Muscadines! Mushrooms! Melons!

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. Things have been very busy. We are working on building a new barn, and getting land cleared, aside from the day-to-day workings on the farm and all the seeds that need to be sown. Still, it’s quieter than the spring and summer, so I suppose I should be grateful.

We went through some insanely cold weather a week ago. The temperature dropped into the teens one night. Everything in the high tunnel managed just fine,  and I brought the tomato seedlings (now nearly ready to transplant) inside for a few days to keep warm.

High tunnel harvest began a few weeks ago; meager as it was, having planted as late as I did. We’ve harvested arugula, mizuna, and various lettuces. Mesclun was a total fail-bot. I bought a seed mix from Johnny’s, and everything germinated, but by the time the lettuce in the mix was ready to harvest the mizuna and mustard were freaking huge. So much for baby salad greens, next time I’ll sow the ingredients separately at different times.

The tomato seedlings had a rough time of it due to my utter stupidity. Hardening them off completely slipped my mind, and they got sunburned their first day in the great outdoors. One week later and they are recovering nicely, but still look like they’ve been through hell and back. A few times.

I planted a row of muscadine grapes! I got the plants from Just Fruits and Exotics nursery in Flordia, and was impressed with the quality of the plants and  the customer service. I planted them in a freshly tilled row mixed with manure, and built a very simple single wire trellis across some metal t-posts. The row is nearly 200ft long, but that only translates to a  handful of plants as muscadines are spaced 20 feet apart in the row. I bought a variety of varieties (hehe), spanning the muscadine color and size spectrum.

I love mushrooms! I want so badly to grow them, especially after visiting a local commercial mushroom farm- Red Hill Farm in Independence, La. A friend of mine is working there, and took me over to scope the place out. It’s a very old mushroom farm that was abandoned years ago, and when the current owners inherited the property they decided to get it started again. The growing house was a spooky place in some respects, very dark and industrial, made of cinder blocks. The individual grow rooms were awesome. Trays upon trays stacked on top of each other from the floor to over head height; filled with compost and, depending on the stage of the room in question, mushrooms in various stages of development. The compost they shipped in from out of state, already inoculated with the mushroom spawn. They simply open the bags, place them in racks in the temperature and moisture controlled rooms, and wait. They had a room dedicated to a large steamer that had pipes going to all the grow rooms. After each batch of mushrooms was picked, the room was steamed cleaned to kill any molds or contaminants. Here’s a few pictures:

I’m trying again to grow mushrooms inside.  The sawdust/hydrogen peroxide method was a a complete fail and they all became contaminated after a few days. This time I’m trying to grow them on straw sterilized in our chicken scalder. I stuffed as much straw as I could into a laundry bag and steeped it in 150F water for an hour. I then mixed the spawn into it on a clean table and bagged the result. The spawn has started to run in the bags, so hopefully I’ll have some oyster mushrooms in a few weeks! Pics:

I want to grow heirloom melons this year. The wildest possible. I found a variety from Seed Savers Exchange called Ford Prescott Blanc that looked very interesting. It’s a warty melon, looking almost like some kind of winter squash, but with a crisp orange flesh. I’m also looking to grow Charantais, which is the tastiest French melon I’ve ever had. It’s small, and has an annoying tendency to split at the slightest change in moisture. That’s why I want to grow it in the high tunnel, so I can control the watering myself.

If anyone knows any good melon varieties I haven’t tried, I’d love to hear from you!