Happy Thanksgiving/Indigenous People’s Day (2024)

 

About two pounds of Lion's Mane Mushrooms, which since they grew from and Oak will have a Oak whiskey Barrel kind of flavor which is amazing in a gravy.

On the list of things I never thought I would write or say.. I had to go elbow-deep in this Water Oak to get the Lion's Mane Mushrooms deep inside it's tight crevasse. Yeah, get your laughs out now because the picture above this one shows what I got out of this and the scratches, bruising and, muscle strain was worth it.

These four bags were infested with Tricioderma, a type of fungus that in grow bags goes cannibal and eats any other fungi present. However these Blue Oysters and Lion's Mane ended up killing and consuming the infestation instead. The bags while sealed sat in my field int he full sun for a few weeks and then when cold weather came I saw the intended mushrooms pinning and opened the bag so they could breathe and grow. Salvage Mushrooms for the win.

Because of the holiday I've decided that there will be no normal post here. I've done the same on NextDoor and Bluesky as well. Today I've got a Mushroom Gravy recipe for you and more detailed information that could not make it to the other media sites due to character limits. So lets start with Mushroom foraging (the first two pictures). Late October into November is usually when Lion's Mane emerges in my area and finding it is somewhat of an adventure. I have a few secret patches where I know it's more likely to turn up and for several weeks I use every possible excuse to go there just to check. The weather has to be just right, with rain being important and if I time it right I get the goods. The second picture despite my intentionally humorous phrasing high lights one of the difficulties of harvesting these mushrooms. Some times they aren't outside of the tree and readily visible, sometimes they are in opening in the host tree and sometimes that puts them out of reach. Sometimes they are too high up and you just have to wait until next year. In this year's case as I noted in the caption I pretty much had to give a Water Oak a cavity search. The reward was about two pounds of Lion's Mane which is worth it because I know it will taste amazing. Grocery store bought mushrooms are severely lacking in the flavor department and they also have a bland fungus smell if they have any aroma at all. Plus most of what is sold is either White Button, Cremini or Portabello mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) which are three growing stages of the same species. If you're lucky you might see Enoki, Maitake (hen of the woods), or Shiitake, but even those aren't as good as home grown or wild foraged mushrooms. So the aroma is a almost sweet fungal scent punctuated with strong oak overtones, while the flavor will have a strong oak essence that I liken to oak whiskey barrels. This flavor holds up in cooking and you immediately know you're eating something amazing when you do. Local-grown Mushrooms are vastly superior to store-bought because they have the aroma, and the flavor and haven't been sitting in a refrigerator for who knows how long. This is not to say that I'd turn down store-bought mushrooms on the discount rack, as friends of mine have seen my 'Jackpot!' texts with pictures of me clearing out the discount vegetable rack of obnoxious quantities of heavily discounted mushrooms. No, what I'm saying is if I have the choice between the two I'll go for the fresh local ones every time. This is to a point that searching for Lion's Mane and Bear's Tooth fungi is a yearly activity and making food with them for the holidays is tradition. For me it's not Indigenous People's Day if I'm not consuming native fungi as part of the meal and the same goes for New Years and Christmas. 

