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Jeny Smith 1/31/2019 The Garden’s Legacy We grew up in the garden, in the backyard, in the fields, in amongst the vegetable beds. My first and fondest memories of organic edible gardening are of a summertime lightning storm in southern Colorado where my father’s parents lived. They had a “Victory Garden” behind the huge 4 car garage equipped with a 2 bedroom “carriage house” upstairs. Off one end of the gated vegetable delight was a shack about 6’x10’ where Leland, my dad’s stepfather, kept his barbed wire, bear traps, and other sharp accouterments from his days working with the front range forest service. A padlock kept us out, most of the time. I remember gathering large dark green zucchini with Grandma Ana for her famous chocolate zucchini bread and picking pole beans hardly letting them get to the kitchen before being consumed. In that land so close to the New Mexico border I felt like”Little House on the Prairie” was coming true for me, only in a much more developed yet tiny rural town. Population 3000. In the years to come Trinidad would become famous not for it’s hearty soil but for a doctor who performed many changes of gender for people trapped in the mistaken birth body. No, my grandparents weren’t part of these transformations, although every time I mentioned the town to someone this is what I would be asked. But I digress… 1 In their Willow Street garden I never noticed any mushrooms. I suppose it was due to the harsher winters than we have here in Northern California or perhaps it was because they laid down thick wood chips and gravel between the veggie beds. Nonetheless when I began my own large organic edible garden adventure in September of 2016 I had no idea how many different types of fungi would come to grow on my little piece of Palo Alto land. We live on the corner of Redwood Circle and Carlson in the Fairmeadow neighborhood. The soil here is like adobe brick when it dries and is black strong mud when stuck to the soles of our gardening boots. We’ve done many procedures to attempt to soften and condition this clay-like substance; gypsum, epsom salts, coffee grounds, Alfalfa pellets, cocoa bark, raking, digging, churning, turning, mulching, mulching, mulching, and more mulching… Our first big task at our new home was to remove all of the beaten and trodden down sod and crabgrass. It looked pretty ragged. We also removed two dying trees, a Mimosa or silk tree (Albizia ​ julibrissin) and a wild plum ​ (Prunus americana). The ​ ​ shrubs that came to just under the windows had to go too. Their name eludes me. 2 We learned a hard lesson about mimosa trees...you MUST dig up ALL of the roots or they will sprout forth everywhere they can garner a drop or two of water. They are beautiful green and frothy frondy but are a real pain to remove. We made sure that the old PVC irrigation sprinkler pipes had been removed (mostly) but the Mimosa had gone further underground and the demo crew was not as thorough as they needed to be. My husband has hit the water line twice now in an attempt to dig up the roots! In the backyard we removed 4 large Glossy Privet trees (Ligustrum lucida) that while ​ ​ beautiful in their stature (30 feet tall each!) added too much shade and were horribly messy dropping seeds everywhere. It was a game changer when those beasts left the garden and we are so happy to not be contributing to the continuation of an invasive species. These trees naturalize easily and will sprout up everywhere as the seeds are dropped by birds in locations far and wide. We constantly are digging out their little privet sprouts and have to keep a watchful eye lest they start to grow too deep. Like many homes around here we have some Lily of the Nile (Agapanthus), Fortnight ​ ​ Lily (Dietes), Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia), Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), Acanthus, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ and a beautiful and tall Chinese pistache street tree (Pistacia chinenesis). The city of ​ ​ Palo Alto added a Lindentree (Tilia ​ americana) where the mimosa once stood ​ plus 3 yellow Gingkos (Gingko biloba) along ​ ​ 3 our side yard, we were quite pleased with the new additions and highly recommend the city’s street tree program. We also added Happy (named by our daughter), a lovely Japanese coral bark maple (Acer palmatum ‘Sango-kaku’) tree which has been VERY ​ ​ Happy and thriving on the side of our driveway with just enough shade from the towering and enveloping ancient looking Juniper (Juniperus communis) behind it. We ​ ​ were told by an arborist that the Juniper tree may not live too much longer and oh how that would severely change the amount of sun on this little front area...amazing how many microclimates there are on a corner lot parcel of 5000 square feet of land. 4 Speaking of microcosms and mini-worlds...MUSHROOMS. Why is it that they love the front area of our house where I planted a tester round of the silvery green carpet plant Dymondia (Dymondia margaretae)? To date we have counted at a least 4 different ​ ​ types of fungi. Even just writing about them I get a little queasy. The majority of them are not harmful and can even have a very symbiotic nutritive aspect to the garden but most are poisonous to humans and animals thus I really don’t want them in my garden. The most heartbreaking lesson we learned was in the redwood veggie beds we had constructed in the backyard. The planter beds were lovely but the soil or the mulch we were given was full of spores and also flea beetles. For awhile we had a lot of healthy abundant veggies like eggplant, zucchini, cilantro, basil, and tomatoes growing strong but little by little we noticed super bright yellow sprouting in the soil. Seeing so many bright almost fluorescent mushrooms 5 popping up was rather distressful with a young child at home, a curious human being who knew it was ok to pick and eat from the sweet dark red cherry tomato vine but had to learn repeatedly to avoid the alluring daffodil-yellow fungi. “They get scared by us humans” we would tell her and an adult was always present to make sure she didn’t investigate taste or texture on her own. The official name of this mushroom is Leucocoprinus Birnbaumii. Often these mushrooms will appear in houseplants and ​ greenhouses. They are sometimes referred to as flowerpot parasol or plantpot dapperling. They are quite dapper and really do resemble a gilled little fairy parasol! Unfortunately they are toxic and can cause stomach issues if ingested. We tried to dig them out as they sprung up but they were voracious and created a network of webbing throughout the entire box 6 stifling the tomato plant roots and completely overtaking the marjoram. It was devastating to see our beautiful crops being eaten alive by this parasite. In a final effort to eradicate the plague, we decided to take all the dirt out and put it in the front yard on top of a bunch of branches (hugelkultur) which created a nice little mound perfect for growing volunteer tomatoes and sweet peas! We scrubbed the planter boxes with soapy water and a little ammonia after removing all the weed guard fabric. This type of mushroom thrived in the beds because of the incorrect amount of irrigation and improper drainage. We also learned that there was too much soil in the beds and likely the fungus came from the mulch that was used. The largest L-shaped bed we have removed and will be repurposing it in the near future. In the front yard we have what I believe to be honey fungus. It grows in and out of the dymondia along what I think are the roots of the Pistache and Mimosa trees. My garden class teacher informed me it won’t hurt the other plants and can be knocked over and removed quite easily. 7 Another type of mushroom we’ve observed and think it must be, Clitocybe Tarda. A brownish pink cap with a smooth surface also easy to tip over and remove. Also found in the garden one day under some storage boxes was slime mold. The grossest of all the things I’ve encountered so far in my garden project. These really aren’t fungi but rather a primitive organism that form a slimy gooey mass called a plasmodium which can resemble vomit. The creepiest part is that it can move across your land usually at night. Time to get the time lapse camera out! We remove this disturbing substance every time by shoveling it up, while wearing gloves of course. ICK! 8 Despite being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of unwanted pests and organisms in the garden I truly agree with this statement: A Garden is a Delight to the Eye and a Solace for the Soul. -Saadi Our land, our gardens, no matter how big or small, are places to nurture and cultivate allowing for our own meditation, relaxation, and joy. They say the first year a garden sleeps, the 3rd it creeps and the 5th it leaps! I’m so excited to be creeping along to a leap year watching my garden grow alongside the growing of our daughter. I’m so happy that my grandparents, and my mother instilled in me this desire to take care of and love the outdoors.

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