Do you love mushrooms as much as I do? I've harvested them a few times. Many varieties are too expensive in the store, so I only get them when I find them in the wild. But how do you know which ones are good to eat? And once you do find them, you need recipes. Can they be grown in your backyard garden? I wondered about all these things. With the books I'll be reviewing now, we can answer all these questions.
Foraging
I've been foraging for mushrooms for years. When I first decided to do this, I was not going to just go out and start picking, I needed to know what was good to eat and what was not. I found two books that have been in my library ever since and I reference every time I go foraging. My favorite field guides to mushrooming are by David Arora: Mushrooms Demystified: A Comprehensive Guide to the Fleshy Fungi and All That the Rain Promises, and More ...: A Hip Pocket Guide to Western Mushrooms. These are two great and very different guides to mushrooms. Mr. Arora is a bit of a hippy who loves to go out after a good rain and find all the best mushrooms he can. He seems to know about every type and his books are a must have for any fungi lover who wants to go hunting.
Mushrooms Demystified is a huge tome of a book. About 2 inches thick and 1000 pages, it has details on over 2000 species along with information about if they can be eaten, if they are hallucinogenics, how they are classified, where they grow and so much more. You will even find information about using some as dyes and medicines. This is NOT a field guide. It does not fit in your back pocket and would weigh you down too much if you tried to take it with you. Keep this book at home, then when you are out, with our next guide, if you find a specimen you don't know, you can bring home the specimen and it will have all the details you need.
All That the Rain Promises, and More ... is your pocket guide. It is made to fit into your back pocket and is used by people all over the world to find mushrooms. It has a key in the front and back that will guide you to the right place in the book to locate details about the mushroom you have found. It has the most popular mushrooms, with nice full color pictures and some information about them. In the notes, it tells on what page in Mushrooms Demystified you can find more information about it.
If you are only going to get one mushroom guide, I recommend All That the Rain Promises, and More ... as you are likely to carry it with you when you go foraging, and what is the good of having a guide and not using it? If you can get both, Mushrooms Demystified has more information, more species, and makes a great addition to have at home. For instance, if you run across a Fat Jack in the woods, you look it up in All That the Rain Promises, and More .... There you find out the important piece: "Edibility: Edible". You then take it home and look it up in Mushrooms Demystified. There you find much more: "Edibility: Edible. It is generally listed as mediocre, but one collection I sampled had a rather pleasing lemony flavor."
Use MD to get some details about a mushroom before hand, such as where to find Oregon White Truffles (MD p.858-9). "Habitat: Solitary, scattered, or gregarious in woods and at their edges, associated mainly if not exclusively with Douglas-fir (Usually trees between the ages of 8 and 65 years); found from California to British Columbia, but especially common in Oregon. Although it normally grows underground, I have found specimens on the surface." You can then head out to your nearest Doug-fir patch, with a shovel, and go digging for them. If you are lucky you will find some. Be careful though "widespread collecting can be destructive."
Cooking
You collected your Black Morel (Rain p.230, MD pp.790-1 & plates 199, 202) and your Lion's Mane (Rain p.200, MD pp.615-616) and now you need to know what to do with them. I headed to the library website and put a couple of books on hold. These two will provide you with a good collection of recipes to keep you busy for a while.
Mushroom Feast: A Celebration of all Edible Fungi, Cultivated, Wild and Dried, with Recipes by Jane Grigson was the first I looked at. It first tells you which are the "best" edible mushrooms and then has several sections on different types of foods. The book includes information on mushrooms in history, legends, and some recipes from the far past. Very nicely written book and a fun read, even if you don't try the recipes.
The Complete Mushroom Book: Savory Recipes for Wild and Cultivated Varieties by Antonio Carluccio is a combination of a field guide and a cookbook, or so it claims. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. In the field guide arena, I would not count it as very good since you can't easily find the mushroom you are looking for as there is no key. Besides, it is far too heavy a book to bring into the field, even if you cut out the recipe book and just took the field guide. As far as a recipe book goes, it is your standard fare. A little information about where the author got the recipe, the recipe, and a great picture of it. Nicely done, but I like the history and whatnot of Mushroom Feast even if it does not have all the great illustrations.
