Smiling Earth Mushrooms

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Long Branch, NJ
Smiling Earth Mushrooms

We cultivate specialty mushrooms for sale to restaurants and the public. We also create mushroom pro

09/08/2026

Sometimes I see Ground ivy and get excited that my gotu kola is growing in new places! They look a bit alike, but if you look up close, you see Ground ivy is pretty fuzzy where gotu kola is smooth. They both send out runners, but gotu kola has flowers at the ends, Ground ivy just has more leaves. Both send out roots from runners. You can eat both. I tried making a pesto with Ground ivy and some other wild greens. I didn't love it. I'm not sure I'd love a gotu kola pesto either. I'll stick with basil, thank you.

09/01/2026

I took a close up look at the tiny flowers of gotu kola yesterday. This wasn't easy to do while mosquitoes buzzed in my ear and bit my arms and feet. It's kinda cool how you can see the tiny anthers and stamens. Gotu kola is in the carrot family, Apiaceae. But it's kinda the black sheep of the family. Most of the other members like dill, carrot, fennel, parsley, carrot and angelica have white umbelliferous flowers. The family used to be Umbelliferae. Umbrella-like. Gotu kola decided to have pink florets, and less of them. But it still produces seeds fused in pairs like the rest of the family.

08/31/2026

My gotu kola tincture. This is an herb that's nice to use fresh in a salad or juice and it's best taken daily. This is hard to do if you don't have an abundance of the plant. So I stretch it and other plants with methods like tincturing or oil infusions. These methods also are great for preserving and extending shelf life. Every method has its ups and downs. Tinctures make it easy to take an herb daily without a lot of prep work every day. Since gotu kola can help with mental clarity and longevity, you kinda want to take it for the long run! I take it every morning in our Brainy Bitters elixir.

08/24/2026

We went to Costa Rica two and a half years ago. Gotu kola was everywhere. It loves the shady understory and humidity while not having wet feet. It's not native to the Americas, but it does very well down there. I can't believe I didn't get more pictures! I zoomed in to give a closer look. The last picture is ours in the garden. It's only hardy to zone 8 so we keep it in pots to bring inside for the winter. I tried it in the ground, but it didn't do any more than it would have in a pot, so now I save myself the trouble! It gets very cranky by March (me too) and dies back completely no matter how hard I try. The air is just too dry. But every May it starts to come back, maybe from the roots or from seeds it dropped. I'm just excited every time!

08/23/2026

I divided gotu kola plants yesterday, acting as a mosquito buffet while I squatted in one place for too long. My potting table has been re-purposed as a temporary deer obstacle 🙄. It's actually keeping them out of the yard! Somehow I was able to enjoy the process and the quiet of a Saturday morning, despite the swarming mini vampires. I noticed (and then researched) that what you see in the photo are the flowers. They are found inside the crown of the plant because they are pollinated by ants 🐜. Or vice versa.

08/20/2026

I finished a new batch of Skin Salve-ation three weeks ago. It's ready for sale after running out of labels, buying the wrong size, then reordering the right size only to finds that I was out of ink 🙄🤪. Finally got it all together. 😁 Couldn't get this post together before the end of the market today, so find it at GOLD COAST GARDENS tomorrow! Use it for dry cracked heels, elbows and hands, rashes, athletes foot, and to brighten tattoos!

08/17/2026

Ahhhh, that feels better!

08/15/2026

Got a surprise day off, so we joined The New Jersey Mycological Association for a foray! Found this stump covered in moss, covered in a mushroom, which got covered in another fungus, with one more mushroom acting like the cherry on top, or the king of the hill. So much feeding and decomposing happening in and on that little stump. So much more that we couldn't even see. We love to romanticize fungi and mycelium as things that can "save the world", or that "connect the forest", "the wood wide web" and other such ideas. There's also the opportunistic feeding, competition, decomposition, parasitism, poison.
And then a dead luna moth who hopefully succeeded in it's purpose, it's cycle of life completed, before it serves another purpose as part of that other cycle. It's a jungle out there, but it's pretty fantastic too!

08/12/2026

When we have a bunch of tomatoes that need to be processed NOW, we do a simple canning job. Clean up the tomatoes, put them in a blender, skin seeds and all. Then we can up quarts of this puree in a pressure canner. In the winter, we have this raw sauce available to cook down into tomato soup, any kind of tomato based sauce, or chili. No flavors in there except tomato, so you're not committed to one particular style. Tomato freedom! Thanks, jeffsorganicproduce for all the great tomatoes!

08/10/2026

August overwhelm. There are beds here. Four of them. I can barely tell. Lots of good stuff is in them, like tulsi, calendula, marshmallow, ashwagandha, valerian, scullcap, and more. But you can't see it because of all the other stuff, like mugwort, fennel and god knows what else. Also pretty good. But it's hot, buggy, weedy and I have adulting to do, like fix tires, pay bills and install a washing machine. Or I'll just go to the beach. Yeah. That's what August is best for!

Address

Long Branch, NJ
07740

Telephone

+17323515278

Website

http://www.smilingearthfarm.com/

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