Check these out! The instructions say they are good to eat anytime after they start looking like real mushrooms, but I just can't bear to hurt a hair on their little heads.



I stuck my hand in the picture for scale. It is amazing that they grew that much in only 2 days. But I guess if I'd been squished inside a 1 foot high log for 3 months I'd be in a hurry to escape too.

The second day after busting out of the holes drilled through the bark, the fruits of the Shiitake Mushroom Log are already looking like real mushrooms with caps and everything!



The lower part of the bark is wet because I was leaving the dish full of water in the desperate hope of not killing off the log again!

As reported in a previous post, I had nearly given up on my Shiitake Mushroom Log I bought on Amazon.com, after 2 months of non performance upon arrival. However after trying the techniques I described in that post, 2 actual mushrooms began to get extruded from a drill hole at the bottom and a break in the bark next to that. Orange arrow indicates the items in question below:



( Click here to read more.... )
 

An update on the blueberry bushes, George, Barbara, Jeb, Dubya, Laura, and Jenna*: I went to the lumber yard to buy landscaping timbers and they first sold them to me, then admitted they didn't have any. So I am waiting on them to deliver... supposedly today or tomorrow. In the meantime, Peat Moss turns out to be insanely expensive, and sand only comes in small containers around here. Woe is me! The Bushes are huddling under plastic bags for now, getting water once or twice a day. I hope they make it!

Yesterday I did a pile of transplanting and stuff indoors. The winner of the Best Sprout Award was definitely the zucchini which was already about 8" tall! I also found three butternut squashes, each about 4" tall and quite robust, as well as Spacemaster Cucumbers. The cucumbers sprouted really well, but they turn out to be problematic to transplant. Out of 6 pots, 7 sprouted (heh) but I snapped 2 in half transplanting them. Oops! The five survivors immediately drooped within 5 minutes of transplanting. Luckily they lasted the night so I think they've made it, but I dread transplanting them to their final location in a week or two. I am going to make a note to wait until after frost and plant Spacemaster directly next year.



Here's the five after they started to droop... OK today though.



I found 1-2 each of tiny basil, oregano, thyme and sage sprouts from my most recent attempts. Let's hope I keep them alive this time! A couple of them are shown above, along with some very robust Pepper sprouts. The little pepper plants are mostly from seeds from grocery store peppers, including small Mexican sweet peppers, and a red bell pepper. Also I have some Hungarian Yellow Wax peppers that did grow from seed, but I'm having a heck of a time getting Jalapeño to sprout. Maybe I will just buy one of those as a plant, lol.



Here are some grape tomatoes I grew from seeds from grocery store grape tomatoes too. I don't personally like this kind of tomato but they are my Spouse's favorite so I figured I'd put in the effort. There sure are a lot of them... in addition to the six I transplanted last night there are 4 more little pots with several underdeveloped sprouts apiece. 



Here are some "heirloom" Brandywine Red tomatoes from seed. I wonder at what point they stop being "Heirloom". These came from the regular old seed rack at the grocery store. Sounds pretty mass production to me!



Here are morning glories. I was supposed to plant them 4 weeks before last frost but they are already huge and there are still a week or two left to go. I am thinking that I might move these outdoors now and just replace them if they die, because they aren't going to be very happy growing this fast indoors.



Braeburn apple sprout! This was just sort of a "for fun" sprout.



The avocados need to be moved outdoors soon too. They also need to be transplanted into larger containers. We had a very warm day (80 degrees!) the other day and two seeds that had been sitting on the counter in water for months suddenly split and started growing. Woo!

Today I found a plant sale put on by volunteers who work on gardens in a local city park. Everything was make-a-donation with proceeds going to keep the park beautified. I got 2 basils, 2 thymes, and a chocolate mint (!) plant, as well as a horse chestnut tree I didn't really want but she insisted nobody else would comprehend what it was or take it. I also got a large number of small plastic planting pots, and a fair collection of large pots suitable for planting stuff outside too. All in all a good haul for the donation.

