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Hello plant friends! I have a salvia plant that a member was kind enough to gift me a few years back. I have been meaning to take cuttings for some time now, as the plant appeared to not be doing as good as it could, and I don't want to miss my chance to propagate this relatively difficult to come by plant. So now in spring with a bit of humidity and cloud cover seems like a reasonable time (correct me if wrong please!). Here is the plant with some labels: And a photo taken at ~ point 1 looking back towards the pot: There is a coleus growing next to it so I labelled its branch to avoid confusion. Over the past few summers the salvia has grown one big branch that can be seen growing outwards to left of the pot in the photo. This branch is a bit woody now, so not really ideal for cuttings I guess? I have put numbered lines where I was thinking I could take cuttings on this main branch. My goal is take make the cuttings a few inches long and cut just below a node. Is this a good idea to try and make cuttings from an older branch? Or should I wait until some fresh growth comes out a few inches and use that for cuttings? I feel this plant would do better if I cut off that big branch so it could focus its energy on new grown down near the base, but it would be good to use this cut branch for propagation too. All comments, help and ridicule welcome! Cheers, Dan

Cool blog! The animal rescues were my favourite part.

Anyone attending the Regrowth festival? 20-23 January 2017, near Muswellbrook http://www.re-gen.org.au

great photos!

A lone p. cubensis and some red stemmed pans, my first dung dwellers of the season.

one week later, cap has fully opened and is beginning to dry out. I really love seeing this mushroom every morning, whatever it is!

Any ideas on the ID for this impressive specimen? Could it be in the gymnopilus genus? This is the second flush that have come from this spot in the past month. As can seen in the photo, it is growing from the base of a gum tree. Location is Hunter Valley NSW. Cheers! edit: it has gills of a yellow colour similar to the flesh.

https://soundcloud.com/hwitebear/3-whitebear-the-beast-within

I'm about to plant some garlic, big fat Russian purple ones, maybe the leafy green parts of the plant can be used in salad to get some health benefits?

I lived in Germany for a few years, it got down to -20c in winter and rained every second day, on average. However in summer all that water and with luck some sunshine creates a very fertile environment for growing temperate region annuals. A Good green house sharing some warmth from the house allows for growing sub zero intolerant plants and cacti through the winter. Maybe Scotland is different, but in continental europe many interesting temperate region plants of medicinal interest grow. The local botanic garden where i lived had many solanace plants such as tobacco, brugmansia, henbane and datura, and others such as hemp plants, ephedra, poppies and trichocerus cacti, to name the obvious ones. There are also many edible plants and fungi growing 'wild', such as Burdock, sorrel, wild garlics, boletus edulis, not to mention game animals such as rabbit and deer. Just watch be aware of Echinococcus multilocularis when foraging for wild berries etc, I didn't find out about this fox transmitted parasite until I had been there for a year... Yes the winter is grey, cold and wet, but there is something beautifully melancholic about the snow and deciduous forests. If I was to live in the uk, Scotland would be the place to be I reckon as it still has remote areas that can be considered wilderness.

Nice pimento... I see subs, gyms and Amanitas, amongst many other interesting fungi. I'm a little bit envious! Yeah that cluster of young purple mushrooms really stood out from the drab green and brown of the forest. Went back to have a look at them on the weekend. They become a more pale purple with age, and have a layer of slime on the cap. Lots of them in one spot at the peak of the 200m high hill.

Yeah I think some extra amalyze may be required. So I could cook up some sweet potato and add some of the water to the mash? Saliva contains amalyze as well, hence the tradition of chewing and spitting out the corn I guess. Might do a bit of both. Yeast is the other thing I need to think about - a regular ale yeast might not work so well with corn, or at least won't make a very authentic chicha. I'll chase up some koji or similar - helping convert starch to sugar is probably what the South American wild yeasts did.

