The Perennial Agriculturalist

backyard wheat

2012-02-25T10:56:00.001-08:00

i planted this within days of the crop on campus and from the same batch of seeds in soil prepared pretty much the same way with the same batch of composted manure so i can't explain why the wheat in the backyard is so much bigger and thicker beyond the fact that the wheat out back is in a sheltered bed of two by twelves and the campus wheat it totally exposed...whatever the reason it will be a much bigger crop.

traditional bread

2012-02-25T10:56:00.000-08:00

"in turkey we found that an important reason for selecting local wheat instead of modern, higher-yielding varieties was the quality of the local wheat for bread and the fact that no market was available to purchase wheat with the desired qualities( meng, taylor, and brush 1998). a similar situation exists in peru where local potatoes are preserved for home consumption and for gifts (brush 1992)"farmers' bounty: locating crop diversity in the modern world. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________so...monsanto's west bred brand of high-yielding, trans genetic spliced up wheat isn't a big seller in parts of the word because the bread it makes doesn't taste like grandma's...the locals prefer to preserve landraces specific to the area and eat bread made form the wheat their ancestors grew...not really surprising...people are fond of their habits and food culture is a deeply conservative thing...all bound up in ritual and status and tradition and in the types of plants best sustained by the local ecology...seems they prefer the old fashioned type of genetic engineering that comes from artificial selection for desirable traits...like the way the grain makes the bread taste...or the texture a specific potato takes on when it's freeze-dried at altitude or steamed...fine with me...i'm looking around this spring for some sump weed to grow as a seed crop next season ( 2013 i mean ) the domesticated strains have apparently died out...abandoned by the indigenous peoples of north america when the superior maize turned up...i still like the idea of growing native food crops and i will be experimenting with that when and where i can...speaking of where...i had a spare moment this morning and so i took a trip out to campus to check on things...the winter wheat there is doing okay...not the bumper crop out in my backyard, but it will serve he purpose i am growing it for which is mostly to be turned under in the spring to add nitrogen to the soil...although i will let some of it mature for seed for next autumn...all the mulching is intact and the wheat grass is still dormant and the gamma grass won't start greening up until sometime in april...mid-march will be here soon and the teosinte seeds will be going in along with some beets and turnips...just to keep things going until it's time to plant potatoes...it will all be here before you know it

wild potatoes

2012-02-19T11:22:00.001-08:00

it occurred to me that i had never seen a wild potato plant beyond photos of mature ones in books ( i have no faith in photos of plants i pull off the web anymore...so many mislabeled ones...it is one of the reasons i started including photos in this blog...at least i know what i grew )and that i would not recognize a seedling if it bit me...so i put some potting mix and mushroom mulch in a peat pot...added water...got out the envelope of wild potato seeds ( tiny things ) from the potato introduction station in sturgeon bay wisconsin...placed two ( carefully ) in the newly combined soil...and put them downstairs under the grow light with the apple trees...i germinated the apple trees in a damp paper towel in a baggie and if i don't see some sort of substantive movement in the peat pot over the next few weeks i will try that method ( although how i will ever see those seeds against a damp paper towel as a backdrop eludes me )...since i plan on growing them for a morphological comparison with domesticated potatoes ( and maybe get some gene flow going...although how i would measure that eludes me as well...no scientist...just an amateur ) i really do need to know what they look like when they sprout...inductive and empirical is the way to proceed i think...more as it comes along.

denial is a human constant

2012-02-18T06:52:00.001-08:00

i have absolutely no frame of reference for this winter and so i am having some difficulty with the chronology of the year so far...there was eight inches of snow on the ground here last weekend and today the winter wheat in the backyard is basking in what sunlight there is filtering through partly cloudy skies...my notoriously inaccurate thermometer says its thirty-four degrees fahrenheit and there are a few flurries falling so it's still winter...but it might as well be late march as mid february...it was fifty degrees yesterday and promises to reach that high again in the coming week...every time i go out back i expect to see elephant garlic coming through the soil and when that happens the jerusalem artichokes won't be far behind...last spring was cold and it took much longer for things to get started...it could be eighty degrees by the time my seed potatoes arrive...then again it may still be snowing and melting...like i said i have nothing in my experience to relate this to...new territory and i have to wonder how much of a part i'm playing in it...the deniers say that climate is cyclical and that's what this is...that i can burn all the fossil fuel i want...that daniel yergin subscribes to this theory is not reassuring...i am forced to believe that we have entered the anthropocene era and that the consumerist culture that i am so bound up in is actually trying to do us all in...so i grow perennials...i just transplanted this year's apple trees into larger peat pots...the roots ( those future carbon sinks...along with all the living, organic soil i can manage to sustain [ won't be so arrogant as to say create] in all the place i will be growing things this coming season...this one hundred and sixty square foot garden on campus has extended it reach well outside the academic domain) of the larger tree were coming out the bottom of the pot it started out in...those guys still have a couple of months under the grow light until i start to take them outside to harden them off so i thought it would be a god idea to give them more room...on the whole i am anxious for the new season to begin and anxious about what the results might be as well...i am going to have to be careful about making the call on when to unmulch the yams and asparagus...the planting schedule is going to take some deeper consideration as well...at least for the spring planters.