If you want one mushroom recipe book, get Mushroom Feast if you like history and reading. If you prefer to have pretty pictures to go with the recipes and a nice pretty layout on the recipe, take The Complete Mushroom Book. If you want a third choice, I found a copy of Wild Mushroom Recipes by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, but it is hard to find. It is just a simple listing of recipes, no pictures or anything. What I liked about it is that the recipes are grouped by genus of mushroom. This makes it really nice for finding a recipe specific to a certain mushroom you found.
Growing
Hooked yet? How about growing your favorites? Check out these two books on cultivating our fungal friends in your back yard. They want you to grow them! You know they do! And you want to grow them too! Pick up these books, they don't go boo!
I've wanted to grow mushrooms for a long time, but never have. I've never really had a place to do it. Still, I want to learn how. I checked a couple of books that are recommended in Mushrooms Demystified and read them. Like David's books, one is a tome, the other much smaller.
The tome is called Mushroom Cultivator: A Practical Guide to Growing Mushrooms at Home and is by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton. It has all the information you need to grow mushrooms on any scale. It has great detail on every aspect it speaks of. I found it to be a little overwhelming, but if I was going to take growing mushrooms very seriously, I'm sure I'd want this book in my collection.
A while ago, Laura Williams won a contest here and I said I'd write a review of her site. This is that review.
Laura is a Christian and homeschools her seven children. She blogs about various things, including contest, saving money, raising kids, gardening, homeschooling and whatever else she feels like writing about. She must spend a lot more time blogging than I do, because she manages to write at least one article a day (her daily contest list) and usually four to seven articles. I'm lucky to get four to seven a week.
Often when I see blogs that have several articles a day, most of them are short and useless articles. Not the case with Laura. She has a lot of good information there. She has a list of great recipes, making money articles, games and more.
Laura has been on my list of sites I regularly visit for a while. I really enjoy reading her blog and when she entered my contest, I was thrilled to have her on it. I was even more thrilled when Random.org made her the winner (of course with only three contestants, she had a good chance). Thanks, Laura for entering the contest, and thanks for having such a worth while site.
This weekend, Louis Palau was in town and when he comes to town, he knows how to throw a party! He invited Veggie Tales and had several puppet shows and blow up toys (bounce houses, slides, etc) for the kids. Live music from big name bands like Mercy Me, TobyMac, Kutless, Chris Tomlin and more. And it was all free!
Well, that part was free. They also had food and you could buy merchandise from the musicians and the many of the sponsors had stuff for sale. But the main events were free. It was a lot of fun. I like free and I love to see Emma having a good time. She did. She was singing along with Mercy Me and during at least one of the prayers (this is an evangelical event) she was praying along. My little 2 1/2 year old singing praise and giving praise. It was so wonderful to see.
I'd like to say a thanks to Him for sending me such a lovely daughter. She is a joy and a wonder. She makes me smile every day and I am sure will do wonderful things for His Glory. He is great, yet he loves me enough to send this beautiful joy to keep us entertained. Yes, I'm a sap. I love Jesus and I love Emma. I'm a lucky man.
I've been wanting to put in a rain barrel. I found a barrel that had been used for compost at a garage sale. I paid $2 for it and a bunch of other stuff that they had in the free pile, like a bag a steer manure, another of lime and a couple other fertilizers. I made off pretty good. I didn't get it hooked up right away because I did not have a lot of time and never made it to the hardware store for a spigot.
I finally got the spigot. And now, guess what... It is raining. And I still can't install it. When I put the putty on around the spigot, it needs to cure for 24 hours, and I need to patch a small hole in the bottom. The silicone also needs to cure for 24 hours. By the time I get it all done, the rain will be gone and I'll be wishing I had it set up. Oh well. I have a couple of buckets out there, so I'll get a little rain water to hold. And then I'll get the whole thing properly set up and I'll tell you guys all about how to do it.