* It has come to my attention that some people are afraid I might be seen as making a tribute to the Bush family by naming my bushes after the Bushes. Never fear! It's not a tribute, they just had to be ID'd somehow and it was more fun than A through F or 1 through 6.

The container garden is coming along nicely. The number of containers planted as-planned is getting closer to what is shown on my PlanGarden plot, though there are a bunch yet to go. It is still officially 3 weeks before last frost here! I had to bring in a couple things overnight the last two nights.



I still have a lot of sprouts in the basement, mostly peppers and tomatoes that are sprouted but can't be brought out yet, and melon and squash type things that are too recently planted to have sprouted yet:



A lot of these are in this new potting soil my Spouse got me from Wal Mart, that is supposed to be 100% organic. I'll say! The other day I found these little volunteers in my lettuce sprouts (see inside the orange circles):



They looked like small round seeds growing up on long stalks. Trouble is I hadn't planted anything with seeds like that. Here's a closeup:



Pretty soon there were one or two in every pot! Well, a few days later, boom:



They are tiny mushrooms! LOL. Guess I'll try not to eat those, no idea what they are except they apparently like organic matter. Alas, the Shiitake mushroom log I bought on Amazon did not work out and I have to send it back. Hopefully they will send me a new one that sprouts actual mushrooms! I'll let you all know what ends up happening there.



So here's a little tour of what's outside on the deck right now. First here's the bok choi heart I rooted, looking insanely happy. There's almost enough leaf there to make chinese foo for two again! The center now has a tiny cluster of buds. I think that means it is going to bolt right away. I'm not really surprised since it was basically a mature plant (sans leaves) to begin with. I read that the stalks and buds are edible (inf fact the best part of the bok choi) but I might also like to keep the seeds to plant next year. The alternative would be to harvest these leaves now immediately before it bolts any further. Decisions, decisions!



The red potatoes are starting to sprout and leaf up. These are from CSA potatoes from last fall, that started to sprout over the winter and I kept them sitting on the light table until now. They are planted in layers of shredded paper to give lots of space for potatoes to grow. When the greens get taller I am suppose to keep backfilling the buckets until the dirt and paper reaches the top, for max amount of potato harvest. Cross fingers! Also note to self, find better way to store potatoes next winter.



These green onions are probably the next most ready to go crop after the Bok Choi. They're from white storebought sets. I foresee a harvest of at least a handful of them soon!



These leaning onions are transplanted from large yellow CSA onions that sprouted over winter too. They lean over because I let them grow bigger and bigger in the sheath of their old mother onion, and they leaned way over so they could get more light on the light table. I have since figured out that they can be removed from the original onion as soon as they're clearly seperate entities, and well before they get that big. So in the future I won't have any more leaning ones like this, but hehe this first batch is oddballs. They seem to be getting bigger anyway despite their odd shape.



I hope these will be large round onions also... they are red and white ones from grocery store sets. Just starting to sprout now! They are planted 3" apart from one another in the pots.



Here's the first round of radishes and carrots. I read that I should keep planting new rounds every X number of weeks in order to have continuous harvests. These containers have radishes (showing) and the little guys between them are carrots. The carrots will be big enough to want the extra space by the time the radishes are ready to pull. I hope. The carrots are half-longs so the pots should be plenty deep enough for their growth.



Spinach sprouts. These were the first things I sowed outdoors. The ones in back are co planted with peas. The ones in front don't have their buddies yet.



I really have no idea what to expect from this tiny rosemary sprig. I had no luck growing rosemary from seed but this leftover storebought piece unexpectedly rooted in water. I think it succeeded because it was in the same water with other herbs, one of which must have convinced it to go. I don't hold out a lot of hope that I'll be able to keep it alive, but heck... it's worth a try!!



These two sage plants also rooted in the same container of water. Since I've never had luck with rooting sage before either, I'm convinced there must have been some plant in there that was greatly benefitting these guys. Either that or the rosemary and sage were benefitting each other. Hope they live! That round green guy in the back on the right is a boston red lettuce heart. No roots on that yet... but it hasn't shriveled either.



