Saturday, May 27, 2017

dioscorea and solanum out back

life let me get around to a few things around the yard today too...the chinese yam vine has cleared the top of the cage around the pepper plant by almost three feet( first photo ) ...so i drove in three tomato stakes as the basis for a trellis ( second ) and tied a tier of jute twine around the posts for support ( third ) ...there will be more tiers i am sure...then i trained the vine onto the jute ( fourth ) and that is where it stands until the vine expands its range...then i turned to the carolina horsenettle i brought home from campus...it is a deep rooted perennial ( more on that in a minute ) and i dug out as much of the roots as i could when i i collected it...to give it some depth to root without turning it loose in my yard i too an old five gallon bucked ( fifth ) that had a cracked bottom and drilled a few more drainage holes...then i filled i with am mix of potting soil and compost all the way to the top ( sixth )...with a gloved hand ( the thorns are vicious ) i planted them as deep as the roots i got were long ( seventh and eighth )...they still have the same nasty thorns they had when i found them in the garden last summer ( ninth )..they are a nightshade related directly to potatoes...the blooms in the tenth photo are carolina horsenettle but might as well be potato blossoms...as the name infers the plant is native to he southeast of the country ...how it came here is beyond me and it struck me as odd it was here last year...that a non-native, warm climate plant migrated here and then successfully overwintered to reappear again is, for me, a clear index of climate change...we will see how it takes tot he bucket.

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