With all of that said, we have the third picture. Those were contaminated Mushroom blocks that were handed to me by Sandhills Mushroom Farms for recycling into Mushroom Compost. Each of them was deemed contaminated and the most likely culprit was Trichoderma, though there was a possibility it could have had Neurospora which is commonly called Orange Bread Mold. Respectively we called them Barf Mold (Trich) and Cheeto Mold (Neuro). Neither is desirable but at least in the environment Trichoderma can form mycorrhizal bonds with plants and be a net benefit. As I noted in the caption these contaminated grow bags sat in the full sun in a field for weeks at my farm waiting to be ground up and turned into mushroom compost. But sometimes the cultivated strain wins, and out of 180 bags, about 20 saw the intended fungus win the war and start pinning. Pinning by the way is the term for when a fungal mass starts producing growths indicating it wants to try and produce fruiting bodies. The fruiting bodies are what we think of as the capped mushrooms but they also come in a variety of shapes and forms besides the traditional one we think of. Bags found to be pinning were brought in cut open to allow oxygen in and if they persisted then the backs were fully opened to let the fungus mature it's fruiting bodies to a harvest-able state. Sometimes this worked and sometimes I got weird fungal mass that had parts and pieces that looked right but was basically a spongy blob. I've taken to referring to these blobs as 'Fungal Blubber' and they are still edible just not pretty.  After salvage-harvesting, the blocks are ground up and turned into the usual unsterilized mushroom compost and that's the in and out of the process behind that third picture.

 As for the recipe I promised you, I’d like to share a recipe that is a tradition at my house. At thanksgiving the first batch of wild forage mushroom gravy is made with as many wild foraged mushroom varieties as I have on hand. However, the one I use the most of is Bear’s Tooth and Lion’s Mane because this is the time of the year they naturally emerge and are the absolute tastiest. Generally I find them on or in Oak trees and they take on an oak whiskey barrel kind of flavor that lends itself to savory brown gravy. Since brown gravy is a must-have at thanksgiving dinner in general it blends in well and adds an extra bit of flair to food item that most just think of as a means to dealing with meat or potatoes that might be too dry.

 

Ingredients:

1 Cup of chopped Mushrooms

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 14oz Can of Broth* or 2 bouillon Cubes (This can be Chicken, Beef, or Vegetable)

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder*

Salt and ground black pepper to taste

 

Directions:

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat.

2. Whisk in flour and stir until the mixture becomes paste-like and light golden brown or, about 5 minutes.

3. Whisk in beef broth gradually.

4. Cook and stir until no lumps remain or about 2 minutes.

5. Add Mushrooms, Worcestershire sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, and black pepper.

6. Cook and whisk until gravy thickens or, about 5 minutes.

 

Serves 4

* If you want to make this recipe a bit fancier, you can use Beef Consommé, Himalayan Pink Sea Salt, Black Garlic and freshly cracked black pepper in replacement of noted ingredients.

A Profile In Diversity: The Holiday Cacti

            Generally speaking, most people think of cacti in a very limited light; they expect cacti to look like the Saguaro, Prickly pear, Barrel Cactus, or even the Mammillaria, and yet this is only part of the big picture when it comes to Cacti. To further blur the line, a lot of cacti don’t have the word cactus in their common name while a lot of succulents are called cacti but are not. A good example of the former is the Eve’s Needle (Austrocylindropuntia subulata) which is a true cactus and a relative in the Prickly pear family. An example of the latter is the Pencil Cactus (Euphorbia tirucali) which is not a true cactus. To add to this confusion, many thing that cacti grow only in deserts, and dry areas in the Midwest when in fact cacti have adapted to survive on mountainsides (san pedro cactus), grasslands (lawn peyote), and even in forests (the holiday cacti). The diversity as seen is quite impressive and thus many ask what defines a cactus since it’s known that all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. The key defining features of a cactus are the following.

1.      They tend to originate from habitats with some level of regular drought.

2.      They show a number of adaptations that conserve water.

3.      They generally have a thickened stem structure that stores water.

4.      Most species have lost the ability to produce true leaves.

5.      The spines we see are actually highly modified leaves.

6.      Stems perform photosynthesis.

7.      Cacti often have shallow fibrous root systems designed to suck up any rain that may fall.

8.      Cacti stems are often ribbed which allows them to readily expand or contract during or after a rainfall.

So, with that said in this episode of LITFM, we are going to take a look at one of the most widely distributed true cacti in the world, the Holiday cactus. Now I know I did an episode on this prior but this year I have quite a number of photos to demonstrate the variety of colors that these forest cacti can bring into your home. But first, I know what some of you may be thinking, ‘Christmas Cacti are bland most of the year’, this is absolutely true however they are also one of the most tolerant easily propagated cacti known. This allows for someone to grow them with a minimum of fuss and very little special care other than a repotting every few years.

