- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher!

This week on Central Texas Gardener, Lenny West is only 22, but already he's found his passionate mission in growing fresh vegetables to food desert neighbors in the Killeen/Temple area.

Grow your own mushrooms and learn how they improve your soil with Angel Schatz from the Central Texas Mycological Society.

Daphne Richards answers your questions and Carder Nastri shows how to protect succulent plants in winter.

So, let's get growing, right here, right now!

Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) Lenny West is only 22, but he's already found his anchor in plants and his passionate mission in providing fresh vegetables to food desert neighbors in the Killeen/Temple area.

To build his vision, he and Deonta Davis are transforming a vacant lot into a wellness harbor.

- So here I have mung bean microgreens.

The reason I grow these is because microgreens are packed with a lot of nutrition, and they also grow very fast.

So if you're in a rush or you just need a quick boost or a quick boost in flavor, you can use microgreens.

- Over a year ago now we started out as a farmers' market to where our object and goal was to bring fresh produce to north Killeen to address a food desert that they experienced in that area.

We wanted also to be able to have our own produce at the market.

Lenny West, actually, you know, he coined the idea.

He was like, "Hey, we could grow microgreens."

And so we started out with microgreens, and then it kind of built from there.

- Hey, I'm Lenny West.

We're currently at Make a Way Wellness in the City Farm and Gardens.

The vision for this property is to mostly have Texas natives, as well as a lot of fruit trees and berry bushes.

The reason that we want to do this is because we want to encompass a inviting place, so that eventually we want to have a farm to table experience so that people are able to come and potentially pick berries or pick peaches, and then we're able to make maybe a peach cobbler out here just so we're able to show that is possible, that you don't necessarily have to go to a big box store to enjoy the freshness of a delicious food.

- My name is Deonte Davis.

I am the founder and executive director of Make A Way Wellness.

And our mission at Make a Way Wellness is to aid in community development through efforts in neighborhood stabilization, community reinvestment, and programs and initiatives for the benefit of low income and socially disadvantaged populations.

- The way that I connected with Deonte was at a suicide prevention event.

I was coming because another friend of mine that I had met through gardening, and through that, he told me that he had his own nonprofit going on, and we just connected because I wanted to start growing microgreens.

He wanted to start a farmers market, and from there, my gardening knowledge and his business knowledge, we were able to combine and make something great out of it.

- Our family owns this land right here behind me, as you can see and it was just basically a vacant lot.

When we first came out here, we actually had a big homeless camp right there in the middle.

You know, they had their tents and overhanging and, you know, we were just like, well, we can use this land, repurpose it, and actually give it a really good cause for our communities.

Me and my wife are actually getting that nursery going at home because we currently don't have like a water line.

We found out that the city water line that existed only is for those properties back there that have homes.

So we will have to get another pipeline in here, and then we'd have access to fresh water.

- So when I was younger, I had certain issues, whenever it came to school or my mental health or just certain areas that I wasn't able to express myself in.

All I had was basketball.

But you can't necessarily wake up at 12:00 at night and play basketball, but you can wake up at 12:00 at night and plant a seed.

So from there, I was just able to see myself doing this for the rest of my life.

So I started volunteering at Well Community Garden and then another community garden, and then another community garden.

My at home gardening experience started at an apartment.

A lot of people say you can't garden at home if you're in an apartment.

But I was able to start with containers.

And from there I grew and I grew and I grew to the point where I had so many containers, the apartment was like, "Hey, you're growing too much."

So from there, I moved to where I'm living now, and I still container garden because is is cost efficient.

Anybody can do it.

You don't have to have a ton of money, and you don't have to have a ton of space.

A lot of the containers that I got, I got donated from a nursery.

And also if the weather gets bad, you can move it into the shade, you can move it inside or outside, and you're able to make your own mix the way that you want to make it.

- Actually the inspiration and motivation to start this was I really wanted to get involved in the community.

