Friday, October 14, 2011

digging tubers







i spent from 6:55 am until 9:35 am on campus harvesting the jerusalem artichokes, taking out the cowpeas, and sowing winter wheat...i used a spading fork to pop the plant and roots out of the ground ( it's one of the photos...i gave up trying to unrandomize the way these upload long ago)...there are tubers growing out of the roots at the base but they also radiate out a fair distance from the parent plant so you need to root around some ( i found myself digging back from the garden underneath the university's lawn to retrieve tubers...there will be rouges come spring) the photo with my feet in it is of the haul form just one plant...sixty plus tubers of various sizes and even more various shapes...i replanted ten tubers ( last year i replanted eight and ended up with fourteen...no doubt the population will be larger next spring as well)...after i harvested the sunchokes i went around and picked all the cowpea pods i could find for next years nitrogen supply...that done i pulled them up by the roots and yanked the vines off the trellis and proceeded to turn what soil that hadn't been disturbed by the harvest over and aerated it with the cultivator ( i also ran into numerous earthworm as i dug the tubers...the batch of worms i put in in spring 2010 has seemingly thrived and reproduced...surviving even this spring's mole invasion)...then i broadcast hard red winter wheat seed on all the areas that didn't have jerusalem artichokes planted in them or that i wasn't going to have to mulch next month...the window for planting winter wheat is nearly closed ( although i did plant it on the 29th of october last year and had good crops on campus and at home) and i just finished turning the cowpeas in the old potato bed here at home under and planting wheat there as well...that be will be seed for next fall and i will continue as long as i can produce viable seed...more later at yam harvest and putting the garden to bed for winter as well as an update on the progress of the wheat.

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