In fact, the holiday cactus are almost polar opposites in terms of care to what we would actually expect from a cactus, they like soil with organic content, don’t like being pot bound for too long and don’t like bright direct sun.  It is a common trick in the agriculture business to claim there is an absolute difference between the Easter, Christmas and Thanksgiving cacti when in fact, the only difference in their bloom time is how many photo periods of increasing and waning sunlight they are exposed to. Thus, you could get an Easter cactus to bloom at Christmas and a Thanksgiving cactus to bloom at Easter with careful management. Generally, there are two primary groups of Holiday cactus in the trade; (Schlumbergia truncata) Christmas Cactus and (Schlumbergia berkleyii) Thanksgiving Cactus. The two are differentiated by the fact that the first one has angular stem segments (they’re called pads) and is commonly also called crab cactus and the second one has rounded stem segments. Literally the number of photoperiods these two species of cacti see is all that differentiates their blooming time but of course we’ve seen this before as this is similar to what is done with Poinsettias and our perennial garden bulbs. Literally on a small scale we are playing a bit of god by tricking a somewhat simpler life form into performing its yearly ritual when it’s convenient for us. In the Agriculture trade we do this a lot; that’s why certain plants arrive at the nursery already blooming in spring, we manipulate temperatures and light and other tricks to get what we want.

But wait, there’s more, there is a third common member of the same family called Hatiora, these thin-stemmed cacti are a forest epiphyte and the most famous representative of this family is commonly called ‘Dancing Bones Cactus’, ‘Spice Cactus’ or, ‘Drunkard’s Dream’ (Hatiora salicornioides). The first name comes from the longer extended stem segments that look like bones and the fact that they tend to sway in the wind giving the illusion of dancing. The third common name comes from the shape of new and intermediate age stem segments which resemble wine bottles. I don’t precisely know where the second nickname came from, but the flowers of this cacti tend to be turmeric-yellow in color so that’s my best bet. The best part is that Drunkard’s Dream takes literally the same care as a Holiday cactus and tends to bloom roughly between February and April which gives it the common name of Easter Cactus. The difference between Drunkard’s Dream and the other holiday cacti is that you can perceive its active growth, as it’s a moderate to somewhat-fast grower especially during summer with regular water and modest fertilizing.

            Propagation of holiday cacti is very easy, simply twist off a stem that has at least three segments dip the open wound in powdered rooting hormone and stick the segment in a new pot with lightly moist soil mix and monitor for dryness over the next few weeks. The new plant should root in three to four weeks and if you are intending to sell, give it an extra four weeks and light fertilizer to get the pads to swell. For note, Schlumbergia, take a bit longer to get to a moderate saleable size often up to two or three months so plan ahead. If your taking cuttings to save a plant or as a gift then they are ready when a gentle tug on the cutting provides resistance. I should note that just because these cacti are forest cacti does not mean they will tolerate being exposed to very bright all-day sun (7+ hours) very cold, or constantly wet. But as promised I have pictures of this year’s Holiday Cactus display which started in December and is nearing its end in February.

 

Pink tubes, white petals - a true bicolor

 This one is the oldest Christmas cactus in the collection, it was bought at Home Despot in New Jersey and made the trip to NC with me back in 2009. the wispy green stuff in the background is the branches of a Hatiora salicornoides  whose origins I cannot recall but have been in that same pot for at least five or six years now.

This is one hell of a shade of red...three technically.

This Christmas cactus was added to the collection along with two others, and according to the color analysis software I used to try and get an idea of what shade of red it is, it's fire engine red, Cranberry red and Crimson depending on the angle. In case you are wondering the blossoms are crinkly like that because I think they got slightly frosted.