Rain barrels really are a great addition to your garden. Rain water is so much better for your friendly fauna than the chemical laden hose water that we normally put on them and it is also better for the environment. It can also save you some money, be a conversation piece, and if set up properly, add beauty to your home. I hope you get one too!
There is a contest to get a dream job in which you have to submit a short video application in order to be considered. I thought it was a fun idea and I need practice with my video editing skills, so I thought I'd give it a try.
Basically, you create the short video, submit it for consideration, then you get to vote on them and others vote on yours. The best 10 are considered by the panel of judges and the best 1 wins $1000, their dream job for a day, and a trip to the dream job location. There are other prizes as well. I hope I win, but mostly I did it for the video editing practice.
You can view my video here and be sure to go and vote for me. If you have applied, give a link below and I'll check yours out. (it is not embedded, because for some reason embedding it crashes IE, but the link does not...)
Mulch on your garden beds helps to cut down on weeds, makes the weeds that do come up easier to pull up, and helps to keep moisture in the soil. It can also make the beds look a lot nicer. When you have a lot of beds to mulch, it can be very expensive to buy a big bunch of bark mulch. By the bag is really expensive. If you have a truck, you can get it by the yard for around $30 in my area. Or if you need more, you have to pay someone to deliver it. I need about 4 yards for my flower beds, plus I need something to mulch my veggies as well, probably 2 or 3 yards for that. I have a lot of garden beds, so I need a lot of mulch.
What is a guy with no discretionary income to do? I had an extra $30 a while ago, so I got some bark mulch in a borrowed truck and put it on my rose bushes. Now funds have gotten tighter as I look at the budget till I finish school and wonder how I'll make it, but I still need to mulch the beds or I'll be spending too much time and money watering and pulling weeds. What choices do I have. I came up with some and thought I'd share.
Steal It
I don't recommend this method. By the dog park we go to the city has piled up lots of mulch and I could just go and grab buckets full. I could not get a truck up close to it, as they have it gated, but I would not do that any way.
Grass Mulch
I've heard of a lot of people that would put their grass clipping on as mulch. This works well if you have a good grass lawn to do it with. My grass is mostly dead right now and when it is not, it is mostly weeds. I think I'd get too many weed seeds in it this way.
Newspaper
Newspaper works as a mulch, but you really should put something over it, because it will blow away otherwise. Besides, it is kind ugly. I use this method in the beds that don't have bulbs because it helps more with the weeds, just like the fabric you can buy.
Yard Chippings
If you have a chipper/mulcher, you can take any brush you have, run it through the chipper/mulcher and viola, you have a good mulch. I looked for one new, and saw that they cost $500-$600. I almost choked on my tounge. I had talked to my wife and said "if we can get one for around $100 it will be worth it, because it will cost more than that to haul off all this debris, and we will get mulch. I was disappointed, I wanted the mulch.
Then I went on CriagsList. I found one listed for $125. Went over, checked it out, and brought it home. It claims to do 3 inch peices, but it bogs down so much, if they are still green, that I would not do anything near that. When they are dry, if runs them much easier. It is not as pretty has the bark mulch, but it works well.
Coffee Grounds
You can go to coffee shops and they will give you their old grounds. While you probably would not want to use solely coffee grounds as that might make the soil a little too acidic and might make your worms a little too hyper. Adding it to the mulch will help with color and give it a little fertalizer for you roses and other coffee drinking flora.
Leaves
Not as easy this time of year, but come fall when the leaves are all over the yard, you can pick them up and put them on your beds. This works great for garden beds as in the spring you can then turn the rotten mess of leaves into the beds for extra organic matter.
Raise your hand if you have mint growing in unwanted areas of your yard. I can raise both my hands very high to that one. I've gotten rid of a lot of it and my roses are now mint free, so I thought I'd share some of the methods I've used to get rid of the very useful and good smelling weed. Before we talk about getting rid of it, lets talk about controlling it.
control
The surest way to make sure you don't have mint in unwanted areas of your yard is to make sure that it is always in a controlled area. Use a pot of some sort and keep it above ground is a good method. Some people will bury a put underground. This will help keep it from freezing in winter, but mint is so hardy, I'm not sure that it is needed.
