I want to try planting sweet potatoes in straw bales but conditioning the bales takes forever. My sweet potatoes are taking off and need to be planted. Yesterday I checked the temp of the bales. It needs to be at least less than 100 degrees before I can plant . . probably about 98 degrees.
Yesterday was the first day I had checked the temp. I was hoping I could plant this week but . . not yet. The bale temp is a bit over 110 degrees. Hopefully by this time next week I can plant. Sweet potatoes take about four months to produce. Our average first frost is October 21 – 31 so if I can get the sweet potatoes planted by June 20, I’ll be cutting it close but should be able to get a halfway decent crop.
I do have a bumper crop of mushrooms growing. I think they’re straw mushrooms, which are edible but there’s no way I’m brave enough to try one. I will say that Oscar loves them. Despite my best effort to make sure he doesn’t eat them, he manages to get at least one a day. He can smell them and he searches for them. He’ll run and grab one before I ever see it.
They obviously grow in straw. Last year when we seeded some grass in areas, Vince covered it in straw and in those areas, we have lots of these mushrooms. There’s hardly any way I can take Oscar out that we don’t go through at least some of them. I try to go out with gloves on and pick them every morning but he still manages to find some. So far, he hasn’t had any problems but I really am trying hard not to let him get them.
Our native plant guy is coming back today so maybe he will know something about them. Even if he says they’re safe, I’m not sure Vince will eat them. He has no idea he ate duck eggs in the fried rice yesterday. 🙂
Liz says
..At least you didn’t get the stinkhorn mushroom in your hay. A few years ago, I put down some mulch. After about a year, I started getting some very strange looking growths in my front bed – they look like a p***s. I had the orange ones with the slimy brown top. Gross…. When I got my paper, I would save the plastic wrappers to cover my hands as I pulled the mushrooms. I would dig up the white spheres/roots in the soil, but I finally just cleaned up a couple inches of mulch and soil.
judy.blog@gmail.com says
Never heard of those but you know what’s going to happen now that you’ve told me about them.