While at WalMart we splurged and got some potted stuff too. Cilantro (I still haven't managed to sprout any from seed), strawberry (which I had planned to get storebought all along there) and the middle one is a wacky tomato my Spouse took a yen to. It's called Mr. Stripey and the fruit apparently looks like this:



It appears though that the fruit can have any of a huge variety of different kinds of stripes. It'll be interesting to see what we get, assuming I don't kill it first. Since we now have Brandywine Red, grape tomatoes and berry tomatoes in cultivation as well I predict a very tomato-ey summer :)  Homemade salsa, here we come!



In other outdoor yard and garden news, I have been transplanting a few of these bulbs each day (see orange arrow in picture). They had been growing over in a very dark corner of the yard that is OK in spring but totally shaded in summer. As a result I have no idea what kind of flowers they are -- they never get a chance to bloom.



Here's the old location with the other half of the bulbs still there. It's a surprising amount of work to move them and keep them safe but the already-transplanted ones are doing great! Maybe 2 more days to get the rest, and then I was thinking maybe plant something else that is more shade-loving in this dark corner.



The newly planted American Liberty Elm is starting to show leaves! Yay!



On the back lotline the Toronto Tulips are now in full bloom, with the pastel regular tulips coming up nearby (not budded yet).



This picture doesn't do them justice but there are also dozens of these tiny blue Glory of the Snow which actually came as part of the same collection with the Toronto ones. I can't wait to get more this fall and support this little collection to make it bigger next year!

Today was another big day of work on garden stuff. I planted the sprouted grape-tomato seeds and some blue morning glory seeds I'd been soaking, in little 1" seedling planters. I went through the Ziploc bags of planted seeds and transplanted into 4" pots a number of sprouts that had appeared since the last round, including Mexican sweet peppers, a red bell pepper, Brussels sprouts, and a berry tomato. The light table is changing quite a bit in layout as the season progresses and different stuff gets started:



Probably the biggest job I did gardening wise was to separate out and transplant a lot of the yellow CSA onions that had sprouted over winter, and that I had been rooting in 4" pots. Here's how I did it:



They had all grown multiple "green onions" out of themselves, still wrapped in a pulpy old onion body from the former sprouted onion, as well as long roots.



First I used what I am used to calling a matte knife but which I guess is officially a "utility knife" to slit the extra layers up near the top where it's easy to see, and avoid, the green onions inside. I keep the knife edge pointed outward and use the blunt side for feeling between the onions for their safety.



Then I grab the extra layers and peel them off in one piece, or as close as possible. Depending on the onion these can be pretty squishy and disgusting.



I put the pulpy remains in the compost heap. I assume they would have functioned as compost for the small onions had they remained there in the same soil with them.



The green onions inside are stuck together at the disk shaped base, that the roots come out of the bottom of. There seem to be 3-5 green onions per big onion on average.



I use the utility knife to gently cut halfway through the root disk from the top between 2 onions, then carefully twist the knife to encourage the onions to snap apart along natural lines so they each get their own roots. If they don't want to snap apart, go around and cut between some of the other pairs as well before trying to separate. I did a lot of these today and only had a couple that had no useful roots of their own after separation. These had undeveloped root nubs though so I just placed them in a glass with some shallow water for a couple days.



These are fully separated. As you can see they're already trying to form the bellies of big round onions but there wasn't enough space to develop them quickly when they were stuck together.



These are nice sweet yellow onions so I planted them individually in larger pots so they will hopefully grow large and round like the parent onion by fall. I did a total of about 25 yellow onionlings today. Right now these are all out in the garage being acclimated to the outdoors weather. I'll bring them out onto the deck next week.

Of the stuff already out on the deck, there are lumps and bumps where potatoes and white onion sets are ready to bust through the surface of the dirt, and the tip of one tiny green onion already showing. Fun!