I plant mine in tires. Yes, I know I have plenty of mint all over the yard. It was here when I moved in. I don't want it in most of the places it resides, but I do have two plants that I want to keep: one spearmint and one lemon balm. Those two plants I don't want to go crazy and take over my yard, like the ones I've been removing, so I planted them in an old tire.
Take an old tire and cut out one of the side walls.
Lay it down with the cutout side up.
Place some plastic sheeting in what is now the bottom of the tire.
Place the cutout sidewall on top of the sheeting.
Fill with potting soil.
Plant
With this method, the roots can't easily get out of the tire, they grow too shallow to go under the plastic, but just in case, the plastic is there and held in place between the sidewalls and the dirt is holding it down as well. If the roots threaten to go over the tire, just trim them back. Be sure to water your tire regularly as all potted plants drain more freely and have less soil to get the water from. You should also mulch it to keep down evaporation. I also use this method with my sunchoke, except I use semi-truck tires.
removal
Ok. You didn't know better and you planted some mint in you flower beds. Or you just moved into a place and the former owners/tenants planted mint and it went wild. You now have mint everywhere. Time to get out the napalm, right? Hold on, before you get out the big guns,we can try to get rid of it with just a little bit of work.
Mint has shallow fiberous roots, so you don't have to dig very deep to get it. The problem is, since it is so fiberous, you miss some. The mint will grow back from those little bits of root you missed. So here is the method of digging that I found worked best. This works for many other weeds too. It requires a bit of sweat and some time, but it does work well.
Dig: Dig up what you can. You should get as much of the root as you can, but you don't have to go crazy. Just dig up the chunk, shake off the dirt, toss it in you curbside refuse bin (you don't want it in your compost). I just push the spade at a shallow angle under the clump and pull it up as I go.
Mulch: Around my roses I used a fabric barriar and then bark mulch. I did not dig up the mint as well here as I did in areas where I did not use the fabric. If you don't use the fabric, put down a good 3 inches of mulch. The mulch will choke out a lot of the little bits before they can make it to the light. It will also make it so that those that make it up have such loose mulch around their roots that they pull up very easily.
Weed regulary: Go out once every week or two and pull up anything you see that does not belong. With the mulch layer, you will get up a lot, very quickly. Not a whole lot will have made it to the surface, the rest will come up so easily you will wonder why you would garden without a think mulch layer.
Take it in stages: If your yard is like mine, mint in every corner (and vetch and blackberry and...) then you should take it in stages. I have three rose beds, so I started with the smallest. I got that under control, saw that it worked really well, so I continued to the other two. I also have gotten just the mint and vetch in a couple of areas, letting the other weeds take over, as I just can't get to everything yet. Now, I'm working on my azaleas and bulbs. Next I'll work on where my fruit buses are. Most of the mint is gone from these two areas, and I am working on the vetch. I hope to have them both under control by the end of summer.
I know it sounds like a lot, but I had a large area that I just dug up, never mulched, and don't weed. I have lots of other weeds, but don't get much mint in that area. So, if you take the effort to dig up a clump, get it out of your yard and you might be free of mint in that section for a while. Besides, digging is good exersize!
Many of you have seen the Dirty Fingers Blog Carnival. I post the carnivals every month, but it has been a while since I invited people to join, so I thought I'd do that today. I am also hosting another carnival, so I thought I'd mention that as well.
What is a Blog Carnival?
For those that don't know, a blog carnival is basically a table of contents, or a list of related articles that are found on other blogs. They are sometimes broken into categories, and sometimes have a specific theme they follow. Other times they are very general.
Dirty Fingers
Dirty Fingers is a monthly blog carnival. I keep this fairly general, anything eco, gardening, home, cooking,
how-to, etc will be considered. The point is that it is something you
get dirty doing. You get dirty hands when you cook, when you garden,
when you build, so these will all be considered.