This summer past, I grew a crop of purple maize from a dried cob an argentinian friend gave me. This type of corn is not sweet at all and very hard, so cannot be readily prepared for eating through steaming or even boiling. Reading up on the traditional use of purple maize, it seems in peru at least it was mainly used to make a type of unfermented chicha that was sweetened with pineapple. This seems nice, but I would like to try and make a fermented corn beer similar to chicha de jora, that would normally use yellow or white corn. Does anyone know if the starch in purple corn can be converted to sugars using either the traditional (chewing in the mouth) or modern (mashing) techniques? I have soaked, sprouted and dried about 2kg of the kernels. I also have some malted barley and ale yeast, and was thinking about combing the corn and barley malt in a 1:1 ratio, and fermenting using a standard all grain procedure. Alternatively I could chew the 2kg of kernels (sounds like fun for a lazy sunday) and use something like sauerkraut juice for yeast, to make a more authentic chicha. Any ideas or tips? cheers!

Foraging finds from last week, dry sclerophyll forest on the slopes of a small 'mountain' rising 200m, 30km from coast. Mushrooms everywhere after all the rain we have had. Not sure of the species or even genus for most of them, so they are posted here without ID, to appreciate their beauty. Enjoy!

Given we are going into winter, this pseudo pagan ritual doesn't work so well for us

SEASONAL INTERCHANGE by Michael Aitken In Winter, when the trees are bare, We mortals don our winter wear. In Spring, when trees begin to dress, We mortals then start wearing less, Until, for some, with Summer's heat The role reversal is complete.

Freshly dried, I found the taste of the caps tolerable when powdered and downed quickly, but when stored for some time the already intense taste became too much for me. Makes cactus and vine teas seem quite tasty IMO

The first two could be austroboletus species, I've found similar ones in eucalypt forests recently in nsw. Edit: actually after looking at these pics of different boletes found in near by qld, it's definitely not austroboletus... http://qldfungi.org.au/resources-2/foq-main-page/foq-species-list/boletes

^^ thanks zed, yeah that one didn't jump out as edible, whereas these ones kinda did. this looks like a similar but different species due to the lighter coloured sponge, slightly different colouration on the cap, and smaller stature:

Any ideas as to what mushroom this is? Found at the fringe of a eucalyptus forest.

Yeah zed now I see your photos, they could be slippery jacks. Will try and get some pics today.

Hey zed, yeah they looked and tasted a lot like the boletus edulis I've seen in Europe. There was one patch of about 20, and also another patch of a blue staining bolete with yellow stem and red cap. Unfortunately the universe conspired to prevent photos - I picked them in a torrential rain storm, and then straight into the dehydrator at home. Went for a walk through the forest again today but didn't find any more.

Have been for three hunts since the floods hit last week. Lots of fungi action here in the hunter, including some absolutely massive boletus mushrooms that were unfortunately past their picking date. Have a good haul of porcini in the dehydrator. Found these today, they look like fly Agaric but are much smaller than what I have seen in pine forests. These wre growing under eucalypt trees. They have the egg shaped volva, veil remnants on the red cap and white stem. Only thing is they are 20 - 30 mm tall. Any ideas? Edit: actually some stems were off white to yellowish white.

Wow she is huge! Ummm I mean beautiful.... Does she live at your place?! Not sure if I could sleep at night with that man eater about give my guy a few years to beef up, then we can talk No sign of the frog this morning in the tank, maybe it really was stuck? I'll make the tank more frog friendly anyway, with PVC access - in dry times it is probably a good water source for them.

Rescue complete As soon as the sun set, he (or she?) hopped over the yucca, up the plank and onto the lip of the tank! It is such impressive creatures, oozing reptilian zen through huge black eyes. Yeah eventually I will put some big rocks and plants in there, but the wall is my height so not an easy task. There is a lot of flood water around, but this guy has been hanging around the house for a few months now. I have a bunch of succulents and herbs nearby that attracts insects, so prob not a bad spot to be a frog