This was a mixed colors pot from the same source as the above red one. Pure white with pink accents and incredibly pink bordering on fuchsia. The next two photos are two angles on the same plant.

While labelled as Dark orange, I prefer to call it Fireball orange.

This is  the third one in that group of plants that came from a Sustainable neighbors Seed Swap. Before this Christmas Cactus I did not think they came in any true shade of orange.

Now with 20% more redness!

Here is another red one, labelled as 'very dark red' it sure lived up to it's name. The curling of the petals is an interesting touch. Much like all the schlumbergia in the collection, this is a crab cactus.

Quick shot of Limelight Christmas cactus about to bloom note the bud color.

Now for the big surprise, last year I was offering a unique variety of Christmas cactus called 'lime light' for sale at LeClair's General Store.  What made the variety interesting was that the parent plant demonstrated bold chartreuse blooms. What I did not expect was that the cuttings would throw a curve ball.  As you can see in this shot, the buds aren't white or yellow as expected but largely pink which should have been an indicator of what was about to happen. Normally with Christmas Cactus, the color of the buds is a strong hint to the final color of the bloom.

This true color shot seems to have skewed the color of this Lime Light.

Dancing Bones Cactus

Pictured here is the first bloom of 'Lime Light'. While I realize that the drop cloth and the true-color setting of the camera has skewed the actual color of the bloom,  the bright pink colors in the tube and reproductive parts is accurate. The bloom turned out to be more of a Chartreuse-yellow than a Chartreuse-Green. From my perspective though yellow or green on a Christmas cactus even with pink tones is still a rarity as they are colors you simply do not ever see. In the next week or so I will try a re-shoot of a 'Lime Light' in bloom as the heavily budded cactus in the above picture is about to bloom any day now. I hope I can have a better image up here in the next episode so all of you out there can get a real feel for what 'Lime Light' has to offer.

This is a close up of Hatiora salicornoides, while it is not in bloom you can see why it got the name 'Drunkard's Dream'. The stem segments with age get longer as you can see and they go from a young sort of beer bottle shape to a wine bottle shape and then eventually look like bones.

This brings to a close the first post of February 2018 and a decent look at the biology, growing habits and nature of the holiday cacti. For note this is where the advertising starts because it keeps the Test Garden’s supplied. As always barring terribly wet and cold weather or illness I still manage a vendor’s space at the Fayetteville City Market at 325 Maxwell street between 9:00 am and 1:00 pm on Saturdays. I sell four things primarily during the winter months and they are:

Soup Kits - $6.00

Seasoning Packets – $2.00

Whole Garlic – $1.00

Fresh Organic Ginger - $1.00

Also, I will be bringing a number of random house plants every week if weather permits and While the assortment is purely random, there is not a thing for sale that is above $8.00.

If the market isn’t your thing or your schedule does not allow you to go there my premium exotic house plants can be purchased in attractive clay pots with unique embellishments at LeClair’s General Store. LeClair’s General Store is located on 1212 Fort Bragg Road in Fayetteville North Carolina.

This is their Facebook Page:

https://www.facebook.com/leclairsgeneralstore/

The Visit NC page’s Listing:

https://www.visitnc.com/listing/leclair-s-general-store

These days I am generally at the store at least twice a week, maintaining stock and/or delivering new materials so if you go to visit the store there is a fair chance I’ll be present to answer your questions. If not, you can always send me questions through this blog or visit the farmer’s market or pay attention to what Sustainable Neighbors is doing at the link below.

https://www.meetup.com/SustainableNeighbors/

            This brings to a close the third LITFM post of the new year, stay tuned the next episode which should be posted on the 21^st of February. The topic will be: A Profile In Diversity: The Philodendron Family.

P.S.

            Now is the time to start your hot-season annuals such as peppers, tomatoes and eggplant, but remember you may need a heat mat and humidity domes.