[Katt]

Heey everyone..after all your fabulous advice on preparing my plot i was wondering if anyone had any advice on where to start if i want to grow mushrooms and garlic...i was gonna section of 2 small sections of my land..one for musrooms...one for garlic can anyone give me any advice on where to start? when to plant etc?...i would be realy greatfull!!!

[Heather_S]

I'd put your bulb of garlic in the fridge for a week or two before planting now. they like a cold snap to get them going. I planted mine in february or so and it's coming up now.
As far as mushrooms... I know you can get dowels to inocculate hardwood logs to grow mushrooms on, or you need well rotted horse manure to grow other mushrooms on... I thought they liked it fairly dark too but they're not really my thing - only know about the well-rotted horse manure thing because we happened to look at a mushroom spawn packet at B&Q only a few hours ago  

[John]

The ordinary mushrooms are grown in special mushroom houses, they're not an outdoor crop.

You can buy kits to grow those but they're a fair fiddle and we didn't get many mushrooms so not on the repeat list.

I've no experience with the special innoculated wood type mushrooms - sorry

Garlic - highish PH 6.00 - 6.5 even, bit of blood fish and bone always goes down well too.

[bob_fox]

On my old plot a few years ago I spread some spent mushroom compost mainly to improve the soil. Come September of that year I had a very nice, unexpected  crop of mushrooms! Maybe I was lucky, but I wasn't complaining.

[John]

On my old plot a few years ago I spread some spent mushroom compost mainly to improve the soil. Come September of that year I had a very nice, unexpected  crop of mushrooms! Maybe I was lucky, but I wasn't complaining.

Now that was a bonus!

[Katt]

thank you soo much everyone! So to grow more garlic all i have to do is bury 1 garlic bulb??...woah.....i know i must sound realy stupid to you all by now  :oops:   x x x

[John]

Hi Katt, not stupid - inexperienced perhaps

Break the garlic bulb up into cloves and plant the cloves - so one bulb will give you many plants which will give you many bulbs.

[Heather_S]

And try to only plant the biggest cloves. The small cloves are apparently not so good at producing big bulbs (tip from watching too much Gardener's World).