My garden is now a jungle. I have planted a great number of species that support various different types of pollinators. Right now the sneezeweed, cup plant, grey coneflower, purple coneflower, brown-eyed susan and one of the goldenrods are blooming. The different types of bees and butterflies we are seeing is lovely. The goldfinches are back eating the cup plant seeds. They are so joyful with their goldfinch chatter.
While we were away - two of the buckets of oyster mushrooms fruited and are now an ugly mess. Just before we left I added a third of a bucket of sawdust substrate to all the buckets and moved them outside so they didn't dry out too much. Guess they liked it. The straw topping is not colonized but the sawdust is and no evidence of the mushroom flies. Not sure whether to move them back inside now because they actually look a little too wet. I think I will put them under the porch if it rains so they don't get wetter but keep watching them for another fruiting. And starting to prepare more substrate to feed them again. We are now beyond what I had hoped to harvest when I paid $25 for the spawn.
I have beans, beets, carrots, cuke, delicata squash, onions, leeks, zukes, peppers, garlic and potatoes in the vegetable patch. Last night I made a warm potato salad and fried eggs for supper and the only ingredients I had to buy from the store was bacon, mustard, salt, pepper, paprika and vinegar. It felt so cool to chop up all the veg from the garden and top it with eggs from the neighbours. Tonight I hope to plant a number of new seeds for fall harvest and some more beans that will be used mainly for green manure if we have early frost. The beans planted before holiday are up but I am not sure we will get a harvest. The late planted peas in early July are not producing well. I have lots of old seed so I may try more peas and if it doesn't work out consider them more green manure. I need to get the soil deeper for carrots. And the south end of the garden is really poor soil. The last two rows are very sad indeed. We will be cleaning out the hen house onto that end of the garden next week. I think I should do another truck load of manure this fall as well.