Giant puffballs done, and an unexpected autumn

This morning was the day!

After sitting in water, with some molasses and a touch of salt, for a couple of days, our Giant Puffball spores were ready to be used to inoculate an area.

The instructions just said to pour over grass, but I did do two things to prepare the area we decided on. First, I pulled up the tall grass. There was barely any, and I didn’t try to pull them up by the roots or anything. Mostly, I figured I wanted the spores to be on the ground, not on tall blades of grass! 😀 Then, I wet the area down with a hose. I wet down the morel bed, too, since the hose was handy.

When pouring the slurry out, I just swung the jug back and forth while walking backwards, paying more attention to spreading it evenly than to how large of an area I covered. It ended up being just enough to cover from end to end between the trees, from the morel box, down.

The temperatures have been just lovely, and we’re even getting passing showers, fairly regularly.

It’s been mild enough that, even with the first Ozark Nest Egg gourds withering away from last of pollination, new gourds are forming!

Looking at the long range forecast, I am just amazed.

We’re supposed to hit 28C/82F in a few days! With a humidex of 32C/90F! I thought we already seen our last days of temperatures this high. It’s the warm overnight temperatures that make the big difference, though. The app on my phone has long range forecasts to 24 days. Of course, the farther out they predict, the less accurate they can be, but even so, there are no frost nights predicted! It’s like we’re getting the weather we normally would have got, earlier in the year, instead of the drought. In fact, even with the few showers we’ve had, it looks like we still need to water the garden! We will still be getting beans and summer squash, more and more of the late sown peas are growing pods, more sunflowers are opening their seed heads, and even the Tennessee Dancing Gourd is producing more flowers and gourds. Of course, the beets and carrots are still growing. I was planning to leave those until around first frost, and it’s looking like they’ll have plenty of time to keep developing. The tomatoes are dying back, but still prolific, and the lettuce and surviving chard are thriving. I’m almost tempted to plant some more lettuces!

Almost.

This does mean we won’t be broadcasting the wildflower seed mixes we have for quite some time; they aren’t going to go out until there is no chance of germination.

What a strange year it has been!

The Re-Farmer

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