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We are embracing the digital age here at Stone Soup Gardens with our mighty new Instagram Account. Come on over and follow us and see what we are up to. Photos from life, love, landscaping, hardscaping, permaculture, events, and more! @stonesoupgardens  Every month Stone Soupers gather together to do something awesome as an educational outreach day. We've visited an earthship, attended a permaculture conference, toured the Bullitt Center, kayaked to pull trash out of the Puget Sound, and most recently, went for a hike on the Gold Creek Trail near Snoqualmie Pass. It was great to have the whole family there and to be able to share our collective knowledge of native vegetation, fungi, interesting animal facts, and to catch up with each other outside of the usual work day. Here's a look at our family outing. We had a full house for the mushroom class Finding and Foraging Edible Fungi at the Beacon Food Forest. The weather held out and we had a great time navigating the wonders of the edible understory. Here are a few pics from the day. We can't wait to partner with Beacon Food Forest on our next class. Stay tuned, there will be more offerings soon!  I wanted to invite you all to join me at the Beacon Food Forest for my upcoming class on Finding and Foraging Edible Fungi, but it has already sold out!
Beacon Food Forest 15th Ave S and South Dakota Street, Seattle Saturday, May 14, 2016 10 am - 12:30pm Just in case.... http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2546491 Presenter Jake Harris is an enthusiastic mushroom ambassador, and loves sharing the joys of finding and eating fruiting fungus. In this 2.5 hour course we will talk for a bit about mushroom ID, how to start mushrooms at home, and how to find safe edible mushrooms in the pacific NW. For the workshop part of the course we will get our hands dirty learning about how to identify chanterelles, hedgehogs, morels, boletus and many more, and learn how to grown your own tasty wine cap, oysters, shiitakes, lions mane, shaggy mane mushrooms. We will explore mycellial networks at Beacon Food Forest, and share some time hearing about facts, habitats, uses and recipes. Regardless, if you haven't checked out the awesomeness that is the Beacon Food Forest Permaculture Project, go and take a look. It is a wonderful, edible space where you can stroll through and eat organic fruits, veggies, and herbs. What's not to love?! They also have volunteer opportunities, so grab your gloves, roll up your sleeves, and lend a hand!  Bioremediation:
How to Clean Saturated Soils using Plants and Fungus Thursday November 19th 2pm - 4pm Antioch University, Room 200, 2326 6th Ave, Seattle Join the Green Infrastructure Partnership for an introduction to Mycoremediation and Phytoremediation. We will discuss applications of bio remediation for treating oil and street runoff, roof runoff, biosolids and other pollutants. We will be joined by Howard Sprouse of The Remediators (www.theremediators.com) and David Roman of Clear Water Gardens (www.seattleclearwatergardens.com) who will both share their knowledge and be available for a panel discussion of how best to use bioremediation to clean our soils and watershed. 2:00-2:20 Arrival and introductions: 2:20-2:35 David Roman Into to Phytoremeditioan, and application to home gardens 2:35-3:05 Howard Sprouse Intro to Myco Remediation and application to large scale clean ups of soil and stormwater 3:05-3:40 Conversation and Panel Discussion 3:40-4:00 upcoming announcements and project report backs. HOWARD SPROUSE Howard Sprouse is the founder and CEO of The Remediators Inc. and co developer of Intracep LLC's Permeable Reactive Weir, stormwater treatment technology. "The Remediators is full service environmental company that is internationally recognized for commercializing 'Mycoremediation' which uses fungi to clean contaminated soils and water. The Remediators offers a full suite of bioremediation technologies with their 'Integrated Biological Approach', combining natural cleanup methods in a synergistic system tailored to site needs. The Remediators works closely with local universities and other companies representing the state of the art in the field of bioremediation. DAVID ROMAN: David Roman moved to Seattle in 1999 to be amongst the eternal green. After a 15 year career in the construction industry he went back to school and in 2012 graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Environmental Science and Resource Management. Most of the following year was spent traveling across the country installing phytoremediation caps of retired land fills and toxic chemical sites. In 2014 the research he participated in while at the UW was published by the American Chemistry Society, "Degradation, Phytoprotection and Phytoremediation of Phenanthrene by Endophyte Psuedomonas putida, PD1". He is the owner of Clear Water Gardens LLC, a landscaping firm specializing in water management, cistern and rain garden installation. Come one, come all and see Stone Soup Gardens coop! We will be hosting this year and have lots of new elements in our yard to explore. Hugelculture beds, bike wheel arbors, a kiwi arbor, mushroom beds, a newly installed cistern, and a laundry greywater system, not to mention all of our wonderfully edible native plants! Purchase your tickets today! See you on Saturday, July 11th!  