wheat barley asparagus alfalfa ramps...that's enough for one day

temperatures here are down out of the seventies ( fahrenheit ) and into what you could call a more "seasonable" range...

and two tenths of an inch of rain brought the total for the month so far to one and six tenths inches of precipitation...

combine that with a day off and it seemed a good time to make a run out to campus to take care of a few things...

in the one bed i am working this year i found...

a total of seven spears up and running...not nearly ready for harvest which is a bit behind last season...

the transplanted alfalfa on the west end of the bed is doing fairly well and i would suspect putting most of its enegry into re-establishing roots...not unreasonable and an explanation for the sparse green...

unfortunately the alfalfa on the east end seems to be failing...when i pulled it up i found the roots still moist and supple so we will leave it for now and hope...

i turned and hoed the back side of the bed...

and, despite james scott's injunction and the faddist dietary hoo-ha, i planted rows of einkorn and emmer wheat as well as barley...if it goes well there will be cereal grains by mid-summer...

back home in the east bed there is asparagus up as well...

some of which has escaped the bed...

the barley i planted back there five days ago is germinating...

as is the wheat, albeit more slowly...it may not be cool enough for its taste...

one of the container planted spuds i put in last month has broken surface...a russet i believe...

i have four stands of alfalfa back there all of which are looking greener and more lush than the campus relatives...then again they have not been moved twice in five years and are well established...we will be feeding the bees and providing the solitary ones with nesting material..

i am always pleased when ramps begin to pop up in the bed on the north side of the house...i am hoping some flower this season and produce seed...we will see...

and, finally, jerusalem artichokes have begun to appear...a few days earlier than last year...and those were earlier than 2022...and the earlier arrivals can be regressed a few years to the point we are almost a month earlier than they were in the past decade...a native to these parts it is worth watchng their behaviors as a climate marker...they usually bloom in august...it will be worth noting what happens this coming july

the jerusalem artichokes are unquiet

over that past ten years or so the jerusalem artichokes have broken soil surface in the first few weeks of may...this particular specimen was up at the perennial garden project at iun on the twenty-first of march 2012...that was an exceptionally anomolous month in terms of weather with consistent warm temperatures, at times reaching into the eighties ( fahrenheit ) and was followed by a seasonable april and a summer long drought which did not do this plant much good at all...up early and starved for water...at least in terms of rain...and the heat radiating of the nearby ( within ten feet ) walls of hawthorn hall didn't help much either...in 2013 the sunchokes were back on their usual schedule of appearing in may...

out this morning rooting around with marigold...

i discovered that, in the past week, not only have the tubers continued to root...

the have clearly begun to sprout...perhaps a sign that the inordinately warm winter wil have them making an early breakthrough...there are still a little better than thirty-two days until may and they were not usually up on the first...we will see what happens in april.

last third of march and the second full day of spring

we've already discussed that the daffodils are significantly early and that the asparaagus is on schedule...

there was a dusting of snow this morning and although it has warmed this afternoon, temperatures will be below freezing at night over the next few days...

so the mooseberry bush has stalled...

i did not see a fully opened russian olive blooms until april seventh last year...these began opening yesterday so that leaves us seventeen days earlier this year...

marigold and i were rooting around in the jerusalem artichoke bed and we found...

well..roots...this one had sprouted them in three places...

and this ...

had just the one...

these have been breaking soil surface in the first week of may and rooting in march may simply be part of that timeline...the only way to tell is to keep an eye on them and see what pops up and when...so far it is about a fifty/fifty split between on time and early...we will see how that holds.

open

there is asparagus up and running in my back yard...

so since i had some time i wandered over to campus to open the asparagus bed just to see what was what...

there was a bit of frost on the fabric and when i pulled it up it did not seem as though there was much going on...at first...

a closer look showed there was a spear of asparagus that had broken the soil surface...recently given its soil hat...

and over in the southwest corner the alfalfa is beginning to green up...a successful transplant there...

there was no green in the southeast corner...the plant was basically sitting on top of the soil...i would suspect frost heave had pushed it up...

however, when i pulled it up the roots were still supple and moist...

so, since there is some hope for a recovery, i dug a deeper hole and replanted it firmly...we wil be looking at this over the next few weeks to see if the plant can bounce back...they can do that at times...reference the saga of puddles the wheat plant here in this blog from a few years ago...

that done, i turned the back of the bed in an effort to discourage "native growth"...i will be planting back there before the end of the month...i have so sed for emmer and einkorn wheat and will likely throw some barley into the mix...a bed of grain i think is in order...more when we check in on the alfalfa.