I wanted to help those who had experienced incarceration and coming back out into community, having somewhere to go, somewhere to be and somewhere to belong.

And so I was like, well, you know, I don't want to just give a hand out, but I want to give a hand up.

And I was like, but I don't want individuals to feel like they're not empowered in the process.

So I was like, well, it's going to be on you to make the change.

It's going to be on you to make a way for yourself, to succeed, to grow, to be better.

And so that's kind of like where that name actually came from.

I was just like, we want to be a champion of others finding their purpose.

So that's how we got Make a Way Wellness.

- When I turned to gardening, my mental issues improved and through that I was like, hey, if you can do it for me, maybe it can do it for someone else.

So me, I'm the type of person that if I feel happiness or I see something that can bring me happiness, I want to share it with other people.

So I just felt like being involved in the community, trying to teach kids, trying to teach older people, trying to teach all ages, trying to also enrich my knowledge.

- We want to grow produce and want to make sure that we can provide food and fresh vegetables to our communities in need.

You can get involved by reaching out to us through our website, makeawaywellness.org.

- My goal mostly is to be able to bring it to the youth, because if you're able to start young and have good coping skills, you're able to connect, like I said, the mind, the body, and the soul at a young age, then you are able to equip yourself to live a good, healthy life.

There's a quote that I seen it said that you being a gardener is planting a tree and knowing that you'll never see it reach its full potential.

So that's just how I see kids, like you just plant that seed in them and hope they water it and just know that you were there to be a part of that, be a part of that ride.

- It's really a kick to grow our own edible mushrooms, but it's even better knowing how these fungi improve the soil and life beneath our soil.

Today, Angel Schatz from the central Texas Mycological Society explains how.

How are you doing today?

- I'm doing great.

- I know that I love eating mushrooms.

I really lucked out 'cause my wife doesn't, so I get to have all of them.

So let's talk about mushrooms, and first though, what is the Texas Mycological Society?

- Yeah, so we are a member-supported volunteer-run nonprofit that works to teach the community about fungi.

And a lot of people have heard about us through our popular Mushroom Block Giveaway, which is a really great program that teaches people how to divert mushroom waste, which is mushroom grow blocks.

And we teach people how to use those to grow more mushrooms and also build fungal rich soil teaming with microbes and fungi.

- You're saying mushroom block, what in the world is that?

- It's basically like a sterilized bag of grains, sawdust, and nutrients.

And this is what commercial mushroom farmers use to grow the gourmet culinary mushrooms, oysters, lion's mane.

- And so the manufacturers use those and then they discard them.

Is that correct?

- Yes, that's correct.

Yeah, they usually go in the dumpster.

But one of the things that's traditional in our organization, and we've been doing this going back before the Mycological Society even formed, since about 2015.

So we started working with mushroom farms back then to divert these and keep them out of the trash, because as we know organic matter and the waste can create methane and cause a lot of environmental problems.

- [John] And so also, I mean, sort of the sweet thing is that you get a good waste byproduct that tastes delicious.

- Tastes delicious, and it's so great for building soil.

There's so many ways to use them.

And that's one of the big things that we do is we do these workshops and events to teach people how to use these blocks.

- Okay.

And so you mentioned that they're good for the soil.

So how, let's walk into a scenario that y'all have gone and obtained a number of these.

Like why are they beneficial and how do y'all utilize this to improve soil health?

- Yeah, so there's starting to be more and more studies on how these blocks are beneficial to the soil, so they can be used as a fertilizer.

So there's still, you know, nitrogen and phosphate and all the things that our plants love that continue to break down and feed the sort of soil food web.

So all of our shredders, the earthworms love to decompose the mycelium, which is that white stuff that we see underground.

They love to break that stuff up and that becomes bioavailable to our plants.

It helps save water.