As many of you may know, I teach about mushrooms. Foraging them, how to find them, growing them, and eating them. Recently, I've done a couple of classes on mushrooms, and have had a great response from clients who would like mushroom patches of their own. Often times in landscaping, there is that awkward space under the stairs, or a completely shady corner where nothing grows. Well, today is the day, folks. Stone Soup Gardens has been doing mushroom patches galore the last month or so, and we are thrilled to see such an abundance of soon-to-be-shrooms! One project that I'm proud to share is in the Columbia City neighborhood, not far from my own awesome patch. These clients are near and dear to me because of their deep love of all things permaculture. Our fabulous designer, Jacqueline Kramer of Design Collaborators, created an amazing space full of northwest edibles. We built them a lovely hugelcultur bed, an herb spiral, and a lovely backyard patio with steps down to a gravel gathering space. We also inoculated an area under the stairs with turkey tail mushrooms, put birch bolete spores under the birch tree in the front yard, and added a sawdust patch for our clients to do their own experiments in mushroom cultivation. In addition to all that wonderfulness, we were able to use all the materials we pulled out of the yard, to build the yard back up! This includes logs, branches, and sod for soil building for the hugelcultur bed. The best kind of recycling! The clients also had a mushroom class in their own yard so that they would know how to tend their new mushroom patches, what to look for when harvesting, how to harvest, and how to prepare the beds for winter. Are you interested in growing mushrooms? Do you want to learn more about hugelcultur beds and soil building? Contact Stone Soup Gardens today. We would love to show you all the wonderful joys of our northwest climate! Stone work is something we find ourselves doing more and more often here at Stone Soup Gardens. From retaining walls, to rockeries, to patios, we do our best to fit our client's needs with something beautiful, long lasting, and creative. One such project is in the Mt. Baker neighborhood. Our client was in the process of putting on a new deck, and wanted to create a more useable space in their backyard. While the yard is fairly small and rectangular, it had a good deal of space for a couple of raised beds, a nice area for a hummingbird habitat, and the perfect spot under the stairs for a mushroom patch. We installed two beautiful raised beds with extended planks for outdoor seating. Once those were completed we started on the patio. Since the backyard is generally in shade, the client's wanted something permeable but walkable during our long wet winters. The client had a decent pile of used bricks from a previous project, so we rounded up a selection of used brick from our local salvage store to complement the design. The client also asked that we make room for a lovely Buddha statue and fountain, which we also installed, to create a quiet meditative place that will flower and bloom during the year. We are still putting the finishing touches on the place now, but I think it will be a wonderful garden retreat for our clients in the years to come! Our class this weekend was a great success. We had mushroom lovers spread out all over the living room. Each had a unique reason for coming, and all of them left a bit more confident in farming and finding edible mushrooms. Some of our attendees are having mushroom patches installed into their own yards, and attended the class to find out more about what they will be growing, how to get started, what to expect, and how to harvest. Each got to take a tour of the wine cap patch we have at Stone Soup, as well as see what a shiitake looks like growing on a log. Others were more interested in getting a leg up in mushroom identification for foraging in the wild. We talked about a few varieties that I find particularly delicious, and discussed best practices for identifying them, how to harvest, and what conditions they grow best in. I had also foraged several different types myself the weekend before, and had those on hand for a bit of show and tell. There were lots of great questions and comments, and I look forward to hosting the class again in the future. If you are interested in hosting a mushroom class, or would like more information on how to grow mushrooms at your home, contact Stone Soup Gardens. We love to talk mushrooms. Happy growing and happy hunting! |
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