Today I've been working on garden stuff. I created an account on PlanGarden.com and have been working on this layout of my container garden for this spring. It's cool because people can look in on your gardening pursuits (if you like) and they have their own blog too. There are ways to publish pictures and other stuff to our own blogs too:



Click on the picture to see the plan closeup. If you want to see my actual garden plan on its user interface, click here too.

In order to figure out how many plant pots I had of what different sizes, I cleaned up and sorted all the remaining pots and such in the plant table area, as well as the shed. Here are the big ones I had in the shed:



They are mostly 10-13" in size. This was the "indoors" stash in that they were down in the basement, but I didn't use any this size for anything but avocado trees, so I will probably leave these 6-9" ones in the shed next winter too.



The plant table area is finally clean, which means that entire corner of the basement is essentially done! Well, there's always something to do. The green wooden door needs to be scrubbed with bleach and repainted, and the wall needs the cracks filled with waterproof patching and then painted white. 



I did buy all the seeds I'll need for the rest of the spring planting, but as can be seen above I won't be able to start anything else indoors until something has moved off the plant table! Luckily I am supposed to start hardening off the parsley, onions and leeks this week so they will be going upstairs. Of the latest round of sprouts, almost everything has at least one showing except for the green and red bell peppers, the eggplant, the chives and the jalapeño. The latter two are very old seeds, left over from Colorado so they may no longer be viable. The bell peppers may have been irradiated or an infertile hybrid as I got those from grocery store peppers. I still expect the eggplant to sprout though -- something has to be last to come in.



In other gardening news, the perennial flower garden on the south side is continuing to come in nice and strong. I can now see that all of the Veronicas survived and are doing well. Won't know if any of the purple is in among the blue until they flower though.



Most of the coneflowers survived as well. The two that did not were actually dead before fall arrived so I am not surprised about those. An additional coneflower is needed on each end of the garden to complete the pattern, so that is a total of 4 I need to get this year.



Both kinds of coneflowers are represented among the survivors -- we have some coming up red sprouts and some green.

That's all for now, but trust me there's lots more coming about the garden :)

Of the seeds planted most recently, the iceberg and romaine lettuce, cauliflower and leeks were the first to sprout, with a white fuzzy lump appearing in one of the mexican sweet pepper pots that I suspect is a sprout's root trying to figure out which way is down. I experimented with the new camera's Macro Zoom feature, trying to get good pictures of the sprouts through the ZipLoc bags and got some fascinating art like photos:



These were iceberg lettuce. Alas, the cauliflower ones didn't turn out which is a pity because it was by far the coolest looking of the sprouts -- like a royal scepter. The romaine lettuce sprout was down in the bottom of the bag instead of one of the pots. I'll wait another couple days to see which pot has the fewest viable ones then try to transplant it into that one I guess.



The carrots and radish are all doing well. Apparently they do not mind being planted together, at least for now. The other carrot I have, which was planted much longer ago, is also doing well and has pretty much consumed its original carrot top. It's just a normal tiny carrot now. I need to get my composting rear in gear so that I can add fertilizer to these potted veggies after they are done eating the fertilizer the potting soil makers put in. I have a lot of compost in process, but the harvesting has yet to really be implemented as a lot of it is too new yet.



I think this may be Thyme but I am not sure because it started growing in one of the pots that I had transplanted my original round of herb sprouts into, which then died. I assume it is a seed that did not germinate the first time around and decided to now. Whichever herb it is, it's quite welcome in my garden! Assuming I do not kill it. ;-)



the garlic continues to do amazingly well. I will need to look up what one does with garlic throughout its lifespan. I know there is something about cutting off the baby shoots to make the parent clove grow bigger. Though perhaps one doesn't do that initially, if one wants to create a "working herd" of garlic plants.