staggered planting/harvest

2012-02-11T13:35:00.000-08:00

"the domesticated frijol gordo...of the sierra norte de puebla has been traditionally grown as a vine on maize plants in multiple cropping milpas of the nahua, who gather the late-ripening pods after the maize harvestat the end of the growing season. with an increased demand for for beans in the early growing season, precocious forms have been selected to provide green pods before the maize harvest."
mexican ethnobotany diversity. biodiversity and native america. paul e. minis and wayne j. elisens, eds. p.53

"the indians of this region practiced a series of gardening techniques, including staggered planting times, planting in evenly spaced holes, and interplanting different kinds of crops."
ethnohistory in the southeaster united states. biodiversity amnd native america.p.287

i have been doing some more reading about intercropping in milpas ( thanks for the book coach...you always seem to pick a winner ) and stagger plantings... i have received all the seeds i have ordered for next season and will receive seed potatoes from suppliers as their planting times arrive...i will be planting from the middle of next month through july ( outside the garlic, winter wheat, asparagus,chinese yams, and jerusalem artichokes i already have in the ground ) and i will be harvesting from june through november ( and beyond if you count digging tubers in the winter )...i will be intercropping maize, squash, sunflowers, potatoes, and beans ( along with an herb garden, some leeks, and onions ) the photo is of the scarlet runner bean i planted around the beginning of the year just so i would know one when i saw it...it is a "precocious form" that starts in cool weather, stops producing in the heat of summer, and may begin producing again in the autumn...it has thrown out a vine more than three feet long and i am running out of dowel rod in its current pot...i am pondering how to provide more vining room that i can move into the back yard when the weather breaks...should be an impressive vine by then...it may even give the chinese yams and the cowpeas ( forgot to mention cowpeas...an indispensable part of the nitrogen retention scheme and mainline nitrogen fixer) some competition for the longest vine ( it will not defeat the chinese yams for number of vines produced however...and the cowpeas are no slouches in vine length...more interesting data to collect )...we got about six inches of snow last night but it won't last long...i can smell the soil now.

new apple trees

2012-02-08T15:59:00.001-08:00

the apple trees are coming along pretty well...the scarlet runner bean had grown and has put out a vine that is approximately three feet long ( you can see it to the right in the second photo and wrapping itself around the dowel rods i put in the pot on the left in the two bottom photos )...all the organic and heirloom seeds for the spring garden have arrived ( more germination soon ) and i have potatoes that i bought and freebies from the usda coming...the winter wheat on campus and in the back yard is confused...and in a bit more than a month the spring planting of teosinte begins...and the unmulching of the asparagus...it hasn't been much of a winter really and as far as preparation for a new season goes time's just about up...can't wait.

it's anything but dormant

2012-02-05T08:11:00.001-08:00

just another photographic commentary on the weather...this wheat is so far from dormant that i think it's actually spreading and thickening...if the weather doesn't turn and kill it i should have a good harvest for the continuing "green manure" project.

i could dig some february tubers...

2012-02-05T07:41:00.000-08:00

...which is something i don't believe i could have done last february fifth...but the weather has been so weirdly mild this winter that i was somewhat concerned that when i went out back to dig some up i might find them actually growing...they were not and i dug up a heaping bowlful to store in the refrigerator and the freezer to use in salads and casseroles and i cut some up and plan to fry them in peanut oil ( which i acquired specifically for this purpose to fend off further criticism over my inconsistency in decrying hfcs and yet using corn oil )...i have left the cache pit i lined to experiment with sub-freezing tuber retrieval untouched since there hasn't been enough freezing weather to warrant an attempt...the climate seems to be determined to thwart that particular facet of this seasons learning in the garden...trial and error seems to me to be a basis for cultural advancement and nobody gets it exactly right the first time...refinement as a first principle in anthropology...or pretty much anything else...i'm going to make brunch now...refine my frying technique.

another round of erosion

2012-01-28T09:53:00.001-08:00

i have been out and about this saturday morning...after a trip to campus i wandered out to an office supply store for some printer ink. markers, post-it flags, and some pens and on the road home i stopped by the corn field out on county line road just to see if anything was up...with snow, thaw, rain, snow as the pattern the winter has established i thought there might be something...and there was...the second and smaller of the erosion gullies ( top photo ) i found has gotten a bit bigger and the one from last year ( bottom photo ) continues to grow...you cna see form all three photos that farmer brown has left the con stubble in the field after harvest which will help ( but, obviously from the photos, not stop ) the topsoil from running off with rain and snow melt...you can just see in the middle photo the unbroken snow on the soybean field which was harvested clean and has no stubble...that particular portion of the field however has a grass strip about six feet wide between it and the the drainage ditch at the edge of the road which is absent from the corn field and which is hold back any erosion form that particular portion of the field...whatever sort of precipitation falls for the duration of the winter i would expect both these gullies to enlarge...we'll see if i am correct in that supposition as the season wears on and i make field trips out there as time and weather premit.

winter comes...winter goes...

