Getting up onto the ledge was easier than getting back down.
While I was gone, a Very Good Friend came by to water my plants and check on the garden (Thank you, Cheryl!). The weather here while I was gone was HOT, so she came by every day to make sure that the plants growing in containers hadn't all cooked right in their pots. I was happy to see that she had kept things harvested. Steady harvesting leads to more production, for many crops!
One of the crops she checked on (and watered) was my laundry basket of straw that had been inoculated with oyster mushroom spawn. I have a shiitake log out in the back yard that is a year and a half old and has yet to produce mushrooms, but I started this laundry basket just about 10 days before heading out for our trip. Look at it now!:
I put the basket together at a cultivation workshop with the Mushroom Club of Georgia. The workshop was a lot of fun, and these mushrooms are very good to eat. Joe thinks they are more tasty than chanterelles!
Also while we were gone, the limes matured enough for eating. When we got back, there were 28 limes on my tree. There are fewer now, because we've brought some in to the kitchen (for cucumber/tomato/sweet pepper salad, all chopped up small, with lime juice and olive oil; on the oyster mushrooms; in iced tea). This pretty good level of production may be enough that the rest of my family will tolerate the little tree's living in the dining room, by the back door, all winter long, in spite of its thorns.
What a great photo of you and your son! Thanks for sharing it! 28 Limes? That's great!
ReplyDeleteErin,
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I never like photos of myself, but this son hadn't had his picture in the blog yet, and it is a good picture of him!
I also am impressed with the lime count. When the little tree was flowering, I thought it might have even more (so many flowers!), but not all the little fruits that formed at first stuck.
The tree is in a fairly small pot, and to keep it from drying out too quickly, I "planted" the pot up to within a couple of inches of its rim out in the garden. I plan to re-pot the plant into a larger pot after this crop of limes has all been harvested. I had thought about re-potting it earlier in the spring, but my Louisiana sister (who has been growing citrus longer than I have) said that it would lose a significant quantity of limes if I didn't wait until later. I think she knows from experience!
That is a great picture! I have tried lime trees here in the ground with out much luck...maybe I will try again in a pot!
ReplyDeleteMy sister in Louisiana (closer to your climate zone than Hotlanta) lost her lime that had been in the ground this winter. The weather was much colder than usual. Her lemon tree got hit pretty hard, too, but it is in a more sheltered location and has recovered pretty well. However, a lot of the top growth died and had to be trimmed off.
ReplyDeleteWhen I bought my lime tree, it was supposed to be a dwarf, which would fit more easily into my dining room in the winter, but I think I got a non-dwarf by mistake! The tree in its planted pot is currently taller than I am (not a lofty height, but more than five feet, anyway). I really like having the fresh limes that haven't been treated with pesticides of fungicides, though!
Nice picture from Colorado. I am going to have to see if I can find a similar organization in Washington to the 'Mushroom Club of Georgia'
ReplyDeletePaul,
ReplyDeleteThe Pacific Northwest is, like, mushrooming nirvana. There's bound to be a group nearby!
I keep meaning to post the whole set of Colorado pictures on facebook. Maybe this weekend...
(For everyone who doesn't know, Paul is one of my brothers.)