The Parsley continues to do better and better. I think it has finally come into its own. According to the GrowGuide I am supposed to start hardening off the parsley and any onions and leeks from seed starting the week of April 12! Holy moly, that's next week. I am glad someone showed me the GrowGuide because it's been holding my hand a lot. LOL



For new plantings, this fine large Bok Choi heart was ready to go this week. One of the two leaves I successfully rooted before is still going strong in dirt, but there is no sign that it will develop into a full plant as of yet. It seems to be happy just being a single leaf for now. I can't wait to see how the heart does now that it is planted too.



I also planted these shallots that had enormous 1.5" long roots hidden underneath there in the water at the bottom of the cup. One of them appears to be an albino. It has twice as many leaves as the other single bulbs, but they have not gotten darker than a pale yellow. I am going to ask on gardening if there is anything I can do for that one, or if the poor little fellow is doomed.



I also planted all these sprouted seeds from berry tomatoes from the grocery store. I think that is what they are called -- the kind that is "vine ripened" but I think they basically take a bunch on the vine and just gas them like other commercial tomatoes to make them turn red, because they certainly aren't ready to be picked off the vine yet. I had put the seeds in a little water to rot the gel envelopes off, and then once it started fizzing I washed the seeds and put them in a new cup with clean water. The next day they were sprouted! I also got the grape tomatoes my Spouse likes so much in the hopes I could get some of those too, but I haven't even harvested seeds from those yet.

That's it for indoor gardening for now... I suspect the next post on this topic will involve onion cleaning and consolidation, and spinach-and-tomato planting. Maybe something about species grouping in container plantings because I am starting to research that in preparation.

Today I planted a lot of the things I had rooting or soaking in small dishes, cluttering up the counter in the kitchen.



Among them were 2 celery hearts, shown here with the original one (on the right) which is doing great after weeks in dirt. I declare rooting celery hearts to be a perfectly viable way to grow celery! I wonder if one could just cut off the outer leaves when needed, leaving the plant permanently rooted instead. Only one way to find out I suppose....



These root-ends of storebought green onions have been growing great since being stood in water for a few days then planted. These were actually from the same bunch but one trio on the left is growing big thick greens, and the trio in the other pot are growing tall skinny ones. Interesting! I can't wait to eat them a 2nd time.



The seed-grown parsley is getting quite big. Here it is after I made my first harvest of 2 large leaves to place on our dinner. They tasted great! I'll let the plants rest a while before taking any more. I don't want to harm them. Much.



Also from the kitchen counter rootings are these 2 carrots and one radish. I am not sure whether the carrots with multiple sprouts will grow into 2 carrots again or one per each sprout. And if it did grow into 2-3 carrots apiece, would they all be genetically identical? I also have no idea if it is OK to have radishes and carrots together in the same dirt. I'll have to look that up I guess.



Here are some berry tomato seeds from grocery store tomatoes. I had them soaking until they turned foamy and rotted off their slippery coatings. They have now been washed and I'll plant them at the next earliest opportunity.



Also here's an avocado pit that wasn't ready either when I was doing my counter clearing. It had split its skin, which I did peel off, but has not yet parted the 2 halves. I try to wait to plant them until they have started to push the 2 halves apart.



In other Avocado news, the avocado grove has found a new temporary home in an old humidifier we took out of service this year. It makes a great plantholder for tall plants because it is waterproof, rolls, and has high sides to keep cats out. Shown here next to the light table so they can get at that light. No more plants on the workbench! ;-)

Today was a big gardening day for me. Well, big in terms of work, not size ;-) I had found out about this neat online tool called GrowGuide which lets you put in your region's typical last frost and first freeze dates, and a target date and it'll tell you what you should be planting that week. I wanted to follow it this year with a container garden that I sow indoors and then move out onto the rear deck for the summer. I printed out the first several weeks and put them in a 3 ring binder with 1 page per week. Then I also designed and printed some little forms I could fill out to tell what I had planted on which dates, so I could refer back next year.



Today I planted 4 small (1") pots each of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leeks, romaine and iceberg lettuce, chives, parsley (same kind as before), green and red bell peppers, yellow and orange mexican sweet peppers, and Jalapeno peppers. Those are all noted on the page shown above in my little book!