2012-01-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

yesterday it was sunny and in the 40s...last night there was a dusting of snow...and this morning it's in the upper 20s ( 28 degrees according to npr at about nine when i was approaching campus )...the intermediate wheat grass ( middle photo ) is in no doubt about the season temperature non-withstanding and it is full blown dormancy...actually it has been since late november...the winter wheat is more cold hardy than the wheat grass but i am inclined to think that it should be dormant as well...certainly the winter wheat i grew last year was by this time...but it was under a pile of snow form mid december until late february or early march...both the wheat on campus ( top photo ) and the whaet in my back yard ( bottom ) are still la vibrant green when brown is the seasonal color...there is usually a ten percent die back of winter wheat due to cold which is more than made up for by the rhyzomatic spread of the wheat in the spring ( i planted less than 100 plants on campus last year and harvested 383 )but i am afraid that if there is a significant cold spell without an insulating snow cover the die back may make a spring crop a much reduced affair...peculiar weather this january...there is usually what is locally called ( and it may not be just local ) a january thaw, but mild januarys are another matter...a mild december had me thinking we might have a winter back-loaded with ice and snow...now i'm not sure...it's true that february isn't generally a less wintery month than january around here so the possibility of a true winter still exisits...but i'm beginning to have my doubts.

winter in the backyard

2012-01-14T07:10:00.000-08:00

winter has put in another appearance in my backyard...the perennial grasses are coated with snow and the raised bed of winter wheat finally has its insulation ( you can just see a few blades of wheat poking up through the snow )...my notoriously inaccurate garden thermometer which was showing temperatures around sixty degrees recently is struggling to make it to twenty and the burlap wrapping on my apple trees has a couple of inches of snow on top...and yet i'm reading extended forecasts that call for temperatures above freezing in the coming week so the wheat isn't in the clear yet...for a crop that i planted in mid-october the wheat in the raise reached about ten inches in height...which means a well developed root system and, at least, a chance of a fair crop come june...goofy weather will also play fast and loose with my jerusalem artichoke storage experiment...i need temperatures below freezing for a while to obtain a realistic assessment of how well it does ( or, more likely, does not ) work...i have obtained my seeds for spring planting and i ordered a few more pounds of seed potatoes to plant a patch in my daughter's back yard ( they asked ) and i got an email from the usda potato introduction station in sturgeon by wisconsin saying seed clones from their fall harvest will be available ( for free )for spring planting so we will have an abundance of potatoes this coming year...diversity is good so a second strain won't hurt...lots of work going on in the asement and more to come outside in a few short weeks...ten weeks to planting teosinte and wild potatoes...and about thirteen to cutting, callousing, and planting red nordlands...sunflowers, scarlet runner beans, snow peas...it will be here soon...can't wait!

winter in the basement

2012-01-14T06:49:00.000-08:00

it's winter but work on next season is already going on...the top photo is of a scarlet runner bean under the grow light in the basement...i'm growing them this coming spring...they're a cool weather crop that flowers and pods in the spring, lays low in the heat, and picks up production again in the autumn...i haven't grown them before so i germinated one so i'd have an idea of what they looked like...in the two weeks or so since it sprouted i've had to transplant it to a larger pot because the roots were coming out the bottom of the peat pot it was in and it has grown to a bit over ten inches in height...robust viners, i may have to construct a basement trellis before i can put it outside in march...i have been trying to ascertain if they are self-pollinating or if this plant is doomed to not produce...the second photo is of a couple of new apple trees i've got going down there...mostly as a back up if my winterizing plan for the trees outside fails...if it does these trees are going to remain potted and protected until spring 2015 when i'll plant again...if my backyard trees come through ( which is plan a) then i will find homes for these next summer. the basement teosinte is none too happy and i am trying to research the plants seasonal cycle to see if there's a period of dormancy or if they are simply not going to make it through to spring and another season outdoors...i have more seeds from the usda but i'd really like to try to get these to go to seed...that may be impossible this far north...more as it comes up.

dormancy?

2012-01-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

peculiar weather, no? the top and bottom photos are of the winter wheat in the bed in my back yard...it is still growing and has exceeded eight inches in height...in the tradition of random firefox uploads to blogger, the third photo is of a clump of winter wheat on campus that i took on november fourth...the second photo is of the same clump that i took on campus this morning...the wheat hasn't gained much in height but is has tillered considerably in the last couple of month....you can actually see dormancy creeping in around the base of the wheat, but it isn't hibernating yet...neither, for that matter, is the grass on campus...it is green and photosynthesizing away...fifty degrees on january sixth aint natural...there are doubtlessly folks out there who fervently hope we get away without a winter this year...and i have seen some mild winters here in the last decade ( although not the past few years )...it hasn't even gotten cold enough for me to test out my fabric lined cache pit for jerusalem artichokes yet...nature has me in some suspense over what will happen next...and what sort of impact it will have on the spring season...last year was a cold spring and everything but the elephant garlic was alte in coming out of dormancy...something out of the ordinary, like an april snow could be a problem for planting things like red nordlands.