So adding organic matter just in general through compost will help with water absorption rates, helps with porosity, it improves just the general soil quality that in itself like reduces the need for things like pesticides and herbicides, 'cause we know when we have really good soil, we also have really healthy plants.

These mushrooms we work with, they're wood-loving mushrooms.

So there's sawdust, grains like millet and a nutrients.

There's usually like a nutrient bath that's added to the water in the mushroom blocks.

And so we work with wood-loving decomposers and some people might be familiar with mushroom compost.

There's a lot of information online about how like some mushroom compost contain soluble salts, which can be really bad for growing especially young plants.

And those soluble salts, we don't want those in our gardens.

And those come from what are called dung loving.

And so we all know some dung loving mushrooms.

So the the things you see at like HGB, at grocery stores, the portobellos, the white button mushrooms, creminis, those type of mushrooms are dung-loving mushrooms and we don't do anything with those, but people can buy that type of compost, but it's important to kind of like try to wash those salts out.

So these are wood-loving decomposers.

So you can even use the blocks as kind of like a inoculum to wood chips.

Every season, I'll cut down all my woody matter, all the plant material, plant biomass, and do what's called trench composting.

And it's a way to, it's kind of called, I think it's also called like lazy man compost, and like I'm lazy.

- We'll stick with the trench.

- The trench.

So you can take like garden scraps and even like citrus.

So the mycelium will even eat through citrus, which is some composting, you know, that doesn't have enough decomposer fungi like citrus just kind of sits there, it's not good.

- Even in vermaculture, I know it's not great to incorporate a lot.

- Yeah.

So you can bury all of that and it's very magical.

Like once you bury it, cover it with wood chips and cardboard and your footpaths, you can sometimes have, when it rains, you'll get mushrooms kind of popping up in your footpaths, which is really magical in the garden.

- Yeah, I know we've had a lot of viewers ask like, why do we see a lot of mushrooms popping up after a rain?

- Yeah, so mushrooms, they're genetically are really closely related to us, like they're also 70% water.

So they need that rain to help generate enough energy to create the mushroom, which is the fruit body, the reproductive organs.

So they wanna continue to spread their spores and keep decomposing and cycling nutrients and making them available for all the plant life on our planet.

- I know probably the next big question that everybody's gonna know is where in the heck can we get some of these?

- Yeah, so we have about 30 neighborhood pickup spots and even in places, like the Natural Gardener.

So plant stands, community gardens, churches, some residences- - [John] Baseball fields.

- Baseball fields.

A lot of people end up just growing mushrooms by accident.

They'll pick up a bag, just leave it in its existing bag and treat it sort of like a chia pet.

You know, put it in a shady spot, you know, think about how the mushrooms might like the environment in the wild, find a nice shady spot, spritz it once the mushrooms start to pin- - [John] What is that?

- So pins, they look a little bit like bowling pins, they're like baby mushrooms, and at that point you really wanna feed it a lot of water because, again, the mushroom has a lot of water in it and so that'll help it grow faster.

And then once you get done fruiting the mushroom, and this will happen over a course of just like a few days, it's really magical how fast mushrooms grow, you can harvest or you can compost your mushroom block to continue to add that soil organic matter that we know our soils lack.

You can use that to mulch around your perennials, your vegetables.

- There's a distinction though, wild mushrooms, you probably shouldn't go out harvesting, unless you really know what you're looking at.

- Yes.

Yeah.

And there's a lot of apps these days that do like pattern recognition, like iNaturalist, Picture This, there's even AI created foraging books and we tell people always confirm with an expert.

We have a great Facebook group.

There's another one called Texas Mushroom ID that's on Facebook that's really great, and you always wanna confirm with a human on your ID, and we have a great foraging class if you wanna get into wild mushrooms.

So people can take that online.

I made a like a Gantt, like a seasonal calendar that comes with a download.

It's very similar to like a vegetable planting guide.

So you know like what mushrooms can I grow what time of year?

