You will likely get more response to the details of planting your herbs on a forum dedicated to growing herbs, or maybe it is not a question anyone on a forum can really help you with. Trial and error is still a rite of passage in the internet age! But with respect to the landscape plants that you have in that bed, what you have here is sort of a choice between form and function. Functional beds like vegetables are usually not in really visible spots because their purpose overrides their appearance, and to some extent the same is true of herbs. So if you want to grow herbs in this bed for use, they may or may not enhance the look of the bed. You will have to experiment to see which herbs look good and grow well in this setting. It depends on sun angles and soil, among other things. Landscape plants like the shrubs you have there do outgrow their spaces after a while; that point usually being when you can't keep up with the pruning - their root mass is so big that it puts out an amount of new growth every year that you can't keep within the confines of the space. But one does not lightly remove established greenery because it may take ten years before you have something this substantial again. I do think the hedge is providing a good backbone and I'm not sure I would remove it. At least, not yet. And when you do, you might actually want to just replace it with a new, smaller one. And it might be an easier transition to make once you have your herbs or other plants established. That said, be sure to consider access to those shrubs for pruning when you plant your herbs. Maybe some stepping stones in the bed would be good, and also help you space your herbs nicely (and help the soil retain moisture). KarinL

So they are slimy and rotting? Mushroom compost is expensive and you are getting it for free. :) I love seeing mushrooms; it means my soil is alive. Yes, fungi it a good sign. You will also at various times have critters and other kinds of seemingly odd visitors and residents. Relax and enjoy the show. Takes pictures and document their comings and goings and how your garden does before, during and after they arrive. Unless you can specifically show that something living in your garden is causing appreciable damage (like squash bugs, for example), leave it be. Gardens are spaces which are alive and attracting biodiversity is good. Even something which causes only a little bit of damage should be monitored but ignored, because the predators that will solve the problem for you always show up later and need something to eat. However, it doesn't sound like your garden gets much sun. 5 hours might be okay in OK, but some sun-lovers like tomatoes might under-perform. If so, next year choose a smaller tomato or a grape tomato. They need less sun than their larger-fruiting cousins. You might be okay, though -- 5 hours of direct afternoon sun is marginal but sufficient here.

First of all thanks for sharing the mushrooms with us (at least to taste visually :-) and I hope you had good luck on your spore collection. My question is about spore handling. I watched the link you posted and yes he is creepy sounding. He kept stressing sterilization. Now nature is far from a sterile environment and mushrooms grow just fine in nature. Does anyone know the importance of sterilization when spore collecting / processing ? I wondered if it was the 'type' of mushrooms he was dealing with. I can understabd it for the edible ones. For me I would want to do edible mushrooms and possibly a few non-edible. We have recently learned about using mushrooms to help decompose wood chips which we will have a bunch of soon. What I learned was that if you add mushroom spores to the chips it helps them decompose better. After seeing the cost of mushroom syringes I cringed. I would pay that for edibles but would probably buy a kit instead. I was considering walking around and collecting spores of normal mushrooms via the print method you described and using them on the wood chips or simply taking those shrooms and dropping them down on top and letting nature do the rest. If I need to take prints I really did not want to go through so much trouble for the non-edible ones. Would someone with experience in shrooming touch on my question and ideas or offer better/less expensive ways of getting shrooms to assist the decomposition of the chips ? thanks !

Too wet, yes. Don't worry about the mushrooms. The soil needs to have fungus in it to be healthy. As the bean roots get longer, water more deeply and less frequently.