back to the plants

2012-01-04T16:49:00.001-08:00

the odd weather is playing fast and lose with my winter wheat and i really don't know where it will all end up...good, i hope, but my experience is a bit limited and all that i have read still insists on the need for snow form december to march to insulate the plants form the cold...well...no snow...no real extended sub-freezing weather either...peculiar climate these days...natural or anthropogenic...i suppose that all i can do is wait...there's movement in the basement though...i have never grown scarlet runner beans before so i decided to germinate some just so i would know what they looked like when they came up...odd critters...a north american native and grown form heirloom seeds...perhaps not in its original native range, but on the home continent...close enough for my standards ( bear cultural and demic diffusion in mind)...the indoor teosinte is holding its own...the aphid infestation is down to a few individuals sprayed on a daily basis...obviously eggs have been laid in the soil...i heaped the pots with mushroom mulch to provide some needed nutrients as the winter progresses and the addition of the second gro light seems to be working well...there is new growth ( though not much in the way of new tillers ) on both plants so after several months in the artificial environment of the basement i am guardedly hopeful ( as opposed to optimistic which would be a complete denial of life's realities ) that they will see spring and eventually go to seed...my apple trees did well this past season and they are securely mulched for winter...but, realist that i am, i am hedging my bets by growing a few more just in case i have blundered completely...if the backyard trio come through to spring hale and ready to produce another season's growth i will find homes for the newbies...perhaps as a companion to the tree i planted in my daughter's back yard last summer...everybody likes some company...more stuff as it comes up.

peanut butter and bread

2012-01-02T15:28:00.000-08:00

"the price of bread did not vary; its weight did. roughly speaking, variable weight was the general rule throughout the western world. the average weight of bread sold in the bakers' shops in saint mark's square or on the rialto in venice varied in an inverse ratio to the price of grain...regulations published in cracow in 1561, 1589, and 1592 indicate the same practices; unvarying prices and variable weights."
"the structures of everyday life: civilization and capitalism 15th-18th century. volume 1" fernand braudel. p139

i know this has nothing to do with gardening and i was unsure which blog to post this in...but it is food related...and it is related to an industrial food system that is capitalist at heart and has to turn a profit to keep shareholders happy, even in difficult times...since this project is meant to stand in contrast to industrial food i thought, in the end, that it was germane to the underlying philosophy so i put it here ( and i am much less likely to go off on a terminal rant in this blog )...these three brands of peanut butter sell at the local supermarket for prices that can be covered by 10 ( wow..there is no "cent" sign on this keyboard..are cents obsolete?) cents...pretty standard pricing industry-wise but the jars are significantly different...the fisher's jar has a reasonably flat bottom...the skippy and planter's jars have a "punt" in the bottom...a concave structure that adds strength to champagne bottles but serves to lessen the amount of peanut butter in the jars...the skippy and planter's jars have 16.3 ounces, the fisher's 18 ounces...the fisher's jar is also a quarter inch bigger in diameter...so, like the fourteenth and fifteenth century european bread makers, peanut butter producers ( and, i'll wager other food producers ) are varying the quantity of goods provided, not the price...a long tradition of sleight of hand...i am curious to know what fifteenth century bakers did to make their loaves appear larger than they were...or was that more an issue of government fiat than marketing manipulations?

dormancy

2011-12-31T10:50:00.000-08:00

i spent part of the morning of the last day of the year going to campus to check up on the mulch...just to make sure there wasn't straw blowing all over and that some critter or another wasn't bedding down for the winter...the gamagrass in the bottom photo has been dormant for some time as well as the intermediate wheat grass in the top one...i did notice that the winter wheat ( middle photo ) on campus is entering its dormant phase as well as the chlorophyll starts to leave the leaves ( which, like the gamagrass, will "green up" sometime in march)...a departure form the behavior of the winter wheat in the backyard ( or, perhaps, the wheat in my yard is the anomaly, since it is well protected by the two by twelves that make up the frame of the bed)...eventually that will go dormant as well...frame or no frame...now...where's the snow?

frankly i'm a bit concerned

2011-12-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

admittedly it isn't very far into winter yet...but it has been disturbingly mild...the snow of a few days ago is long gone ( it's raining right now) and the winter wheat i planted in mid october continues to grow...no dormancy yet, and it's getting on to over eight inches tall...so is winter going to be back-loaded with nasty weather? could be...somewhere in here i need some snow to insulate the winter wheat from the coming cold...dry winters are no friend to the plants...it is an important part of my organic fertility and if i seem weirdly concerned, that's why...i took advantage of the day to lay down another layer of mulch around my blueberry bushes, erring on the side of caution.

