Native Bee Hive

It was Bill M’s birthday recently and this was the present that he got from Colleen and the children, a ‘Carter Built’ native bee hive!

This awesome little hive has already started to pull its own weight as these wonderful little creatures have been seen working throughout the garden carrying out their pollination duties.

Colleen is going to try and organise a group meeting with the hives maker in the new year and hopefully we can get a demonstration of how to split the hive into two hives.

Colleen said the honey is delightful and tastes like butterscotch.

 

Shiitake Mushroom Futures

I asked Bill if he had any recently cut hard wood and got a quizzical look in reply. “Haven’t you seen around the side?” he responded. We wandered over to the other side of the house and were greeted with the remnants of his recent venture into arboreal management. The log sizes where just perfect for mushrooms so we decided to lay down some Shiitake future’s. Neither of us have grown Shiitake’s before so we figured we would start with a small pile.

We don’t have any oak trees but I have found lots of people who have told me that most hardwoods will work just as well.

The wood has to be a hardwood species and needs to have been cut no longer then two weeks previously otherwise non target species of fungus can infiltrate the wood. From what I have read, the logs are protected for the first two weeks but after this period they start to break down.

We selected some logs in the 10 to 15 centimetre diameter range and stacked them up behind the shed on some sacrificial offcuts. These will have to stay here for two months before being inoculated and moved to a cool shady location. It will take a further 6 to 12 months for the logs to start “fruiting”.

How to grow mushrooms

Mushroom growing kits

Geoff and Llyn’s urban adventure

Geoff and Llyn have lived on the land all their lives and have made a good living out of organic gardening and some aquaculture enterprises. After recently retiring and moving into Yeppoon the couple made the decision to continue doing what they love and luckily for us have brought their wealth of knowledge into the urban farming arena.

I dropped in to visit 3 months after the big move and am blown away by how much progress has been made in such a short amount of time. Inside the house they have been opening everything up to the light and outside Llyn has a thriving wicking bed system in place that is powering along and is already churning out more greens then they can eat. I was particularly interested in how much shade the greens were growing in and how beneficial it was for them and also the success of Llyn’s potato growing bags which produce all year round except for the very hottest summer months.