Morning Glory Roots and Lions Mane Fruits

Today is an exciting day for me because I am starting the process of growing lion’s mane mushrooms. Especially in a blog entry, when I am documenting what I did during the procedure it is not to be taken as a guide of how to do something. I intentionally do not title my blog posts “how to do…” because while I want to be able to help others learn how to do certain things, I am new to most of these topics and I have researched them a lot but like for example my gardening experience is limited to one season at our new house, because last year we moved in in March and we were planning a wedding and I did grow some things but all I did was basically throw down some old potting soil along my back wall and throw some sorghum, black eyed peas, and probably a bunch of other seeds too but those two are the only things that grew last year. They did very well however, especially considering that I didn’t do much to amend the soil, essentially nothing. I did not till exactly but there is a tool that came with the house that you slam down into the ground and then twist and it breaks up the soil a bit. I did that but not everywhere as I did want to break up the soil a bit but not so much that any establish fungal growth was completely destroyed. Fungi make these root like hairs called mycelia that grow through the soil and when disturbed they have to regrow, and if disturbed too much then the fungal growth basically has to start over from spores. I suppose there is probably not a lot going on in completely dry, hard soil, but I’m guessing that if I take a sample and look with the microscope I should be able to find some life. That will have to be for another day though.

Ok let’s try this again. So I document what I do including many mistakes. With sweet potatoes, I have been buying a couple from the store everytime I go, so I have gotten a variety but none that are sold as “seed potatoes”. I started out with some organic ones. There are serveral way you can get sweet potato “slips” or starts, basically baby plants, from a sweet potato. First of all, a sweet potato is different than a potato and only distantly related. The regular potato is what’s called a stem tubor and a sweet potato is a root tubor. They function about the same and look about the same but they are technically a different part of the anatomy. A sweet potato is in the morning glory family and is an enlarged lateral root used to store energy and to “perennate” which means to survive the winter. Another great plant that I grow from the morning glory family is ipomoea aquatica or “water spinach” is what I usually call it, but it has many names. It grows in my pond and while it has done ok and survived the two times I planted it, it has not grown like I was expecting it to. I’ll talk about water spinach another time, but it is pretty delicious.

To grow slips from sweet potatoes, there are several methods: you can suspend them in a cup of water with toothpicks, lay them partially buried in soil, or you can cut them in half and suspend them in wter. The first ones I got I tried laying in moistened soil to coax the vegetative propagation process to start. I kept them in my indoor grow room and kept the soil moist for weeks without any change that I can recall. I eventually buried them outside in the garden near a soaker hose, but they just rotted away or maybe the ants made a nice meal out of them. Since that didn’t work for me, and my aunt was also trying to grow slips with little sucess, I was unable to plant them for this years spring garden. I started back up as the summer got super hot in preparation for the fall, and this time I tried just putting the sweet poatatoes in small cups with water. I used medium sized potatoes as apparently they produce the best, and when placed in the glass the water would come up about 1/3 to 1/2 way up. I then put them in my kitchen windowsil and kept the cups full of water. First, I started with two red ones, probably red garnet. Then I added some brown ones, and later more red ones. Out of all of them, only two did not rot, and only one has produced a slip that was big enough to pull off. The second one has a couple short slips but they are growing slowly where the one swee potato that is producing is making them a very fast pace.