"the experience of the sublime is all about nature having her way with us, about the sensation of awe before her power-about feeling small. what i'm talking about is the opposite, and amittedly more dubious, satisfaction of having our way with nature: the pleasure of beholding the reflection of our labor and intelligence in the land. in the same way that niagara or everest stirs the first impulse, the farmer's methodical rows stitching the hills or the allees of pollarded trees ordering a garden like versailles, excite the second, filling us with our power. these days the sublime is mostly a kind of vacation, both in a literal and a moral sense. after all, who has a bad word to say about wilderness anymore? by comparison, this other impulse, the desire to exert our control over nature's wilderness, bristles with ambiguity. we're unsure about our power in nature,it's legitimacy and it's reality..."
michael pollan form "the botany of desire" pp. 183-184

so is that what i'm doing in the garden? imposing my will on nature and forcing her to yield up sustenance? proving human mastery ( and ramshackle stewardship) over the earth? i thought i was trying to work through ( though manipulating) biological processes to create some sort of food security...that is why , i believe, humans turned to horticulture and agriculture...to create an artificial carrying capacity to feed themselves and their growing numbers of kin more fully...that this led to a further increase in mouths to feed and a stratified society and specialization of labor and the rise of priestly and aristocratic classes was largely an unintended by-product of a successful experiment that created more food than subsistence required...and it's with that priestly caste that humans were removed from nature and put in charge of it...not with the act of bending nature a bit to try to guarantee a bit more to eat...i'm still inside nature out in my back yard..just asking her to co-operate a bit...and she does. albeit sometimes grudgingly and not without reminding me who's still in charge with late blight and potato beetle larvae...no...i'm asking here not demanding...monsanto and cargil are doing quite enough of that

kitchen garden/horticulture?

2011-12-26T10:30:00.000-08:00

my backyard has been an anthropogenic artifact since at least 1975 when this house was built...from about 1999 until three years ago it was an artifact that had been left to biology to act on as it pleased which is why i am still in the process of clearing out russian olive bushes and locust trees and ubiquitous maple saplings and whatever else has taken root out there as i begin to manipulate the environment again...the aim is to convert at least half the yard to food production...just to see what i can do...a fair sized kitchen garden...i imagine people have been creating gardens ( as opposed to agriculture ) for quite some time and they seem fairly widespread...Buffalo-bird Woman grew sunflowers, maize squash, beans, and tobacco in her garden ( although it might be more horticulture...hers was much larger than mine will ever be )...as contact with europeans increased new plants came...potatoes for instance...even though they weren't a european crop..."at first we Hidatans did not like potatoes, because they smelled so strongly!...after three or four years , finding the indians did not have much taste for potatoes and seldom ate them, our agent made a big cache pit- a root cellar you say it was-and bought our potato crop of us. after this he would issue seed potatoes to us in the spring and in the fall we would sell our crop to him. thus handling potatoes each year, we learned little by little to eat them" [wilson 1917] food culture seems to be fairly conservative...diffusion of new crops is slow because acceptance is slow...most of what i have read indicates it is change through necessity as a rule...my carpatho-rusyn granny was a european ( her name was anna czomplak, just so we can put names to both gardeners )...and a contemporary of Buffalo-bird Woman...in her kitchen garden, in what was the austro-hungarian empire in those days, she grew cabbage, beets, turnips, carrots, and, just to show that there is cultural diffusion in foods ( as if you needed proof )my granny grew potatoes and sunflowers...i believe i covered some of the reasons behind the adoption of those foods so far from their point of domestication in an earlier blog...a peer of Buffalo-bird Woman in more than just time...and, i would suppose, more than just gardening...my kitchen garden provided lunch today...i went out and dug up some jerusalem artichokes...i cleaned them and set some aside to use in salads and then, no doubt to the horror of purists, i fried some in corn oil...sprinkled some garlic salt with parsley on them and ate the whole plate... i may never become a self-sufficient producer of food in my yard but i'll be feeding myself as much as i can from it...more stuff as it comes up.

post harvest III

2011-12-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

my indoor teosinte has begun to rebound from the aphid infestation...the brew of water, dish soap and cheap cigars has worked pretty well...did in the aphids but not the plants...there is new growth in the larger of the two plants and i am hoping for more...the additional grow light i installed seems to be helping and i packed the pots to the top with mushroom compost to provide some needed nutrients...the soil in those pots has been there since last spring and is probably fairly depleted...when spring and warmer weather roll around i will be re-potting them into larger pots ( provided we make it through a winter in the basement)because i would still like to see them go to seed...i alter their watering schedule a bit...i was watering them once a week but i believe i was erring on the side of caution and not watering enough..so i watered them thoroughly a week ago wednesday and again last sunday...the plants perked up and lost a lot of the droopiness they were developing...i think i will go back to a once a week schedule but will water more thoroughly...trial and error to find the right amount and timing.

it has snowed remarkably little in this mild december which has me concerned a bit...i need some snow to insulate my stands of winter wheat here and on campus soon..it's true that the weather has been less than harsh and so there is no need to worry yet...but a dry cold winter will decimate my plants ( sorry to those of you who loathe snow ...the snow we have had has long melted and we have had some fairly significant rain in the past week so i headed out to look at the cornfields and i have found the beginnings of some erosion gullies running form the fields to the surrounding ditches...i have been looking for erosion figures for porter county but without success as yet, however all the geological surveys i have come across note that the area has soils well suited for agriculture but that the topography of the terrain ( we are located at the end of a glacial moraine ) lends itself to significant erosion...these risks can be mitigated ( but not eliminated ) by techniques such as contour plowing...one of these small gullies is in the same place as the one i photographed last spring...the other is a new development so i will be driving by at regular intervals just to see what happens...particularly if the weather remains rainy as opposed to snowy...we will be sing what the spring runoff does as well.

