while to get started, the rewards are worth it. Our in-depth guide reveals how to get started!It’s wonderful to walk through a wooded forest after it’s rained and find a mushroom popping out of a log or in between downed trees! Most of these mushrooms however are not edible. But it is possible to start growing shiitake mushrooms in your own backyard or greenhouse – especially if you have a shiitake mushroom kit – and pick them as they spring out of the wood and beckon to be devoured. Mushroom growing is a little different from raising herbs or other veggies in your garden. But it is a fun process and a good way to get new gardeners involved with growing their own food. Once you understand a little about the steps involved, you’ll see it’s actually quite straightforward to grow shiitake mushrooms! Years ago, people could only grow shiitake mushrooms in forests in East Asia. However, we’ve come a long way and can now grow them around the world. They’ve become so popular that it’s estimated about 25% of yearly mushroom production is shiitake mushroom. With a taste similar to wild mushrooms and packed full of that deep umami flavor, this little mushroom is worth the wait. A little bit larger than button mushrooms and filled with vitamins, it is said that it can boost your immune system. Shiitake mushrooms are fundamentally different in their growth habits than anything else in your garden. They are fungal spores that are dormant until they find the right conditions to grow in. In order to help these little guys spring into life, you’ll need to create a home for the mushroom spores to grow and reproduce in. This planting medium is usually a freshly cut log or a sawdust substrate. With the growth of online retailers selling all sorts of plug spawn that has been inoculated, shiitake growing at home has never been easier!
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As experienced fruit growers, we know all too well the importance of planning when it comes to avoiding depressing mistakes with your fruit trees. But even the most experienced growers can make mistakes, and we’ve made plenty! We’ve learned much of what we know the hard way. It’s equipped us very well to help home fruit growers (like you) avoid the same depressing mistakes. There’s no point everyone going through the same pain, so we’re very happy to share our mistakes here on the blog. It might help you skate through the rookie stage as painlessly as possible. Some of the worst mistakes we’ve made along the way happened before we had a robust picking calendar. Making the mistake of letting fruit fall to the ground One early occasion was particularly memorable. It was a beautiful summer day near the start of the picking season. We’d been busy with the cherry harvest, and were excited for the apricots to get started. We had a great crop that year, after a disastrous season the year before. One of the first apricots to ripen in our orchard is the delicious Poppicot variety. To be fair, we’d checked a couple of trees at the top of the row, and decided that they were at least a week from being ripe. What we didn’t do was walk to the bottom of the row to check the fruit there. If we had, we would have noticed a few ripe fruit already lying on the ground. A week later we went to pick, and our hearts sank as we saw a sea of ripe fruit lying on the ground, wasted and ruined. A fruit tree plan—what’s that? We realized that we had made two rookie mistakes. The first was that we didn’t have a Fruit Tree Action Plan or an accurate picking diary to remind us of when it was time to harvest. And the second was that we didn’t realise the impact that microclimate can have on fruit ripening (that is, trees can ripen unevenly, even when they are close together). Bottom line? Our lack of planning led to the waste of all the hard work, pruning, thinning, watering, and feeding that we’d done up to that point! Lesson learned: write an Action Plan including a picking calendar, folks! It’s an easy way to make sure you don’t miss out on the fruits of your labour. Learning the hard way why netting your fruit trees is always worth it When we first moved home to the orchard and started growing fruit, we didn’t have any nets at all to protect the fruit trees. We regularly lost fruit to birds and dreamed of being able to protect our precious crops. Then we got a great deal on a job lot of ex-winery netting. We snapped it up and imagined that our bird woes were over. Ah, such innocent, naive thoughts. The thing about bird netting is that it works really well – as long as you put it on early enough! (You also need to regularly care for your nets.)
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Removing fruit tree suckers is an important part of pruning your fruit trees. They’re sometimes called watershoots, but in fact, watershoots are something entirely different. Pruning is one of the 5 key fruit tree jobs. Whether you’re pruning in summer or winter (or any other time for that matter), removing suckers is an important part of the job. What’s a sucker? Good question! Suckers are shoots growing from below the graft union on your tree. Sometimes they’re growing directly from the roots and coming up through the soil near the trunk of the tree. Most fruit trees have been grafted. This means that shoots from below the graft union are growing from the rootstock, rather than from the variety. Watershoots are something different. Just like suckers they are strong, vertical shoots, but watershoots grow from above the graft and need dealing with differently. Why should you always remove fruit tree suckers? There are three very good reasons why you should always remove these shoots from your fruit trees. It’s often better to illustrate these things rather than talk about them. Suckers are pretty common, so we have lots of photos from our orchards to demonstrate what we’re talking about! Can suckers get as big as the tree? This is a little plum tree with two suckers coming up from the roots. Notice how they’re pretty much the same diameter as the original tree? In just one year, both suckers have grown taller than the tree. Just imagine, for a minute, what this scenario would look like in another year or two if the suckers were left intact. Within a very short space of time, the original grafted tree would become increasingly difficult to distinguish. In fact, the suckers would likely out-compete the original tree, increasing its chances of dying. If you have a multi-trunked fruit tree in your garden, this is one of the common explanations for how it got there.
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Grapes are another fruit that we're fortunate to be able to grow well in the PNW. There are two types of grapes to consider: wine grapes and table grapes. Table grapes often produce better than wine grapes, so unless you're making wine, we recommend selecting a table grape variety. Planting Grapes Choose a location that has a lot of sun, heat, with lean, well-draining soil. Grapes can thrive in rocky soil and they don't need a lot of love and attention to produce well. Grapes love warmth; top dressing with gravel or planting next to an area with reflective sun are great ways to hold heat in. Grapes are self-fertile, and so you don't need more than one plant. One plant needs a lot of room to spread. If you'd like to have multiple grape plants, we recommend putting them at least 8 feet away from each other and training them in opposite directions on a trellis.
Read MoreFind and share everyday cooking inspiration on Allrecipes. Discover recipes, cooks, and how-tos based on the food you love and the friends you follow.
We’re hot and spicy… literally!
Let the crockpot do all the work for you – simply throw everything in and you are set. It’s so easy, so tender and so flavorful!
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The delicious flavors of a traditional Cheeseburger all wrapped up in a convenient little bundle.
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"I adopted this recipe, I love, I make it often and even use it when I plank, it actually goes well with ANY fish I try it on, Original Intro: quick and easy meal."
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Loaded with protein, veggies and healthy grains, these stuffed bell peppers will provide the nutrition that you need for a healthy, balanced meal!
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