Mushroom Plants, Dandelions and Garden Designers

We start with the topic of dandelion, it’s a weed but can it help you in Grow Your Health; growing a mushroom plant in Vegetable Heroes; a new series called ‘so you think you need a landscaper part 1’ with Peter Nixon in Design elements and a

GROW YOUR HEALTH

Dandelion: Taraxacum officinale

I’ve talked about weeds on this program, not just controlling weeds but eating weeds.
It’s not something that I’ve got my head around yet, but one weed that is being showcased today has been used in herbal medicine and nutrtition for quite a while.
Apparently it’s good for your liver.

Let’s find out what it is.
I'm talking with Simone Jeffries, naturopath, nutritionist and wellness coach of www.simonejeffriesnaturopath.com.au


The leaf has a serrated edge forming a basal rosette, with a strong taproot.

Dandelion flowers have only ray florets, and no disc florets, therefore no centre.

Milky sap comes from the stem.
It’s good though that dandelion coffee or tea has the same health benefits. 

• Simone recommends eating the leaf because they are bitter. 
• Bitterness is good for us, because it stimulates the appetite.

Dandelion leaves are best when young because they become more bitter with age.

Add to a salad, incorporate into a pesto or mix it in with a juice.

The dandelion root is beneficial also, being made into tea or dandelion coffee.

Contains high amounts of iron and calcium.

You can slow bake the root until its brittle, then you can grind it up to make your own tea or coffee.

• As always, make sure you can identify the weed correctly before consuming it.
• Also don’t collect the weeds on roadsides or nature strips, because you don’t know what animal has left its message on them or if they have been sprayed with herbicide. 

If you have any questions for me or for Simone please contact us or write in.

VEGETABLE HEROES

RUNGIA KLOSSII

Have you ever heard of a mushroom plant?

I bet you’ve never heard of a it?

• Rungia klossii  or Mushroom plant is from the Acanthaceae family, that has quite a lot of ornamental plants with names like, Acanthus mollis or Oyster plant, Justicia sp, you might’ve heard of the shrimp plant, or even grown it yourself.

Why are these plants in the same family?

For one thing, these plants have sympetalous corollas-that means the petals are fused into a tube and they also have  mostly four stamens (sometimes reduced further to two).

Flowers of mushroom plant have sympetalous corollas

Members of this family that grow in Australia or New Guinea (Australia was part of New Guinea in Gondwana time.) are usually small herbs or shrubs with quite dark green leaves.

Back to the mushroom plant, where do you get it?

• What is it actually then ?

The mushroom plant is a perennial-that means it flowers and sets seed over a number of years, growing to about 60cm high.

It comes from the highlands of Papua New Guinea, so it’s a tropical or sub-tropical plant, but seems to grow alright in cooler areas that only get a light frost.

Don’t despair, if you want to try this plant, I’ve been growing mine for years in a pot, and even though there’s not that much frost where I live, it seems to survive quite well.

Except for one time when house-sitters didn’t water it and it looked quite dead.

There are a couple of green stems so I’m hopeful that it will come back.

Where to Plant

• In cooler areas, the plant will die down in winter but comes back up in spring. 
• Mushroom plants can be grown in a position that gets morning sun or semi-shade. Full sun tends to burn them.
• If your district experiences temperatures in the mid-30’s for stretches at a time, I would say that you should only try this plant in a semi-shaded spot.
• In cool temperate climates you could grow the mushroom plant in a full sun position.
• This plant certainly won’t cope with any frost in winter.

 Mushroom plants have dark green, glossy succulent leaves and stems with a yellow central mid-vein.

The leaf is crinkly, about 2 cm long with a sharp point.

And they’re also arranged in opposite pairs  on the stem but at right angles to those above and below.

This is what’s known as decussate.

What does it taste like?

• If you bite on the leaf, it’s quite crunchy, and very tasty and yes, quite reminiscent of mushrooms, but not overpowerlingly.
• Mine has never flowered but it’s supposed to have blue flowers in spring. It probably flowers in more tropical areas.
• The flowering doesn’t matter really because you’re growing it for the leaves to put into your cooking, sandwiches and salads.

Growing it in a Pot

• There isn’t much information about growing this plant in books or on the web, but I’ve found that it grows well in ordinary potting mix, and I’ve also put a plant in the edge of my veggie bed.
• I have heard that it doesn’t like being waterlogged, so for those people who have clay soils, you need to grow it in a raised bed or pot of any size.
• You could say it copes in most soils, but it must be well-drained and kept fairly moist.

If you manage to get one, I would recommend taking a cutting for insurance until you find the right spot for it to grow.