taxes, tithes, and new world crops

2011-12-17T03:15:00.000-08:00

"...the plant was an ally in the smallholders ceaseless struggles against the economic and political elite. a farmer's barnful of wheat, rye,or barley was a fat target for greedy landlords and marauding armies, buried in the soil, a crop of potatoes could not readily be seized"
charles mann in "1491"

"...new world plants reached the old. in one direction went rice, wheat, sugar cane, and the coffee bush, in the other maize, potatoes, haricot beans, tomatoes, manioc, and tobacco. wherever they went the newcomers met resistance from existing crops and eating habits. europeans considered potatoes a sticky and indigestible food; maize is still despised in southeast china where rice still rules. but despite these entrenched attachments and the slow pace at which new experiences were absorbed, all these plants became widespread and accepted. in europe, in any case, it was the poor who first opened their door to them; and their rapid growth subsequently turned them into desperate necessities."
fernand braudel in "the structures of everyday life:civilization and capitalism 15th-18th century volume 1"

"perhaps the sunflower was ignored in the united states because it was too familiar, but in russia it was adopted for precisely the opposite reason-it was almost unknown. in the early ninteenth century the russian orthodox church issued a holy decree that proscribed a list of oil-rich foods from being eaten during lent or in the forty days before christmas. these two periods fall in the coldest months of the year when rich food is particularly comforting and sought after, but almost anything with a high oil content was forbidden.. sunflower seeds, containing about 30 percent oil, were so little known in russia at that time that they not named on the list. forthwith , sunflower seeds and their oil were eagerly adopted in russia, without fear of religious disapproval.."
jonathan slivertown in "an orchard invisible: a natural history of seeds.

little known and imported foods as a form of resistance to political and economic subservience to elites...an opposite to status foods...un-status sustenance for the poor...diffusion through necessity...a sort of corollary to cohen's neolithic population pressure as a spur to agricultural development...as economies contract and we all relearn the cultural art of eating in season i wonder if there may be an inversion...will people rediscover native foods and the sort of horticulture ( which is pretty much the scale of food production i am involving myself with...and even that may be pretentious...more of a kitchen garden really, despite the blogs title) /agriculture that predated the industrial revolution and the development of the agricultural and food "industries"...will eating habits and food culture change? historically necessity seems to have been a strong motivator for change in this area so the more knowledge about what there is to eat locally the better...so far for me jerusalem artichokes have been the biggest find and the most prolific producer...i have been scouring field manuals of edible wild plants and ransacking the usda databases for more plants that are or were locally edible...there are efforts going on to domesticate illinois bundleflower as a protein rich legume...sumpweed could be a source of seeds as oil rich as sunflowers...but they are small and the plants don't produce large quantities of seeds (and since they are not domesticated i imagine the harvest would be a matter of timing...gathering the seeds before the seed heads shatter...there's still a lot of research to do on what i can grow and how effective it will be in localizing my food consumption...and i still have questions about how productive my suburban backyard can be...this project is slowly moving beyond the university and the anthropological study that the campus garden represents into the realm of real life...what i find there can be educational...now to find a way to apply it to the everyday.

milpas and maize

2011-12-15T16:24:00.001-08:00

" a milpa is a field, usually, but not always, recently cleared, in which farmers plant a dozen crops at once, including squash and beans, multiple varieties of squash and bean, melon, tomatoes, chilis, sweet potato, jicama ( a tuber ), amaranth ( a grain plant), and mucuna ( a tropical legume)."
from 1491 by charles c. mann

i have read quite a bit about the idea of intercropping and using plants to enhance soil fertility ( hence the whole cowpea/ winter wheat experiment) and the idea of growing the traditional mesoamerican triad of beans, maize, and squash appeals to m e so i have ordered organic, non-gm seeds and i am scouting locations out back and on campus for additional plants...my problem is squirrels...i grew maize on campus without incident last season ( it's on the right in the photo...northern tepehuam teosinte is in front of the cardboard i put in to help it stand out from the wheat grass) but the squirrels nailed all the maize in my yard...they waited until it was nearly ripe and gnawed the stalks off at ground level and obliterated my harvest...about what i expected but it doesn't bode well for a traditional milpa...so i have been in contact with various anthropologists whose work involves mesoamerican agriculture about a suitable substitute...i'd thought of teosinte, but northern tepehuan is an iffy proposition...and while i grew a bunch of zea diploperennis it doesn't really get big until august and the whole idea of maize is to provide a natural trellis for the beans to vine on( that and to help balance the nutritional value of the diet)...so i have been searching for a suitable substitute for my back yard...if i cannot use maize i at least want to keep it limited to a plant native to or domesticated in the hemisphere...two leap to mind, both from the same family...jerusalem artichokes get to be eight to ten feet tall and i have a multitude planted out back and i have a store buried from which i could seed more...but they are very bushy and produce rather a large patch of shade in their vicinity ( in fact there are no weed problems with them...they are so dense and produce so much shade no weeds can germinate anywhere near them ) which could be an issue...sunflowers pose no such problem for plants growing beneath them...the beans could germinate and the squash should have plenty of sunshine..so that is what i believe will stand in for maize here at home...i will try teosinte as well just to see what happens and keep things in the family so to speak...more stuff to grow and eat...more ways to get in touch with a culture...more to learn.

aphids!