I still had a lot of compostable organic seedling pots left from my first round of sprouts so I used those. Since I had a problem with seedlings drying out and dying after about an inch tall I decided to use large Zip Loc bags around each set of pots instead of putting Saran Wrap over them like last time. I figured this way the sprouts can be kept steamy until they are as large as necessary. Also the bags will be way easier to re-use than Saran Wrap. Above sets of 4 pots are soaking in bowls to get their initial moisture. The labelled bag for each is folded underneath.



Once they were soaked (the pots were lightly damp and soft to the touch all over) I moved them to their bags, sealed them and placed them on the light table where they immediately began to steam up. LOL we'll see how it works out this time!

Today the celery heart soaking on the countertop had opened up and is now ready to plant:



I also had some other odds and ends in another bowl that are ready to go too:



2 carrot tops sprouted leaves, and an onion bottom sprouted roots.

It still remains to be seen whether the rooted round onions bottoms will sprout green too, but look at this:



The rooted green onion stumps I planted the other day are already sprouting green shoots! Also:



The other day I cut off some of the yellow onion "green onions" that I had grown from a sprouted yellow round onion, and used them in cooking. I left the rooted ends still in the ground and today they were vigorously sprouting new leaves! 



The garlic is growing like nuts.



I also now have CSA shallots from last summer to plant as well.



The basil appears to have started growing rather suddenly in the last few days. I wonder if the warmer weather suits it better?



Alas my blackberry seeds, which need to be warm stratified for 3 months then cold stratified for 3 months, are not yet sprouted. They are still partway through the cold stratification and should be done around the 2nd week of May, but a lot of times I get seeds sprouting while still in the fridge so I was hoping.



Back in the fridge they go!

The parsley in my little indoor garden is finally starting to get firmly established and come into its own. It's big enough to harvest now, though we have enough frozen in ice cubes to avoid that for a little while longer.



The basil I planted at the same time is nowhere near as happy. My goal now is to keep the 2 remaining plants alive long enough to place them outdoors in the spring, since they don't seem to be getting enough light in my basement.



The potatoes in the background are in the same state... I am just letting them sit in the hopes that they will live long enough to be container-planted outdoors.

Today I planted another batch of yellow onions that had been in storage but started to sprout:



The ones that were planted longest ago have formed clusters of green onions like the bunches you buy in the store, only with 4-5 onions apiece and of course, yellow instead of white. I have only been cutting off the greens rather than harvesting the onions themselves for cooking, so far.



Here is some celery I rooted from the center of a storebought one. It is doing great since being planted last week. I have another one on the counter upstairs:



Once it starts to grow roots it will open up and spread its leaves. I have also been experimenting with rooting a lot of other stuff, like Bok Choi, carrots and onions.



I have 2 rooted Bok Choi leaves like this, that have been doing great since they were planted in dirt last week but I have no idea if they will go on to sprout a whole new plant or not. Only time will tell. I had a Bok Choi heart rooted before I went in for surgery, but was not able to plant it in time, and when I got back it had rotted. Alas!



Here is just the base of a Bok Choi stem that did grow roots. It will be interesting to see if small plants grow from it.

In the background are another experiment: rooted ends of commercial green onions. I am hoping they will grow into onions again. If they do, I will feel a lot more confident about letting my Spouse harvest the whole green onions that came from my big yellows, since I'll be able to get some back again.

I also managed to root just the stubby end of a yellow onion, and planted that in the hopes of getting onions from that too. It's an experiment! [evil grin]



Here's a rooted garlic. This was the innermost small cloves with a couple roots on the bottom. When placed in a shallow dish of water they started right up.



In other notes, my onion storage system is nearly depleted -- only 4 left between using them in the kitchen and planting sprouted ones. Next year I want to store onions again but I plan to do something a little different. First of all I need them to be randomly removable without destroying the storage medium or having to remove a bunch of others to get at a particular one. Also, I need to put them somewhere I can goose the temperature down lower. I might build a little hut of 2x4's and visqueen with a little vent to the outdoors I can control with a thermostat.

