Johann's Garden

Earlier this year I worked at a retail plant nursery where I was able to get lots of free plants off the dump rack.  On one occasion I lucked into a number of ornamental canna plants.  They were being "dumped" because they carried a virus which caused visible streaking on the leaves (not to be confused with the natural desirable streaking of some cultivars).  Viruses are very common in cannas.  I figured I would take them and just grow them for a season to get experience growing cannas as I had not grown them before.  I repotted them in larger pots and grew them on for the season.  Now that the winter is upon us they are going dormant.  I dumped out the first of the five potted plants and cleaned the tubers.  It took a few minutes to remove all the roots which held a lot of potting soil, but once they were all off not too much soil was left to clean off the actual tubers.  I have read very good things about the edibility of canna tubers both ...

It's been about two weeks since I posted about my mint kombucha experiment. I heard it couldn't be done, but I gave it a go anyways. The outcome has been entirely without regret. I've had chance to drink some of my mint-bucha now and it is definitely a full out kombucha with a nice clear taste complete with minty tones. Last night while entertaining a couple of young ladies I told them about kombucha. Neither had heard of it before, but they welcomed my offer to let them have a try. I started out by giving them each a sample of regular kombucha which I had brewed using black tea. Their reactions to it were positive. This was a nice surprise for me as up til that point I had only been able to convince my less adventurous family to try it. None of my immediate family were very excited about it, nor did they seem to enjoy it (My father did confess later that he thought it was good. However, he didn't even finish his small glass of it). So, after my first positi...

It seemed that kombucha and I kept running into each other online. It kept popping up here and there, but I never really gave it much thought. Then one day I was at a friends house and she said "Hey come here, there's something I want you to try." It was kombucha. This was the first time I had actually seen the real thing, and I did not hesitate to try it. I found it to be delicious, and not at all dissimilar to a fizzy soda like beverage minus the guilt. There was a cider like flavor to it as well, and I loved it. Of course when she offered to send me home with a couple of scobys to start my own brew I couldn't say no. I was hooked. There, now that that's out of the way I can move on to the point of this blog. I have some of the most deliciously flavored mint growing in my garden and I want to put it to good use. A lot of the references I found suggest that kombucha must be brewed in tea made from Camellia sinensis, or else it would degrade and weaken the ...

I was just outside planting my new aronia berry plant, and waiting for one of my pregnant Jacob ewes to give birth when I noticed something strange in the grass under the weeping willow tree... I've seen a lot of mushrooms popping up here and there lately, but they don't tend to catch my interest like this one. This one was different. It was quite unlike any mushroom I had ever seen before. At first glance I noticed the cap of the mushroom had a shredded appearance. That in itself made for an interesting look, but there was more to it than that. Not only did it look shredded by nature, but it was wet. I'm not talking about rain or dew wet either. There was black liquid actually dripping from it. Liquid so black it looked like tar. While I crouched down to watch the mushroom I was able to witness multiple droplets of pure blackness fall off and stain the ground below. I can't even begin to guess what purpose this black liquid serves. It didn't seem to be harm...