I bought some garlic from WGG last year, they have very reasonable prices and good quality. I have been waiting impatiently for a few months to see when they will start taking orders for this year! dcarch: I would suggest using an Asiatic variety such as Korean Mountain or Asian Tempest for making black garlic. The Asiatic varieties are generally short storing which is probably why the black garlic curing/aging process was invented in the first place. A Turban variety might make a good substitute if you can't find any Asiatics.

Do very gad you survived (but wasn't worried because you wrote back). I'm told there's few really bad mushrooms fruiting up in the air on wood logs, that get the size and appearence of a gilled mushroom up. Of course you don't want to discover a new one! The Amanitas on the ground (above buried tree roots) are quite nasty. No sign after eating, until many hours later. The victim starts losing water from both ends to try to self flush the toxin, but it is too late. If one eats below a certain totally dose, they might be able to save them they can be hydrated enough. Above a lethal dose the science gets interesting. Too much of the liver auto digests and between that and inability to hydrate the person, there's no saving them. Cells are always turning over protein and remaking it. The literature I read said that the the toxin stops protein production by liver cells. Cells then autodigest. Less liver less chance to pick more mushrooms. Happy to have no first hand experience with this. Many inoculation sites in shittake cultivation on logs are used to help ensure that it wins out over other wood degrading fungi. Note however that Shiitake can pop up quite a distance down the log from where the plugs were introduced it into the log. The mycelium runs from the that perfect placement of pegs down the sapwood zone and under the bark running pretty fast through the open plant vascular tissue. It's after the easy to get carbohydrates, in the attempt to secure them before other other fungi. Then can it compete quite well, slowly degrading the other wood for energy source. You can get more nitrogen (in protein and amino acids) in the mushrooms harvested over time than in the original log! No this is not alchemy! It just suggests that nitrogen fixing bacteria got in there and were eaten by shiitake or external nitrogen was tranported in. At times shiitake mycelium runs out of the ends into the soil or leaf litter zone and it can pump nutrients back. In the spring or wet fall periods I've lifted logs and some had a nice patch of leaves (1-2' diameter) sticking to log as you lift it! Tricky fungus is harvesting what it needs. It can compete a little at soil level because it's powered by a lot of log behind, which it can degrade to get energy. In a faster closed nutrient system, such as in sawdust culture you must add grain or other nitrogen sources to get good mushroom yield. Luckily the mushrooms are more valuable than the grain. Are you just letting rainy weather make mushrooms or stimulating production 3 to 4 times a year by submerging logs under water and then restacking for fruiting? The idea is to let shiitake degrade wood a few months, then stimulate fruiting and repeat. At least some dim light is needed to grow shiitake indoors. This is because light is needed to initiate fruiting. And then it gets more complex. In nature on a log, the mycelium knows where to pop up. Light and lowered carbon dioxide levels are required to fruit, and bark extractives are stimulatory to fruiting. This how shiitake can choose to fruit on the log surface, rather than futility inside the log. Light, an increased rate of carbon dioxide loss, and bark are all at the surface. The expanding mushroom then uses gravity, light and perhaps carbon dioxide or surface water dehydration sensing? to know where to aim the cap and get the its spore holding umbrella up into a better place to cast spores to the wind. Rather than just let them get washed down right under the fungus on the ground that umbrella cap helps ensure it. The spores are trying to be deposited on newly fallen trees during fall, winter, spring weather. I think a chain saw works "more better". Nature is neat huh? Some of the above mushroom expansion phase needs more research. I did some of the early work in an earlier career on initial light trigger, carbon dioxide trigger, and bark stimulators. This was way back in the later half of the 70's through early 80's. Much fun.

I used to be much more cavalier about discarding roses but I've changed my ways. For one, it takes so long for bands to grow into ornamental plants with little rain. Besides, by now I should know better and be more discriminating in what I order. I know now that Maggie does not ring my chimes but she's staying. Charles Darwin, of which I have two, hardly lasts one day, but I hope with age that will improve. Mrs. Henry Morse is one of those early hybrid teas that take forever to put on growth so that might have been a mistake. I'll try fish solution to hurry her along. Mme. Antoine Mari's flowers are really too delicate for the heat, but there again I hope she'll toughen up with age. Sometimes I wish desperately that I could begin the whole process over again, amend the soil properly before planting, install drip watering right away and choose roses as though my life depended on it. Oh well.....

Thanks, armoured and annpat. I'm pleased to report that two days after I turned the top half of the pile, and added shredded cardboard to dry the pile, the temperature in the center of the pile at least has gone up from 120° to 130° and the sour smell is mostly gone. Very pleased to see that. So either the turning was beneficial in introducing more air, or adding the shredded cardboard did it by...well, introducing more air, or both. Would I have experienced the same results had this been a normal December/January rather than the climate-crisis December/January it clearly is (lows above freezing for four days straight)? I don't know. Would I have experienced the same results if I'd turned the entire pile rather than only the top half ? Another thing I don't know. Damn, creating and maintaining a compost pile is a hell of a lot of fun and deeply satisfying. I've been a gardener for six years and until this year never bothered doing it partly out of laziness but in part because I didn't realize what an incredible experience it is. To witness the transformation of the various materials from your food and garden and Amazon boxes into another physical and chemical form through the help of these amazing, mysterious microbes and the heat they generate is just plain magic. Alchemy, really.