2011-12-10T03:33:00.000-08:00

aging has impacted my eyesight...i brought my potted teosinte upstairs into some natural light yesterday morning and what i had taken for some sort of dank basement mold on the leaves turned out to be aphids...no wonder they're failing...so ii went out and purchased a two dollar deluxe spray bottle and a pack of the cheapest rank little cigars i could find at the corner convenience store and cooked up a nasty anti-aphid brew in the kitchen with the help of a few drops of dish soap...the soap helps distribute the nicotine evenly and keeps it adhered to the leaves and those rotten little bugs...i sprayed the leaves liberally with the mixture several times and the soil in the pots as well...i also cut off and removed all the dead leaves which went into the garbage rather than the compost...this morning when i went downstairs to check my teosinte leaves were aphid free ( sprayed them again anyway and will continue to do so until i am convince the infestation is over )aphids in the yard i look for (expect even ) an invasion in the basement didn't occur to me...i will be more alert when moving plants in form outdoors...i have been roaming the house inspecting the houseplants...so far no more aphids...the spray bottle is primed and there's more toxin brewing ( which won't harm the plants or daisy the cat or me or you [unless you smoke the rank cigars] as close to an organic pesticide as i can create in my kitchen)...i am ready for more bugs.

first snow

2011-12-09T05:44:00.001-08:00

my backyard, probably inaccurate, thermometer said it was twenty-seven degrees fahenheit when i went out back to take these photos this morning...we had the first snow of the season last night...around an inch of wet snow that i don't imagine will last through the day...i'm actually hoping for more since the wheat needs about four inches of snow cover from december to march to insulate it from the worst of the winter cold...winter wheat without snow isn't going to do well...a dry, cold winter isn't in the best interest of my stands of wheat here at home or on campus so i will risk the wrath of many people in wish for a goodly amount of snow...it cannot be helped...since it has snowed i believe i will dig some tubers this weekend and have some jerusalem artichokes for a meal...more on that as it transpires.

re-organization

2011-12-04T09:21:00.000-08:00

i acquired a couple of shelves, took out a cfc bulb and replaced it with another grow light, and removed all the improvised stands...this has put just a bit more organization into the plants that are wintering over in the basement and will help keep spring germinating a bit less chaotic as well...there is still mold accumulating on the teosinte which bugs me, but keeping a fan moving the air around has eliminated the slime that was sticking the leaves together...there is new growth on both plants and, hopefully, the addition of a second grow light will help give them a bit more of what they need...i will still be bringing them up into natural light as much as it is possible and i will trim off the dead leaves and branches as winter progresses...with work and patience i hope to keep the root system viable and repot them in the spring for a return to the outdoors...it would be great if i can bring these plants through a few seasons and get them to go to seed...i assume that like most rootstock perennials they don't seed for a few seasons...it took both the intermediate wheat grass and eastern gamagrass a couple of years to do that...whatever happens i have received more zea diploperennis seed form the usda so the experiment in wintering over both outdoors ( i have mulched the plants on campus...hoping for new growth in the spring even though everything indicates that is a farfetched hope) and indoors will continue for the foreseeable future...basically just so i can say i did it.

apple trees in december

2011-12-02T10:55:00.000-08:00

photosynthesis has clearly come to an end in the apple trees and since the weather is due to go south directly i took advantage of a balmy december day to wrap them up...i made some cages out of some 2 X 4 fencing we had in the basement and put one around each tree...then it was simply a matter of filling the cages ( carefully) with straw and wrapping them in burlap...protected from the worst of the weather to come and being smashed by the snow, but able to breathe and sense the ambient temperature...they'll come out again sometime in march and we'll see if my orchard continues growing for a second season.

post harvest II

2011-12-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

it's been a few weeks since the last time i went out looking at post-harvest fields...i had questioned whether the bean field that been harvested and plowed was going to be home to a cover crop...the top two photos have the answer and i think it's no...you can see in the top one water collecting at the top of what looks like a path taken from the upper field tot he lower on by farm machinery...it also looks like the beginnings of an erosion gully down the middle of it and that will be something i'll be looking at this winter into the spring before plowing for planting erases the erosion evidence...it's a bit late to be starting a cover crop now...the temperature is set to dip below freezing overnight for the foreseeable future and that will send the winter wheat into dormancy...the wheat on campus in the third and fourth photos is tillering nicely...some have three leaves and some have five...as long as we have sufficient snow it will be fine...the wheat in my back yard has filled in and will produce enough seed to carry the nitrogen retention project into the winter of 2012...i am about to place next season's seed order, and in addition to potatoes, asparagus, and jerusalem artichokes, beets, turnips, leeks, brussels sprouts, and kohlrabi will be out there...along with some maize and a new batch of teosinte...can't wait...this looks like this weekend will be the time to button up the apple trees for winter...more on that process as i do it.

