Even more mushrooms...

I know I've already blogged about my mushroom succuess but I just had to share the latest and first harvest from the white mushroom box. The harvest ended up weighting a total of 750g.

The previous posts can be found: here, here and here.

I swear I didn't give it Steroids!

I've already shared  the success I've had with my swiss brown mushroom box, but I never thought I would get anything as big as this coming from it! It took about a week for the mushroom to get to this size. It's cap is 17cm in diameter and the stalk is 5cm wide!

Sprouts

Mum recently bought me a sprouter from The Diggers Club so I thought I would document my progress with it. I decided to used a mixed seed mix consisting of Adzuki Beans, Mung Beans, Lentils and Fenugreek that I picked up from Bunnings. The whole process sounded a bit labor intensive, but it really wasn't that bad. You start off by soaking about a tablespoon of seeds in water over night to loosen the exterior shells. Over the next 5-7 days you rinse the sprouts 3 times a day and tilt the jar so the water drains away. After that you have about half a cup of sprouts to use. We decided to use them in a couscous and chicken salad, they added a nice texture and crunch.

Here are the daily photos of the sprouts:

 

The Finished Product:

Mushroom Progress

My mushroom box has kept me very excited over the last few weeks. I finally harvested the first 'flush' of mushrooms the other day and am now waiting for the next flush to come through. I've been so impressed by the Swiss brown mushroom box that I've bought another box from a local mushroom farmer that went along to the Mt Eliza Farmer's Market.

My Composting Solution

For the past month Dan and I have been putting out composting system to use. Since doing so we've cut our rubbish each week from 1.5 big garbage bags to only half a bag! We are now only throwing out non compostable items such as plastic and recycling paper, cardboard and metal.

Worm and Compost Buckets:

Our solution has 3 parts:

• The Worm Farm: All vegetable scraps excluding citrus, onions and garlic get fed to the worms. I generally feed the worms once a week and blend all their food up so its nice and mushy for them. The also get feed a 'fattener' once a week made up of chicken layer pellets, corn flour, powdered milk, agricultural lime and bran.

• Bokashi Bucket: Everything that can't be feed to the worms get put in the bokashi bucket, including small scraps of meat. This method ferments the food making it okay to put in the outside composter.
• The outside composter: This gets all the garden scraps plus the fermented bokashi bucket contents.

Mushrooms!

I was the garden shop the other day and stumbled across these mushroom boxes. There were two types too choose from: Shiitake and Swiss Brown mushrooms. The Shiitake mushrooms grown along a piece of wood which wouldn't be practical for my garage as the cats like to climb and explore over everything. The Swiss brown mushrooms grow in a box which is much more suited to my needs so i deiced to try that one out.

Above are the pictures of the Mushroom kit. When you open up the box there is a bag of brown castings which you add water to and then spread over the white web-like surface of the compost in the box. That's all there is to it. It's kept in a cool draft free spot out of the light and sprayed to keep moist. The instructions say you should get mushrooms in 2 to 3 weeks, fingers crossed and I'll keep you posted.