Pepper Garden Harvest

I installed a pepper garden at the New Orleans Botanical Garden in April of 2013 with 14 cultivars of different peppers. Each pepper cultivar was unique in the level of heat, shape and size. Peppers have been harvested 4 times and total counts have been obtained and shown below. The heat is on!!! Peppers are a great planting option for any New Orleans vegetable garden. Minimal maintenance and minimal pest damage!

Fairy Rings

When the days get increasingly warmer and wetter, a surprise explosion of mushrooms begin to appear in our lawns and along road sides. Typically, these mushrooms grow in a ring that we call a “fairy ring”. There are many fairy ring stories in European folklore. Most center on the belief that the rings were places where elves or fairies would dance. The legends warn against humans disrupting or joining the dance, lest they be punished. In France, they believed that giant bug-eyed toads would guard the mushrooms and humans who disrespected the ring would be cursed. Since, these tales have been disproven and we know now that the rings of mushrooms are the sexual stage of the fungus that spends most of its life underground, we can disregard getting cursed and can easily remove the unsightly mushrooms before they open up into a parasol. The mushrooms produces spores in gills after the cap has fully expanded. These spores are deposited and theoretically can produce more fairy rings in the future given the right environmental conditions. The rings will increasingly get larger as years progress, and growth and mushroom production is dependent on optimum moisture and temperature, which are the two major factors that induce fructification. .

IA State, Chlorophyllum molybdites showing green spores, annulus on
stem and mature and immature stages of mushrooms.

Mushrooms that produce fairy rings are “true mushrooms”, meaning they have gills underneath the cap, and include at least 50 poisonous, edible and questionable fungi. One of the more common species popping up in the New Orleans City Park area in the past couple of weeks is Chlorophyllum molybdites. Chlorophyllum molybdites has a ring, or annulus, on the stem, the cap may have warty spots, and if the cap is cut off of the mushroom and put on a piece of white paper it will drop green spores and you will have successfully created your first spore print! This mushroom is poisonous and should not be consumed. Mushrooms should not be consumed from the wild unless you are an expert; there are many mushrooms that have poisonous look alikes and the risk of eating these mushrooms should not be taken.