• The plant will grow from root division as well. Spring is the best time, and it can be slow to strike, although once you get it going it can grow quite quickly.
• If you plant it in the ground it’ll spread by suckering and will form a large clump over time.
• Picking the leaves often means the plant gets more bushy-a bit like pruning most plants, the new growth that comes after is better.

How to Enjoy Mushroom Plant

You can eat the leaves in salads, they have a nice crunch to them, or chop them up and put them into scrambled eggs.

They won’t go that grey colour as they do when you use real mushrooms.

Add them to soups, stews and stir-fries towards the end of cooking time. Heat enhances that mushroom flavour.

Why is it good for you?

The leaves are extremely rich in chlorophyll, making them, valuable for blood cleansing and muscle building.

Mushroom plant leaves have 3% protein (higher in protein than actual mushrooms).

What I don’t get is that have a few calories, in fact they have 33 calories per 100 grams of leaves,

But the good part is calcium content is 272mg to 100 grams of leaves the highest in any plant!

It beats other plant foods with high sources of calcium are: kale at 249mg, almond 234, soybean 226, parsley 203, dandelion leaves 187, watercress 151, chickpeas 150, horseradish 140, sunflower seed 120, wheat bran 119, broccoli 103, fennel 100, spinach 93, lentils 97, raisins 62, Chinese cabbage 43 … which shows us that the mushroom plant is very high in calcium.

The plant is also a rich source of vitamin C, beta-carotene, iron and other vitamins and minerals.

It’s a very tasty herb and there should be more of it around.

The mushroom taste gets stronger with cooking.

Go to your local markets and buy one today.

THAT WAS YOUR VEGETABLE HERO FOR TODAY

DESIGN ELEMENTS

So You Think You Need A Landscaper part 1

You may be wanting to redesign your whole garden so plants that are water hungry are removed and drought tolerant plants put in.

Tex Mex seen in passing. photo P Nixon

It needn’t be ugly or full of just succulents, but what do you plant?
This is when you need a Landscape Designer or even a garden designer
But which of these do you need?
Let’s find out.

I'm talking with Peter Nixon Project manager and landscape designer for Paradisus garden design. www.peternixon.com.au

PLAY: Need A Landscaper part 1_4th December 2019

• If you want more than just new garden beds and new plants, you may just want a garden designer.
• But if you want more doing than just plants, you’ll need project manager who is also a garden or landscape designer.

Peter Nixon's See Changer garden photo Peter Nixon

For plants as seen in this photo, you will need your garden designer or landscaper to prepare an 'availability list.'

Simply because, these are not the standard, run of the mill plants that are available in every pot size all year round.

You may like plants as those you see in gardening magazines or at plant fairs to be used in your new design.

That will mean, someone spending hours on the phone, finding out out which grower can supply them or in fact even contract grow them in the quantity and size that you want.

TIP: ask the right questions of your landscaper or garden designer. Namely, "will you source plants which I want?"

If you have any questions for me or for Peter, please write in to realworldgardener@gmail.com

Perma Gardening Good for the Earth

The Good Earth

Are you an accidental organic gardener? Turns out that you don’t have to be full on into permaculture to actually be following their ideas.
Did you know that permaculture is ‘eco-friendly’, organic, healthy and low maintenance?
I'm talking with Lucinda Coates and Margaret Mossakowska from Permaculture North.

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Plus, if you just want to find more ways to be organic, just go along to some permaculture workshops.
.
To find out about a local permaculture group near you, go to www.permaculture.org.au and look up Our Social Network tab on the website.
There’s a permaculture association in just about every state.
For example in South Australia’s it’s www.permaculturesa.org.au/
http://permaculturemelbourne.org.au/is for all across Victoria, and for 2UUU listeners there’s a permaculture shoalhaven network http://www.spn.org.au/
For local listeners, go to www.permaculturesydneyinstitute.org/
If you have a question about organic gardening or want to know where to find organic gardening workshops in your area, why not drop us a line. to realworldgardener@gmail.com or by post to 2RRR P.O. Box 644 Gladesville NSW 1675,  or post them on Real World Gardeners facebook page, we’d love to hear from you.
 

Vegetable Heroes:

 

The answer to the question, what was grown in the Paris Catacombs before the Paris Metro was of course the Mushroom.
Not strictly a vegetable or a fruit, and not even a plant, but a fungi.
They also seem to have very different botanical or scinetific names.
Button mushrooms are Agaricus bisporus, various oyster mushrooms belong to the genus Pleurotus and shiitake mushrooms are Lentinula edodes.
Did you know that the body of the mushroom is mycelium which is microscopic, lives underground, in wood or another food source.
It’s when this mycelium has stored enough nutrients to give fruits, that we get those mushrooms that we see and we like to eat.
4,600 years ago, Egyptians believed that eating mushrooms gave you immortality so commoners weren’t allowed to eat mushrooms, only royalty. How thing’s have changed?

