Nicolas Derome

Joao Winckler wrote:Volunteer tomatoes are one of those things that either happens or it doesn't, and when it does you wonder why you ever bothered starting seeds indoors. I get a handful every year from cherry types that dropped over winter. They always come up later than my started ones but once the soil is warm they grow fast and seem tougher somehow, probably because they germinated on their own terms rather than being coddled under lights. The only downside is not knowing exactly what you'll get if you grew multiple varieties nearby the year before.

Also transplant shock. It's not just about adjusting to root damage, but also to new soil conditions with different levels of compaction/aeration, different nutrient levels, different pH... My peppers often need 1-2 weeks to adjust to transplanting, tomatoes maybe 3-7 days.

Niko Lourotos wrote:

John Weiland wrote:Our garden is fenced against deer, but rabbits occasionally get in .... and that's the effect they would show on our beans.  As others have noted, if these are on a low deck, try moveing them to a higher point like a deck railing or table.  If the new location is away from deer and rabbits and *still* occurring, I would suspect squirrels or similar.

Really?? Squirrels? There are many of then around. I thought the ate nuts etc.
Hm... if it is squirrels, what do I do???

Sometimes squirrels bite off plants, especially flowers and vegetable seedlings, but are less likely to actually eat what they bite off compared to rabbits. You bean looks on the bigger side so I'd lean more towards deer or rabbit than squirrels but who knows.

Michael Qulek wrote:I think what you could do is to fill in the pots an inch or two deeper, and allow the curvy sections to produce roots.  Eventually, with roots forming above the curves, the curving will become irrelevent.

So pawpaws are okay with the stems being covered in soils? I know some plants don't like that and it causes their stems to rot (happened once when I played peppers a little deeper than the cotyledons).

Do the leaves have a lot of holes in them, or was it just the stem that was cut? It kind of looks like rabbits even though they might typically shy away from climbing onto elevated decks.

I'm somewhat reluctant to allow volunteer tomatoes to grow, because my season is short and they need the indoor head start to produce a solid harvest window. Chipmunks seem to spread the seeds all over my yard, so I often have to remove them from vegetable beds where they'd smother smaller plants like peppers or carrots. Occasionally I let one or two of them grow though. The chipmunks spread a lot of other small fruit that I planted too (ground cherries, solanum alatum, retroflexum and villosum).

The tip of the sprout got kind of stuck in the potting mix when it germinated last year. It eventually found its way out of the dirt, but by then, the stem was already twisted and I didn't want to try to straighten it out too much out of concern of breaking it. That happened to 3-4 seedlings. With some of them, the new growth on second leaf (this year) was from the base, with others, from the tip.

Niko in Vancouver wrote:

Nicolas Derome wrote:
My bed (started in 2022, moved to a different town in 2023) is still going. I got a flush in late May/early June, as usual. It was a little light, maybe because I didn't add enough fresh organic matter, or maybe because after a wet start, late April onwards has been a little on the dry end of the spectrum. I added a few inches of maple woodchips in mid May though, so we'll see if that boosts the harvests in autumn, or if it will just focus on continuing to colonize and the dividends will come next year instead. My beds are in part shade, they don't seem to mind that too much, although I suppose it can mean the top inch or two of organic material is more prone to drying out and not being colonized as much.

I also have a big root mat for them to colonize. Right next to the winecap bed is a 30x8ft area that used to be reeds of some sort, which I chopped back, covered in landscaping fabric and then mulch a couple years ago. That seems to have killed back the reeds, which I couldn't dig out because it was just a completely unbroken mass of roots. Now that those roots are breaking down, we'll see what colonizes them. I also had 3 morels fruit in that area. I spread some winecap spawn into the maple woodchips I put around some newly planted fruit trees as well, which they seem to be colonizing pretty well already after just a few weeks.

Generally, I have found that they do not need quite as many wood chips as we assume they do! Mine have spread all over the shady  parts of the garden, outside the wood chip "piles", basically to ground with leaf litter and scattered debris. And they flush right through that. I guess that this the neat thing about winecaps - they are "ground shrooms" as much as "wood mushrooms".

Here in Vancouver the summers can actually be very dry. The colonies lie very much dormant for 3-4 months, but always come back on the next rainy season. In general, they seem quite hardy, resilient and low maintenance!