And additionally it tells you which ones have toxic lookalikes that you should also get to know, so you don't pick the wrong ones.

So there's like beginner mushrooms and then ones that are more advanced, where you wanna be a little more careful.

But again, always confirm a wild mushroom with an expert.

And that's why we're here.

- One quick question, real quick.

What's the Texas state mushroom?

- So the Texas state mushroom is called the Texas Star.

And we definitely wanna look for that one.

- Well, Angel, thank you so much for coming by and sharing your breadth of knowledge with us about fungi, a very tasty and helpful resource.

Next, let's check in with Daphne Richards.

(bright music) - If you're anything like me, you're always looking for ways to address challenges in your garden.

From drainage issues to managing steep slopes to blocking out the blasting rays of the summer sun, I'm still trying to get the basic foundation of my landscape settled in and easier to manage.

But one issue I have conquered is screening by using contemporary trellis that I built on a budget.

If you've ever shopped for trellises, you know that they can be quite expensive and that off-the-shelf trellises generally aren't more than about six feet tall.

To screen various places in my backyard I wanted trellises that could potentially run the entire length of my fence line that were also about 10 feet tall.

To accomplish that feat without breaking the bank, I decided to build my own trellises using some very affordable, easy to source materials.

And once I built my first one, so many people asked about it that the last time I installed a new one, I decided to take pictures and document the process and to create a short handout for people to use as a guideline for making these eye-catching garden features in their own yards.

One of the key elements for this project is cattle panel, which I purchased at a local agriculture supply store.

The panels that I use are each 16 feet long and four feet wide.

So I had the guys in the materials yard cut them into two eight-foot pieces before I brought them home.

You'll also need two to three six foot T-posts along with the same number of half-inch wide 10-foot long pieces of electrical conduit.

And you'll need a tool to drive the T-posts and conduit into the ground, such as a heavy duty hammer or a T-post driver, along with some metal wire to attach the post to the panel.

Because they're so easy to use, I chose to grab a bag of the small wire ties that are generally used to attach rebar together, and also purchase the specific tool that makes it easiest to attach these wires as tightly as possible.

Of course, you'll also need simple tools like a measuring tape, a ladder, and a level to get everything all lined up and built straight.

I used my T-post driver to get the post into the ground just past the arrow at the bottom.

Then I lined up my electrical conduit into the groove on one side of the T-post, so that it fit nice and snug, and drove that into the ground about a foot.

Then I lined up the cattle panel, raising it about 18 inches above the ground and started attaching it to the conduit and T-post at each juncture.

I used a total of three T-posts and three pieces of electrical conduit to tie my two pieces of cattle panel together side by side, to make an eight-foot wide 10-foot tall trellis for about 60 bucks total.

You can find my handout on how to build one yourself on the CTG website.

I'm a big fan of industrial contemporary garden features, so I love the way these trellis look in my landscape, but in most areas I don't even see the trellis because for most of the year it's covered by a beautiful vine.

I have these fabulous, easy-to-build trellis in three places in my yard currently, and I have plans to install at least one more this fall.

We'd love to hear from you.

Click on CentralTexasGardener.org to send us your questions, pictures and videos.

- Cold weather's on the way, so let's head over to Carder Nastri for tips on protecting our succulents.

(bright music) - What's up?

I'm Carder from Fireproof Plants and today we are going to be talking about winter care for all of your cacti and succulents.

What is the difference between a cactus and a succulent?

A succulent is just a general term for any plant that is evolved to live in dry or xeric conditions.

And a cactus is a family of succulents.

In order to know how to care for your cacti and succulent, you need to first know is this plant a winter or a summer grower?

And you can tell that by where the plant is from.

Knowing where a plant evolved is a great way to understand how to care for it.

I have two winter growers.

I have this conophytum and this lithops.

These conophytum and lithops come from a winter growing region of South Africa.

This area has a very mild winter temperatures, very rarely get below the low 40s, and the winter is actually the wettest part of the year.

