As a young horticulture student in the forests north of San Francisco where it rarely freezes and redwood trees dominate, I discovered the magic of fungi.  There in the dark damp rotting woods they would appear during the rainy season in all their glory.

This standing dead tree became home for the fungus that has threaded its way through the trunk with a massive mycelium which is a lot like a spider's web.  It gradually consumes the organic matter in the wood, helping it to break down into valuable humus. This mycelium is the fungus itself.

When conditions are right the mycelium does not flower to reproduce. Instead it creates what's known as fruiting bodies.  An ordinary mushroom is a fruiting body.  With this fungi, though, the fruiting body is produced on the side of the tree shaped like tiny shelves, hence the common name, "shelf fungi". The underside of each shelf may bear gills or other spore bearing structures.  From these the spores are released that are so tiny they rise upon the slightest breeze traveling great distances to colonize another suitable chunk of dead wood.

During this season it is so amazing to walk in the wild to find the shelf fungi in their greatest colors and the shelves will be at their largest point.  In the dry summer they will shrink and wither until unnoticeable against the bark. If you own the property or have the owner's permission, bring some of the shelves home and use them as free nature decor in a beautiful bowl on the coffee table.  A real conversation piece to be sure, and now that you know all about them you can share the love of this little known fungus among us.

The home of the great Zulu tribe is Natal, which stretches up the east coast of South Africa along the Indian Ocean.  When visiting this land that so mirrors California, I saw first hand the environment of the Natal Plum, Carissa macrocarpa.  I have long enjoyed these tough yet elegant drought resistant shrubs that take coastal sand and wind and salt air in stride. 

They offer simple white flowers so powerfully scented hey rival that of gardenia for heady fragrance in the dryland garden.

Recently in the dead heat of summer my Natal plum yielded an incredible crop of the fruit for which it is famous.  The Zulu eat it out of hand while colonials found it ideal for jam and jelly.  Due to the sweet milky juice in the fruit which discolors very soon after picking, it has never become a commercial crop.  But for home gardens in hot climates, it's a trouble free fruit producer.

The fruit is the size of an oval golf ball and is ripe when soft.  They are doing quite well here thriving in consistant 110+ degree heat both humid and dry. 

Though the flesh is quite red in color, it takes on a pinkish tone due to the milk.  There is only a small tube of seeds at the top of the fruit that makes it easy to clean and eat or drop into the jam cooker. 

Click here to access the Learn2grow plant databse photos and write up: www.learn2grow.com/plants/carissa-macroc...

My approach to the homestead is more than just a veggie garden and some herbs.  I believe in landscaping where every plant must produce SOMETHING whether edible, or craft or medicine and more.  Living in a hot, frost free climate and looking for new flavors?  Try the Zulu plum and enjoy the flavor of Africa.

In polite company they call it the Mexican truffle, but in the American corn belt it’s nothing but smut.  In fact, the USDA has been trying to eradicate it for a century.   If you have ever seen a smut infested ear of corn, you’d know why this bizarre sooty looking fungus freaks people out.  No doubt backyard gardeners in the Midwest will see it often this flood year because this fungus thrives in warm, wet weather.

Huitlacoche, the Mexican truffle is a delicacy dating back to Aztec cuisine.

But in other cultures the fungus is cherished like a rare and delicious mushroom truffle.  First appreciated by the Aztecs, they incorporated it into many of their ancient dishes where it goes by the name huitlacoche (wee-tlah-KOH-cheh).  Translation from the Nahuatl language means “crow excrement”, describing its unsavory appearance.  Yet this food is still a big part of Mexican cuisine today.  In fact, it is canned and sold in indigenous marketplaces, and is also preserved by freezing.  It’s integrated into tamales and soups.  When fresh, the puffed up kernels are boiled for ten minutes then sautéed until crispy in butter.

The traditional time to harvest Mexican truffles is when the infected kernels are in their early state.  This puts them in the same condition as mushrooms before their gills open.  Some say they should be soft as a freshly ripening pear.  At peak the flavor is described as sweet corn and smoke.  Waiting too long results in a truly smutty flavor because the inside turns from delicious flesh to a mass of black spores.  When the kernel splits open the spores are released, traveling on the wind to land in soil where they remain viable for three years.