Some say that Louis XIV of France was the first mushroom grower in Europe but it’s more likely that it was a French botanist named Merchant, who in 1678 showed to the Academie des Sciences how mushrooms could be grown in a controlled way by transplanting their mycelia. (filaments which spread through the soil underneath them like fine roots)."
Speaking of tunnels, the first mushrooms grown commercially in Australia were grown in disused railway tunnels in Sydney in the 1930’s.
Later the mushrooms were grown in fields only covered with straw and hessian bags.
Listeners might remember buying mushrooms in cans because you couldn’t always get them fresh all year round like you can now.
Remember those cans of Champignons?
Today, Australians eat mostly fresh mushrooms because they’re available all year.
You can grow quite a lot more varieties at home, than just the plain white mushrooms.

Varieties You Can Grow:

There’s White Button, Chestnut button, Swiss Brown, Pearl Oyster, Pink Oyster. Golden Oyster, and Shitake to name a few.
I have grown white button Mushrooms in the past, and having seen different varieties being grown in Europe so I thought I’d explore some other varieties that can also be grown at home.
You may already know that the standard white button kit comes in a cardboard box with compost and casing material that you have to wet and put on top of the compost in the box.
The same goes for Chestnut button mushrooms.
Then there’s grow bags available from some garden centres and large retail outlets that sell Mushroom grow bags.
Mr Fothergills is releasing a new way of growing the other types of mushrooms in kit form this Spring.
Growing Mushrooms (Agaricus species) is easy if you stick to a few basic guidelines.

So how do you grow mushrooms from a kit?

Find somewhere indoors where there’s no wind or direct sunlight, better still if it’s a bit humid like your laundry.
Some people may have a big enough bathroom to put the kit in there!
A good idea is to keep your mushroom kit off the ground and out of the way of the family pet.
It’s not a good idea to grow deep your mushrooms deep inside a cupboard or pantry because the air is pretty dry, plus if you can’t see them, you might forget about them.
The standard kits contain a casing with mushroom spores that you spread over your mushroom compost. For this you need a spray bottle of water to keep the kit moist.
Now there’s a kit you can buy where the spores come in packets.
Some part of each mature mushroom produces microscopic spores that are similar to pollen or seeds.
You can either buy the mushroom boards that need to be soaked first in water, or you can spread the spores on your own board.
Another way is to use logs from almost any hardwood tree as long as it’s not a pine tree.
Two 15 x 40 cm logs are all you need.

What you need to do next is spread the spores over the wetted surface of one log, then place another log on top and tie them together to make a sort of mushroom spore sandwich.
Next, put the logs into a loosely tied plastic bag-so there’s some air circulation, and put this in a warm place.
Somewhere where the temperature doesn’t get below 16⁰ C and above 25⁰ C. In the house sounds best.
Leave this to incubate for 6-8 weeks.
According to Mr Fothergills instructions, the white mushroom mycelium should spread through the wood.

What does it look like?

Have you ever had a loaf of bread get the white woolly flour like mould grow on it before it turns green?
A bit like that, but woolly flour like mould should appear all over the logs or boards. Shitake mushrooms mould looks more of a reddish brown colour.
That actually makes sense, because if you’ve ever had a dead tree in your garden, have you ever noticed the fungus that grows out from the dead trunk as the wood decomposes?
The next step is take the logs out of the plastic bags and bury  three-quarters of the boards vertically, in the garden where it’s cold and damp.
The logs or boards aren’t that big so don’t worry, you don’t have to dig that big a hole.
That will kickstart the process of mushroom growing.
TIP:Water the logs regularly or else the mycelium will dry out.
Don’t panic if you haven’t got a spot in the garden, you can actually keep the boards in the bag but cut some holes in the bag and spray a couple of times a day.
Also keep a little bit of water in the bottom of the bag.
One more thing, to kickstart mushroom production, put the bag in the fridge for two days.

Why are they good for You?