And, according to the Weekend Gardener GrowGuide I can sow the following crops indoors for my outdoor spring garden:

chinese cabbage
collards
broccoli
cabbage
cauliflower
leeks
head lettuce
onion seed
parsley

The seeds have started to appear at the grocery store too so I will do that at some point this week. Whee! I will be able to put to use some of the lessons I learned with my first seed-planting adventure. LOL

When I got back in town after my operation the garden was looking a bit rough. Luckily I didn't lose everything. The carrots were probably the most vulnerable to underwatering since they were so small yet, but some survived:



The parsley is looking pretty good... I'd only be able to harvest tiny pieces off yet but if a need arises I will.



The onions had gone gonzo! All of them grew green stuff like mad. Since I had been keeping the greens about 6" tall there was lots to harvest.





Here's the first half of the harvest.



To preserve them I first chopped them into small pieces.



A spoon works well for filling the ice cube trays. After they're full of onions, water is added to top them off and the tray is frozen. When finished the green ice cubes can be placed in a container (I use a labeled, dated ziploc bag) in the freezer for future use. They can be thawed and drained for use in salads, or thrown as-is into soups and such as a flavoring. I have used this for parsley as well. I am told it also works for chives, and garlic flowerstems.

Once these ones are frozen I'll do the 2nd half of the harvest - there were a lot of onion greens!

In other gardening news, right before my operation I had purchased a Shiitake Mushroom Log:



In theory this should produce home-grown mushrooms for several years while sitting in a corner of a regular room. We had bought a mushroom kit in the past but that one required very special care and also to be in complete darkness, where we could not enjoy looking at it at all.

The log needs to be 'shocked' by soaking it in icewater for 24-48 hours before placing it upright in a saucer or some such. I did that before my operation then left it sitting. But by the time I had gotten back, it had not sprouted mushrooms yet. The Instructions explained that it often does not grow the first month after being shipped, and that I should soak it again after 2 weeks. So today when I was emptying out ice cubes to make my green ones, I put them in the log bucket to make it colder. The idea is to make the mushrooms think a winter has passed.



Here's the log soaking in an oblong bucket. It's possible to buy it with its own soaking tray but I went for the cheap approach. I'll put it in the garage overnight as it is OK for the water and log to get frozen. I hope it sprouts this time :D

Today I did a little indoor gardening. The onions have been growing like blazes and all separating out into bunches of green onions:



After taking this picture I harvested all the leaves that were getting long enough to fall over. They're great chopped up in salads. I also took 2 more onions that had sprouted in storage and planted those as well.



The parsley has continued to grow. I think they are still too small to harvest any safely but they are about 5" tall and have many leaves apiece. At some point I ought to be able to take off 1 leaf at a time as needed for cooking.



Today I recovered these tiny sprouts from the vermiculture bin where they had grown vigorously from chopped carrot ends in the rich compost.



I went ahead and planted them to see if they'd thrive... no reason to expect they wouldn't, but I admit I'm curious as to whether they'll produce 1 carrot apiece and whether these would technically be the same carrot as before.....



15 carrots in all! Hopefully they will survive until summer. I still have a lot of sprouted potatoes sitting around that I hope will survive until spring as well. I don't want to plant those indoors I can avoid it. LOL

Today I repotted a couple of house plants that needed it. Really needed it! One had blown its plastic pot clean in half with the force of its root growth, and the other had been falling out of its pot since I bought it for $2.99 at the ARC thrift shop on my way out of Colorado 2 years ago. I also repotted and cleaned up most of my indoor herb garden.



The parsley are not big enough to harvest any leaves from yet but they are growing faster and faster. I tentatively think these remaining 5 plants (two are in one pot) are now "established" enough that they are out of danger. Cross fingers! I transplanted these today into the pots shown. I have been trying to err on the side of transplanting soon on these because they are said to have a taproot and like a deep pot.