In the wet central highlands of Mexico and Guatemala, small farmers search their crops during the rainy season for signs of the developing fungus.  These infected ears are relished in home cooking and adds to their sparse early season diet.  This probably protects their crops from larger smut infestations as well.   They sell the excess huitlacoche ears at fifty times what a standard ear of corn costs.  In the markets of Mexico City over 100 tons of Mexican truffle are sold each season.

In a market in Coyoacan, once the home of Frida Kahlo, exotic mushrooms join traditional huitlacoche in a gourmet vendor's stall.

            Interest in pre-Hispanic ingredients has risen among the organic gourmet world.  One famous dinner held in 1989 by the James Beard Foundation featured huitlacoche in many dishes in an effort to bring this new yet old food to light.  As a result, the USDA began allowing selected farms to intentionally infect corn with huitlacoche fungus.  The irony here is that scientists at the USDA working to eradicate smut in the past discovered effective ways to infect corn with the fungus in order to test their various cures.  The Aztecs simply scraped the plants on the ground or with dried fungus to infect the kernels.

In America, those most interested in cultivation are mushroom farmers who understand the life cycle of fungi.  But this is a unique form that lives on the corn plant, so it really falls into the purview of market gardeners. 

Despite the fact that it’s a delicacy in Mexico, this black fungus has a hard time catching on in the U.S. and Europe.  Perhaps it’s the black juice exuded from the kernels as they are cooked, or maybe it’s just the idea of eating diseased corn that’s the turn off.  The consensus is that canned huitlacoche is not nearly as good as the fresh stuff, and it must be imported from Latin America.

In these years of upheaval and instability, it’s always a comfort to discover nutritious food in the wake of weather disaster.  And for home gardeners with the spirit of adventure, corn turned mushroom, will bring a strange but savory taste to late summer fare.  

On the first very warm day of spring they emerge, these tiny nymphs identical to their full grown parents.  They are baby mantids that have over wintered in odd hard shell cases stuck fast to branches and walls and fences.  In our spring mania to drive away the die back of winter, do not be too hasty when discarding your prunings and trash.  Inspect for these cases, and if they are found on a pruned away twig or branch, sever that section and place it in a protected location within a shrub or tree canopy until the nymphs hatch.

Thanks to digital cameras we can now see these nearly microscopic nymphs as they are born into a warm spring day.

We are great fans of mantids, because they are the the greatest beneficial insect in the garden.  Their large size and uncanny expressions make them comical as they crawl through the trees and shrubs gobbling up aphids and many other plant damaging insects.  Though terrible to some, they are Nature's most wonderful creatures.

For each adult we rescue from an untimely death will come a new population next year, every one perfectly adapted to strike a balance between predator and prey in the garden.

Before you start ripping all the lush green weeds out of your beds and borders to create the spring garden, take a close look at what's growing there.  It's an old time custom to use spring weeds to create a tonic that was consumed after a long winter of preserved foods.  Before refrigeration, most folks had a deficit of Vitamin C and needed to fortify themselves as quickly as possible to avoid the early signs of scurvy.

This is the root of the spring tonic and the ritual of weed eating as soon as treen touches the countryside.  These would have been the first green things for many months and people were always clamoring for them. Those growing in your backyard are just as nutritious and delicious.

Dandelions are easy to identify by their shape, long notched leaves and bright yellow flowers. 

The urban homestead isn't always barren at winter's end and many common weeds are edible and chock full of vitamins and nutrition.  Dandelion greens are easy to identify and famous for salads.  Milkweed, watercress, wood sorrel and violet leaves are other traditional candidates for fresh or stewed "pot" greens.

The succulent weed purslane was Thoreau's favorite at Walden Pond:

"I have made a satisfactory dinner off a dish of purslane which I gathered and boiled. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not from want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries."

Many gardeners wonder why we need to learn about our weeds.  Come early spring and you're yearning for fresh picked greens, knowing the edible ones can extend your harvest many weeks before planting time.