Even though they’re in the vegetable aisle in the supermarket, mushrooms could be in with meat, beans or grains.
That’s because mushrooms contain 3.3g of protein for every 100g of mushrooms. About three button or one flat mushroom.
Mushrooms are low in calories, fat-free, cholesterol-free and very low in sodium.
One serve of mushrooms has 20% of your RDI of some of the important B group vitamins, as well as selenium, nearly as much potassium as in a banana, and vitamin D.
Yes you heard right, they’re the only source of vitamin D in the produce aisle and one of the few non-fortified food sources.
Mushrooms are also valuable source of dietary fibre: a 100g serving of mushrooms contains more dietary fibre (2.5g) than 100g of celery (1.8g) or a slice of wholemeal bread (2.0g

Design Elements

with Louise McDaid
So you’ve cut out spraying with chemicals, you’re growing bird friendly plants, but what else can you do to make sure your garden is a haven for all sorts of wildlife? Let’s find out…

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The key points were to seek out local plants and incorporate them into your garden somewhere.
Louise also mentioned that sometimes the local plants don’t always have great flowers, but you put them in with other natives or even exotics and build up a plant base that encourages biodiversity.
That way, you’re attracting good bugs, birds and reptiles into your garden that do some of the hard work in the garden for you.
Can’t have enough of those good bugs I say.
There’s a new product out, by the way, that’s not only a horticultural oil, but contains a good bug attractant which the company calls HIPPO.
Look out for it next time you go shopping if you have a pest outbreak.
It’s good because it’s organic.

Plant of the Week:

Anigozanthos flavidus: Kangaroo paws.

  These plants fit right into native gardens, but too often they get this black stuff on their leaves that just looks awful.
If you like Kangaroo Paws, you’ll want to hear all about how you control ink disease and the best way to look after them.

Kangaroo paws “Ruby Slippers,” sounds pretty nice, and if you like Anigozanthos or paws, go out and treat yourself to several of these plants.
 

I’ve erred on the side of “leave it til later for Kangaroo paws. Mainly because I don’t really like them.

I’ve tried to like the flowers, but something about Kangaroo paws just doesn’t say flowers to me.
I don’t understand the motivation behind wanting Kangaroo paws. But there you go.

To be fair, I’m going to talk about Kangaroo paws, or Anigozanthos, because I know there’s plenty of people out there that actually like them. Angus Stewart for one.

I know how to grow them and what to do about the dreaded ink disease.
I also know that the landscaping, larger cultivars do better in most people’s gardens.
Let’s get this over with shall we?

 

Trivia:Anigozanthos is Greek meaning uneven  flower, because the petals are arranged unevenly.

Anigozanthus or kangaroo paws are a rhizomatous evergreen perennial
Paws grow as a grassy like clump with strappy leaves with the flowers well above the foliage.
The flowers are tubular with the corolla and calyx fused. These are held up on tall woolly branched spikes.

To look after your Kangaroo Paws-just give them an open situation.

They’re fairly hardy but for disease resistance grow it in full sun and western sun.

Paws prefer well drained moist soils but tolerate sandy or clay soils, and even temporary inundation-ie long periods of rain, as long as it drains away over a few days.

Take off the flowers that have finished  as well as the leaves to minimise the spread of the dreaded ink disease. More on that later.

 TIP:

Divide your Kangaroo paws now-ie winter. Ablsolutely the best time to do this and do it every 3-4 years so they don’t get overcrowded. Good way to prevent disease taking hold.

Fertilise with ½ strength native fertiliser in Spring.

 

Anigozanthos rufus selection Cultivar Name Ruby Slippers

This cultivar is small, only growing to about 50 x 50 cm.
Grow it in pots where you can see it more often. Put it into a full sun or part shade position, but protect from frosts.
Massed rich red flowers clustered on red stems in late winter-spring with contrasting grey-green strappy leaves.
Climate Suited to cool temperate to arid climates
All Kangaroo paws are  fairly drought tolerant.

 TREATING INK DISEASE ON KANGAROO PAWS.

About that dreaded ink disease- is a fungus, and appears as large black blotches on the leaves. Plants growing in cool moist climates are more susceptible. Also plants growing in warm humid climates are susceptible.

If you’re growing some and don’t have the disease, please let us know, and the climate that your live in, plus the cultivar. Do everyone a favour.

 Ink disease is difficult to treat. Vigorously growing plants are more resistant and dividing clumps after several years helps to make more strong growth.

Slash the plant to rhizome level annually if you like, when they show signs of ink disease-ie blackening of the leaves.
In most cases get rid of the clumps of declining plants and plant new ones.
Happens more with the hybrid species.
Some disease resistant cultivars are also now available.

Larger cultivars can be cut back to the ground and the affected leaves put in the rubbish and not in the compost to prevent the spread of fungal spores.

You can also try spray with the fungicide, copper oxychloride, to stop the spread of the disease.

If you have this problem and you love Kangaroo paws, think of your paws as short-lived plants.
Kangaroo paws generally only last for 3 to 5 years.

Some types, for example, Anigozanthos manglesii, are best considered annuals.

TIP:Most species are dormant over winter (some die back completely) and it is important not to over-water at this time.

Attract honey eating birds-great for a native garden. Where in the winning garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower show.Just follow our tips on how to look after them, or write in or email us a question and we’ll help you with any problems you have with Kangaroo Paws.