And because of that, these plants do most of their growing in the winter.

Now other plants that live in deserts that have more unforgiving winters do do their growing in the summer, and that is predominantly what we're going to be talking about today is plants that go dormant during the winter.

Dormancy is a period of slowed or stopped growth that almost all plants go through.

It can look like shriveled up drying leaves, like on this cyphostemma.

And now the temperature is dropping, daylight is shortening, and you can see that it's starting to lose some of that succulents in its leaves and it will soon drop those and go completely dormant.

A lot of cacti will shrink down into the substrate to protect themselves from the cold air.

Dormancy is caused by four main things.

It is caused by changes in temperature, it is caused by changes in water availability.

it is caused by changes in photo period, or daylight length, and it is finally also caused by stress or damage that comes from a parasite.

Let's go over some basic care of how to keep these guys safe.

The number one most important thing is watering.

And you want to use about half of the water that you would normally be doing.

This is again, because these plants are not growing very actively during dormancy.

So that water is going to stay in that substrate in the dirt that they're in, and it's going to create a perfect habitat for pathogens and bad bacteria and fungus that we don't want.

The reason that cacti and succulence have so much trouble with cool weather and all that moisture is that being a cactus and a succulent, they store lots of moisture in these caudexes, like this fockea edulis over here.

When that moisture in these caudexes and in their cells freezes, it causes ice crystals to form in the cytoplasm.

The cytoplasm is the liquid matrix that fills their cells.

Some plants like these agaves can come back from their roots, but the top will never come back.

Next, no fertilizers.

Again, like with water, these plants are not really growing, they're not going to be uptaking nutrients.

Another don't do: repotting and propagating.

These plants are already going to be stressed during the winter.

Cutting them up or moving them to a new home is going to cause more stress.

And again, they're not growing so they're not gonna be able to put out new roots.

Plants that are in the ground can survive in USDA zones eight and above.

Trichos are on the edge of being frost hardy here in Texas.

And the weakest part of this cactus is this growing stem right here.

This is the most tender part, and we wanna make sure that is kept safe.

So how do I protect it?

Boom.

Give it a nice little hat.

This styrofoam cup is gonna create a little microclimate of warmth around that growing stem.

And the styrofoam is great because it acts as a really good temperature barrier.

This is frost cloth.

Frost cloth is super lightweight and you can see that it's a little bit opaque, so it still allows light in for the plant to photosynthesize.

However, this is not waterproof.

So I would also suggest a clear tarp.

You can use blankets.

This is just a moving blanket that I had in my garage.

Any blanket or towel will do.

Finally, if you really want to get festive, a fun way to keep your cacti warm is to use Christmas lights.

Make sure you're using incandescent bulbs.

Incandescent bulbs will give off heat, whereas the LED ones really don't give off enough heat, but you can simply wrap them around your cacti and that'll keep 'em warm like that.

What about your poor little potted succulents and cacti?

What do you do with them?

If they're not a frost hearty species, I would suggest bringing them in.

You can put them in a garage, but sometimes garages get down to freezing too.

So it really just depends on your garage and the setup.

If you are going to move these potted plants inside, I would suggest a west or south facing window, so that this plant is getting as much of that solar energy and warmth as it possibly can get.

Another way you can keep these plants safe in their pot is using top dressing.

This layer of rocks on the surface that you add on top of your plants acts as a buffer, a temperature buffer.

In the winter, these little rocks absorb heat all day long and then dissipate it at night.

So it's gonna help keep your roots nice and warm.

From "Backyard Basics," I'm Carder Nastri.

- Want more from Central Texas Gardener?

Well, follow our producer, Linda, on Instagram for behind the scenes content and go to CentralTexasGardner.org to sign up for our weekly newsletter.

As always, adopt the pace of nature.

Her secret is patience.

(bright music) (bright music continues) Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

(light flute music)