Totally shady balcony garden? Create an edible fairy haunt with mushrooms

'There is ALWAYS a solution' is a way of thinking that will make your life colorful and different to everyone else's.

Cecilia's Urban Melbourne mushrooms, May 2009

I'm learning I can have easy answers + blame and excuses ("He rejected me", "its too much bother", "the pests got it"), or I can have Amazingness (What was missing? How can I make it worth it? How can I make troubles go elsewhere?)

Something I'm longing to see is somebody making fairyland on a shady balcony, flying over excuses in a single bound. More likely 2 or 3 or more bounds, but its just not impossible, I know.

These days I'm amazing myself with home-grown mushrooms. They are heavy, pink, and unimaginably sweet and delicious. Nobody tells you this. And its so much fun to watch them pop up. Mushrooms are edible pets.

Cecilia's wooden Tokyo mushrooms,
purchased, not grown.

I'm imagining an edible shade balcony forested with rough-barked tree stumps, nicely 'bottomed' (carved) to give a comfortable seat, and a stack of thin cushions nearby. Probably burgandy spotted in cream, for the toadstool effect. They might form a ring around a central wooden 'table' for reading the paper, or studying spells. You could have a fountain and pond setup that catches rainwater, and murmers prettily, neutralizing urban noises, taking you away. A frog refuge? No cats on balconies. Or you might go out there each morning, with fresh water to rinse your alfala sprouts, pouring the nutrient-rich old water on your mushroom patch, and doing a harvest for your lunchtime sandwich. Sprouts grow in the shade, no problems, no pests, nothing to excuses to excuse, Except for "I didn't make a daily rinse routine".

Instructions on Growing your own
1. Buy a mushroom growing kit

2. Take off the lid, spread the extra mulch over the whitish fungi roots.

3. Dampen with water

4. Put somewhere darkish

5. Keep damp, wait a week or two start eating.




Keep your mushrooms company with forest-floor plants that have evolved to get by with very little light. The dapples are just a strategy to save on chlorophyll, but have the added bonus of seeming to 'generate' sunbeams and brightness.

Be the first in the world to create a 'no problem' shade garden, and amaze and inspire us all. Just remember to send me the photo, and make my day.