I got some pretty solid flushes since my last post. Looks like it just needed some renewed rains after all. There was lots of rain 10 days ago, and again 2 days ago, and both were followed 2-3 days later by strong flushes. It's been fairly cool so far this year, with the warmest day standing at only 28C, and the past 2 weeks having daytime highs only around 18-23C. Next week will be very hot though (30-33C with 21-25C nights), we'll see if that forces them into dormancy, or if they resume fruiting when it cools back down and we get more rain. July/August averages highs around 23-27C, and lows of 12-16C, so I'm not sure if in past years, they went dormant in summer due to lack of moisture (warmer weather dries things out faster + last two summers were somewhat dry), or due to heat.

The recent flushes have mainly been outside the original bed, at the edge (but still within) the cedar mulch bed I put on top of the reeds I've been suppressing, as well as in nearby asparagus beds which had a decent amount of mulch and compost piled onto them.

Joao Winckler wrote:The up-potting advice for small pawpaws is worth following honestly, especially for a 1L pot. The taproot on pawpaws is fragile and they really hate being disturbed twice in quick succession. I'd get it growing strongly in a larger pot first, then plant out in autumn or early next spring when it can establish without the heat stress on top.

Wouldn't up-potting disturb the roots just as much as transplanting though? Might get more heat stress in a pot too, since it can heat up from all sides (unless I keep the pot in the shade)? In-ground soil is usually not too hot here, currently it's 65F in the mornings/shade during our mini "heatwave", it could drop to 60F next week.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were already viable, but I usually wait until the stalk starts to dry out.

Niko in Vancouver wrote:So I ended  up on this thread looking to determine whether I  can feed pine cones (not chips, just dried up cones from the ground) to my wine caps.
I think the general consensus is "probably"?

But I also found other interesting queries to which perhaps I can contribute my own observations & experience!

SLUGS: Yes, definitely a problem. But simple beer traps worked great to totally eliminate the problem. I got some cute green "pagoda" ones from Amazon too, so they look appropriately gnomish among the mushrooms :)

BEDS: I just form dedicated mushroom beds in the darkest corners of the ornamental garden, where nothing flowering and pretty really grows, simply by laying down logs (branches from trimming older trees, really) in a rectangle and filling it with leaves and debris. In most cases, the wine caps also seem to have spread beyond their beds, within a year or two.

SUBSTRATES: Pistachio shells worked really well. Walnut shells did not seem to bother them either. I have no straw, but I do end up with a lot of dried up scarlett runner bean husks every fall. The rest is leaves, twigs and sticks from pruning (after they've dried up) and, if I am lucky, mixed woodchips from landscapers working nearby (which I always end up "aging" /drying for a few months first, not sure why, it seems appropriate). It all goes in.

VIABILITY: With the above approach, the beds seem permanent to me. They come back year after year, two flushes, in May and October, since my original purchase (during Covid lockdowns). I just dump stuff on top, ad hoc. If it is too dry in the Spring, I may wet them a bit. That's all.
(*) I do get the distinct feeling that they do not like city water (chlorine?) but they, of course, love rain - even rain water from the rain barrel.

LATEST: I have an old bamboo planter,  concrete, about 2'x8'. I killed the bamboo years ago  (it was shooting runners over the planter, in to everywhere, even got into the house!) but now the planter is solid bamboo roots and cut stumps sticking up every square inch. I can't plant anything else in it and removing the bamboo tangle seems a herculean task, so I will lay chips and  mycelium on top and hope that the winecaps will  simply eat everything and in 4-5 years I will have a planter full of compost - and a dozen bonus wine cap harvests to boot!!

Cheers from Vancouver!

My bed (started in 2022, moved to a different town in 2023) is still going. I got a flush in late May/early June, as usual. It was a little light, maybe because I didn't add enough fresh organic matter, or maybe because after a wet start, late April onwards has been a little on the dry end of the spectrum. I added a few inches of maple woodchips in mid May though, so we'll see if that boosts the harvests in autumn, or if it will just focus on continuing to colonize and the dividends will come next year instead. My beds are in part shade, they don't seem to mind that too much, although I suppose it can mean the top inch or two of organic material is more prone to drying out and not being colonized as much.

I also have a big root mat for them to colonize. Right next to the winecap bed is a 30x8ft area that used to be reeds of some sort, which I chopped back, covered in landscaping fabric and then mulch a couple years ago. That seems to have killed back the reeds, which I couldn't dig out because it was just a completely unbroken mass of roots. Now that those roots are breaking down, we'll see what colonizes them. I also had 3 morels fruit in that area. I spread some winecap spawn into the maple woodchips I put around some newly planted fruit trees as well, which they seem to be colonizing pretty well already after just a few weeks.