Dan Tutor

I love this idea! I feed slugs to my bluegill every time I'm around my aquaponics setup.

In Thailand there are these fish that they keep in tanks to clean your feet. They are minnows, hundreds of them, and they eat the dead skin off your feet in about 15-20 minutes. My feet were baby-soft. It was incredible. Some people found it tickly/freaky, but they were very effective. I think you want some of those!

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00119424/#
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/images/products/dioder-led-multi-use-light-white__70153_PE185535_S4.JPG
I just installed these...

They work great, I'm not sure what they draw but it's not much! They currently light 2 rooms and a hallway in my house. I just cut off the plug inverter.

Hi Tim,
I'm putting together a smaller system as a backup power generator to use during power outages. I have 4 x 100w renogy monocrystalline panels, a 30 amp renogy solar controller, 100 w inverter, and one 50 ah 12 v sealed la battery. It's enough to to charge phones and tablets and laptops, and power these diodes LED lights I just installed from ikea. http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00119424/#
I just snipped off the plug inverter and rewired with a switch to my controller.
Eventually I will buy more panels and batteries, and upgrade to a larger mppt controller, but for now I get to tinker and learn the basics for under 1000$. I've probably got about 700$ in my system right now.

I'm also in maine, just have the panels on my roof, south facing.

I don't get to enjoy the same warm dry climate as you, but I do live on a ridge of ledge on a small rocky island. And I've been planting trees here for something like 13 years in poor shallow rocky soils over ledge.

I suggest you carry a heavy iron bar to test for the depth of the soil. You can just plunge the bar in and quickly ascertain an idea of the depth of soil and how rocky it might be before you dig a hole.
Also don't hesitate to build Swales and terraces to increase the depth of your soil.
My soil is so full of ledge pieces that it really benefits from being turned over and picked through a few times before planting. This results in a denser, cooler, and slower draining soil too. Adding compost and organic matter really helps absorb more water.
Mulching with some kind of organic matter and building a lip or dam around your planting to hold water make watering and retention of water much easier in fast draining soils. Make sure the trees have enough water the first year +!
Hope that helps a little...

Russel your theory is absolutely correct. We have the same problem here, except instead of buckthorn, we have invasive barberry. To make matters worse, the deer eat the barberry berries, depositing their seeds in little manure balls all over the place.

In the few years I've had my forest garden fenced I've had elderberries and red currents spring up from no where!

It's amazing what is just waiting in the soil!

Very interesting, tell us about the spore print...
I think a lot of tropical mushrooms have gone un identified so far, but without a spore print I'd say its in the group strophariaceae. That's a wide guess, but If it was growing on or near dung It could be paneolus or psilocybe. Look for a purple-black spore print. Any chance that black staining was a bit bluish? Was it growing in a group or solitary?
If the spore print is brown it might be a pholiota.
Hope that helps, post more pictures...

Yep, I would say armillaria mellea. I've found them to be very good. My mom even dries them on good years, and reconstitutes them later.
Deer love them. I have a theory that the "October lull" described by whitetail hunters is actually when the armillaria fruits and the deer never leave the woods.
Young buttons are much better than old tough ones, get them before the veil breaks.
And look into possible gastric upset, it's never been a problem for myself and the dozen or so other people who I've eaten them with, but ymmv.

Sorry, I jumped right in and didn't notice you meant lepiota procera!

My bad.

I still can't find anything about anyone cultivating parasol mushrooms, but I'll give Aroras habitat entry here anyway.

solitary to widely scattered or in small groups in open woods and at their edges, in old pastures, along trails, etc; fairly common in the summer and fall in eastern North America (especially the New England and the south) and Mexico.

Sorry, even less info for this one.

My chickens love to scratch up most mycelium they find, but I don't know the salatin reference.