One of the most cultivated mushrooms in the world is the the Button mushroom, or Agaricus Bisporus. When it appears in fields, this wild mushroom has a darker, brownish cap with darker gills and is know as a Field mushroom. When commercially sold, they are labeled as Button mushrooms or Portobello mushrooms, which are usually larger in size.

Now Mushroom Growing Kits are becoming increasingly popular as public opinion and perceptions towards fungi seems to have relaxed a little. People are no longer scared of mushrooms and instead are prepared to try growing their own at home.

Although mushroom grow kits are limited in fungi species currently, the button mushroom is by far the most widely available. Many gardening stores and online garden sites sell mushroom growing kits and they seem to focus on the most well known, considered as being “safer” mushrooms, the Button mushroom.

When the price of a punnet of tomatoes or strawberries seems to excessively high, you can be sure that most of the cost is for fertilizer that is used to grow the plants. When growing your own food, you take back some of the power corporations have over you.

If you decide to start a vegetable garden, obviously you will have to purchase seeds.  Please make sure that the seeds are fresh or they won’t sprout and you’ll be disappointed straight off. You can get some seeds from a friend who is already growing their own produce but, again, make sure they’re no older than last year’s harvest. Most commercially grown vegetables are specifically grown to be sterile, so that the seeds cannot be used.

If the soil in your garden is not very fertile, you will have to purchase some compost and potting soil to start your garden off with. After this, dig in your kitchen scraps from peeled vegetables, rotton fruit and tea and coffee grounds (never meat or bones!).  The worms will do the rest.  It’s magic!

Place your seeds in potting trays and keep moist with a spray bottle, whenever the soil starts to dry out. Your seeds will need plenty of sun and warmth to germinate. A heat mat is very useful.  Loosely covering with a thin plastic sheet or dome will help to keep the moisture in.

Isn’t it wonderful to hear about the spreading popularity of Community Gardens?  What are they? A community garden is a garden that has members of the community participating in planting, weeding and maintaining a piece of the land.  This may be community owned, owned by an organization, or even a privately owned site shared with others. It is often set up where each gardener has his own individual plot for growing, or it can be one large garden, with participating gardeners sharing the harvest as well as the work. Maybe one day this will include a community “hydroponic garden” where we can all gather together and keep gardening all through the winter as well.

More than 10,000 cities in the US have set aside spaces for the residents to garden and grow their own food. Participating residents share in the planning and overall management of the garden, giving them a sense of community, a learning experience they can share with others and their children, as well as fresh nutritious food that they can take pride in growing. It is a growing trend all over the world.

If you live in or near Calgary, where the frost free date is around May 24th, it’s a bit early to start your tomato and pepper seeds indoors. Best to wait till the end of March at least. However, when you start looking for seeds, you can grow varieties that are simply not available at nurseries and garden centers and have a much more varied and flavorful garden.

A good way to start seedlings is to have some good seed starting potting soil, rather than actual garden soil which is too heavy and can easily cake up. Potting soils should be made up of peat moss and perlite or vermiculite with little, if any actual garden soil in them. Hydroponic growing medium is another good way and eliminates the need for soil in the house.

The magazine I’ve come across covers such a wide range of gardening subjects; everything from diagnosing what’s wrong with crops or an individual plant to tips on hydroponics.

When you subscribe, the copies are free.  On line, you can read issues going back three years.  I think paper magazines are still such a comfort to read and keep around the house.  Here’s a snippet from the latest edition:  “A Diagnostician’s Does and Don’ts”, written by J Benton Jones, Jr., an expert in hydroponics:

“A greenhouse tomato grower asked me to make a visit to determine why some tomato plants had leaves with dark “scars” on them. The greenhouse was glass-covered, the crop being grown in a home-made NFT hydroponic system. There were open water surfaces and the air in the greenhouse felt “humid.”  What was happening? With night cooling, condensation accumulated on the interior structure and water dripping from the joined structural pieces was falling on the leaves, causing the leaf “scaring.” The grower thought that there was a disease condition developing and was prepared to apply a fungicide to his tomato plants.”

Read more……..

The technique of growing in hydroponics is taking off in many places.  I encourage you to read this article and start thinking about a space in your home where you can set up an efficient, small in home garden and enjoy the nutritious benefits of home grown food.

Written by Danny O. Calleja / Correspondent

Monday, 28 December 2009 18:34

PILI, Camarines Sur—Even urban areas in the country can now produce in commercial scale high-quality vegetables and other agricultural crops through a revolutionary approach in farming called hydroponics. This newly introduced urban-farming system is a potential approach to revitalize agriculture by fundamentally altering the manner of how crop is produced. This included eliminating the dependence of plants on soil by completely changing their growing medium. The concept of hydroponics proves that soil is no longer crucial for the plant to thrive when the required mineral nutrients are artificially introduced into the plant’s water supply and plant roots absorb them, said Jose Dayao, the regional executive director for Bicol of the Department of Agriculture (DA) based here. Dayao explained that hydroponics makes use of crafty facilities, and resource-efficient and cost-effective cultures and systems to allow the effective use of land, nutrient, water and labor in a comfortable and sanitary working condition. Read more………

It seems that peppers are an extremely successful plant to grow in an in home garden in hydroponics or outdoors anywhere in the world.  Whether you’re in a hot or a cold climate, there is always a good chance you will be able to grow great tasting peppers without much trouble.

Choices of peppers are unbelievable at the moment.  With at least 2,500 new species being created each year, and with many of them there not even being time to give them a name, your perfect pepper isn’t far away.

As for seeds, the best place to get them is normally at garden centres or seed specialists.  If you’re lucky enough to have either one close by, these people will give you a huge choice of seeds for different peppers and each will have a good description on the back of all the things the pepper will need to flourish.  Also, a description of what the pepper tastes like can help you make your choice.

People are coming up with new ideas for growing everyday produce in hydroponics and in home gardens all the time.  It’s a “growing” industry that will feed the world one day.

Here’s an excerpt from a news report:

………”Mr. Fitzpatrick and his friend, an adept student of hydroponics science, began conducting some edible experiments which, after some time and nourishment, yielded a gold mine of an answer. “Anything that doesn’t grow inside the ground, we can probably grow it. We worked with some strawberries and these strawberries turned out to be the best-tasting, juiciest strawberries I’ve ever eaten in my life,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said.

“We tried basil. It was like a weed. It was phenomenal. You couldn’t keep up with it.”……..”

Read more……….

Ivanhoe Junior and Infant School is growing its own vegetables with help from £5,000 from Local Food, a new programme supported by the Big Lottery Fund.

The £50 million scheme is funding food-related community projects across the country.

The Ivanhoe Gets Healthy project is a new education and growing scheme which will provide food-related activities for children, young people and adult volunteers to develop their horticulture skills.”

Read more….