Three Basil have survived to date and while they are growing painfully slowly they all have multiple leaves now. The one shown at front has six!



Mixed results on the onions I planted. Two went rotten, but this one took a firm root and divided into four green onions. Hurray! I cleaned it up and added more dirt to protect the new roots today. There was also an additional one that appeared to be succeeding like this one, but wasn't yet as far along... it still had a good "belly" of living white onion around the divisions.



Of the 20 or so onions that had been preserved hanging up in pantyhose for cooking with, five sprouted and one went rotten. I got rid of that last one and pulled out the greening ones to plant.



Here's the table with today's roundup of onions at different stages of development!



Onions are the winner of which crop was the first to be harvestable. Pictured above is my first green onions :D



This boxelder bug is apparently overwintering in our basement. The picture is slightly blurry because he/she started to walk away as casually as possible when it saw me looking at it. LOL

Well I haven't quite managed to kill off ALL the sprouts yet ;-) Practice makes perfect though.



So far the Parsley are by far the healthiest ones. They aren't growing very fast though so I think maybe the amount of light provided by the very expensive grow light is not enough. It probably needs to be a lot lower closer to the plants. It's already on for 16 hours out of every 24.




The 2nd best are the basil. They are growing but painfully slowly. There's something else growing with some of the basil but I don't think those are herbs, at least I don't remember accidentally planting anything in there. LOL



Our basement is too warm for storing potatoes and a bunch sprouted before I realized that and frantically cooked the rest. The ones shown here are red, but I also have yellow and white ones that sprouted. If I can keep these alive until spring I'll plant them outside in the hopes of getting more by fall. In any case I wanted them out in the open where I could keep an eye on them. Nothing is worse than rotten potatoes you can't find. :-p

Today nearly all of the parsleys have tiny parsley-leaves now. I transplanted a lot of them into larger pots, though I ran out of thawed potting soil before I was finished. I brought in a new bag from the garage but it was stiff as a board, so I will have to do the rest tomorrow, lol.



I also transplanted all of the Basil and Sage. These also had 'adult' leaves starting to show, tiny perfect replicas of how they'd look when big. As a note, only one Sage ever sprouted so I guess one is how many I get!



Once again the sage refused to photograph well. I guess the camera doesn't like focusing on fuzzy stuff.

Also the Red Bell Peppers have started sprouting like crazy:



All the Oregano and Thyme had died after sprouting, and there were a lot of pots of Sage and Rosemary that never sprouted at all, so I cleaned up all that today as well. The table is looking great!



Tomorrow when the potting soil is thawed I'll repot the rest of the parsley (at center) and also divide the onions and repot those since they appear to have transmogrified into several young onions apiece. All except the one that looked like it was about to sprout but never did. Guess I'll have to eat that one if it doesn't bust a move soon!

Today one of the parsley grew 2 tiny new leaves that looked like actual parsley leaves! (See plant at center, you may need to click to study the large version to see them.)



When taking that photo I accidentally also took this other one that I believe was on night portrait setting, but I moved too quickly after clicking since I didn't realize I was on that setting. The end result was kind of cool but I doubt I could reproduce it again on purpose ;-)



Tonight I lined up all my small pots on the table so that I can fill them with dirt for transplanting small herbs into them! Woo!

Today I was astonished to discover that a small succulent I had bought at the grocery store last year had flowered. I have no idea what kind it is as it was just labeled "foliage" when I bought it. I assume that means they did not expect it to flower in someone's home.



This is the one I noticed first. It looks a lot like a rat's tail, only smaller. The scaly appearance is due to thousands of teeny white flowers studding the cone-shaped base in concentric rings.



When I went to go take pictures I then noticed this other flower also. This one is only an inch long.

This plant flowered on the same kitchen counter as 3-4 of my onions busted loose on too. Clearly it's a plant proliferation hot spot!