I will be hosting the October 7th issue of Make It From Scratch. This weekly blog is focused on things that are hand made. In living sustainably, we have to learn to make things our selves from local material. That is why I'm interested in this particular blog. It is also often less expensive to do things yourself than it is to pay someone else to do it. That is not always the case, but often.
This weekend, I was working on my new herb garden. I cleared out some brush in the area and was trying to level the area and pull up the stump that was left from one of the bushes that was removed. I dug up a bunch of bulbs, enough to half fill a kitty litter tub. Next, I dug around the stump. Got one side dug down a little and started on the other. About a minute later I felt this sharp pain in my ankle and ran for the door.
I got my shoe and sock off, had my wife go to the car for the first aid kit, with the sting relief pads. Once the pain subsided, I put on the sock and shoe and returned. I assumed that I got stung by a rough bee that I pissed off, so I started digging again, but I kept my eyes open, just in case.
About two shovel fulls when I saw about 10 bees coming out of a hole a right at the fence line. It had been well hidden by the bushes that had been there, now it is right out in the open. I'm unsure what to do.
I can go out there and spray, killing them all, and be free of any potential stings to myself or my family. At the same time, the bees might help to pollinate my garden. I've also read about the loss of bees recently and don't want to add to the low bee numbers by killing an entire hive. What to do, what to do.
I don't know much about bees. I think I need to do a little research and find out what kind of bees they are. If they are yellow jackets, then I guess I should just kill them. If they are a more friendly bee, that would not have attacked me, if I had not been attacking their nest, then maybe I could just figure out a way to protect that nest and let them bee. For now, there is a stick in the fence, marking their nest and the herb garden is places on a temporary hold. It is going in containers anyway, so the containers have been set up, just not in the permanent location.
Tired Garden is proud to bring you the sixth edition of the Dirty Fingers Blog Carnival. This issue is a little smaller than some of the others, because I forgot to set up the carnival until mid month. We still have 7 great articles for you to look though. We even have a couple of great articles that are outside of our normal gardening and housing fare. I'm including these because they do have a component that is sustainable. Read on and be sure to comment on the articles if you see something worth commenting on. This makes us bloggers really excited.
Organic is awsome, but you wanna take the next step? Check out Permaculture! This is the way farming should be! Read about Permaculture -- Moving Beyond Organics at { gathering home }. Be sure to watch the video, it is very enlightening!
Aww, the flower. They are so lovely to look at, but have you ever looked at them closly? I mean really close? Have you looked at their organs? Check out Flowers: the business parts posted at Walking Prescott and you will get your chance to see them from the inside out.
and 
. These are two great and very different guides to mushrooms. Mr. Arora is a bit of a hippy who loves to go out after a good rain and find all the best mushrooms he can. He seems to know about every type and his books are a must have for any fungi lover who wants to go hunting.
by Jane Grigson was the first I looked at. It first tells you which are the "best" edible mushrooms and then has several sections on different types of foods. The book includes information on mushrooms in history, legends, and some recipes from the far past. Very nicely written book and a fun read, even if you don't try the recipes.
by Antonio Carluccio is a combination of a field guide and a cookbook, or so it claims. It is beautifully illustrated and well laid out. In the field guide arena, I would not count it as very good since you can't easily find the mushroom you are looking for as there is no key. Besides, it is far too heavy a book to bring into the field, even if you cut out the recipe book and just took the field guide. As far as a recipe book goes, it is your standard fare. A little information about where the author got the recipe, the recipe, and a great picture of it. Nicely done, but I like the history and whatnot of 
by the Puget Sound Mycological Society, but it is hard to find. It is just a simple listing of recipes, no pictures or anything. What I liked about it is that the recipes are grouped by genus of mushroom. This makes it really nice for finding a recipe specific to a certain mushroom you found.
and is by Paul Stamets and J.S. Chilton. It has all the information you need to grow mushrooms on any scale. It has great detail on every aspect it speaks of. I found it to be a little overwhelming, but if I was going to take growing mushrooms very seriously, I'm sure I'd want this book in my collection.
by Bob Harris is a much simpler guide. It is a good beginners guide and once you get more advanced, 