indoor teosinte

2011-11-24T06:09:00.000-08:00

the potted teosinte i brought in last month and put under the grow light continues to tiller up new growth and seems to be well adapted to indoor life...however i have developed an issue with mold...about a week ago i noticed that some of the leaves were wet and sticking together...when i pulled them apart i found mold growing between them...i separated them and wiped them dry and set up a fan to keep air moving over the plants...i also began to bring them up into natural light for part of the day hoping the uv light would attack the mold...i continue to dry wipe mold off the affected leaves and the mold does not appear to be spreading...hopefully i found and contained it...if it begins to spread i will need to do some pruning which is contrary to my nature but may be necessary to preserve the plants..that or perhaps a move to a corner somewhere upstairs...more later as things develop.

tillering II

2011-11-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

i was just out in the back yard checking up on things and the winter wheat in the beds is coming along ( top two and bottom photos) there is tillering going on and the wheat continues to grow and fill in...the weather simply hasn't been cold enough to send it into dormancy yet...the wheat on campus (photos three and four) continues to develop tillers as well and there are now more than five hundred plants up out there...i have a much thicker crop at home than on campus and i am a bit dis appointed by that...the wheat on campus will fill in in the spring and i will be leaving a stand to mature and ripen, but the other part of the plan was to create a cover crop for the soil and in that respect i have had much more success in the backyard than on campus...i used two different batches of seed to begin with and then re-sowed the campus garden with the other seed, but i am not sure if the differing results are from some seed viability issue or if the beds in back afford the wheat a more protected environment for germination...next fall will see the campus garden sown with seed from the summer harvest exclusively...i believe i will grind the remaining grain form this year and make some bread...that will take care of any old seed issues.

post-harvest

2011-11-20T05:28:00.001-08:00

it's getting on to thanksgiving ( dinner at mom's) and the harvest of feedstock for the food system is pretty much complete down county line road ( although there is still some work to do)...the field of beans and corn i photographed at the beginning of october( middle photo, as if you needed me to help you figure that out) was brought in last week..beans first, corn last...perhaps because soy beans are a hot commodity this year...you can see the corn stubble left in the field and that will help hold the soil together, but the bean field is bare as could be...it had been plowed and i thought perhaps there was a cover crop going in, but it's a bit on thr late side for that...i've had winter wheat in for a month or better and it is just started to tiller...anything going in that field wouldn't have enough time to establish itself before dormancy so it's going to winter over as it is...you can see water starting to collect in the low spots and this is where the erosion i photographed last spring took place...the plowing for this past season has obliterated the trench the water wore through the field but if i keep my wits i believe we sill see more erosion photos after the next spring thaw...the national corn growers propagandize about "no-till" corn a lot but that doesn't seem to have translated into action in the northwest corner of the hoosier state...more soil erosion as i find it.

tillering

2011-11-18T08:59:00.000-08:00

it's been dry and windy in these parts recently so i went out to campus this morning to water the winter wheat because it hasn't gotten cold enough yet to send the wheat into dormancy and the wind is drying the garden out...the wheat in my backyard is better sheltered by the raised beds but i watered it as well...the good news is that the wheat is taking advantage of the mild weather we've had so far this month and has begun to tiller which means it's pretty well established and a good number of plants should survive the winter ( top and bottom photos)...the zea diploperennis that i moved indoors last month seems to be fine as well...both of those plants are tillering up new growth as well so the grow light seems to be providing an adequate environment...it's early days though and there are many things that could go wrong still..i will be moving them up and down the stairs so they can grab some natural light throughout the winter and get a break from the basement.

progression ( even if the photos aren't in order)

2011-11-16T15:23:00.000-08:00

the bottom photo is from about eleven days ago....the fourth photo is from may...the top three are august , july, and june in descending order...just a few photos of the changes in the perennial garden project over the course of the season.

mulch

2011-11-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

the time had come to cut back and mulch the asparagus and yams and today seemed as likely a day as any so i went to campus to put the garden to bed for winter....about two and a half hours of work took care of it ( a bit more work this year since i mulched the zea diploperennis in an act of pure optimism )...i took out the trellises...cut back the plants and had at it...once again i laid down a layer of organic matter ( actually humus i picked up at lowes...i never seem to be able to produce enough compost at home to cover my needs...i may have to convert a larger portion of the yard to compost production...this is one of the reasons i have started working with green manures and winter wheat [ and i may look into rye next year] to create organic matter without the ordeal of composting...more on that as i fill my raised bed in the back yard ) and covered it with straw and fastened down landscaping fabric to hold it in place...it has worked well the last two winters and it keeps thing neat...which seems to count on campus...mulching here at home is a different story...it' where all the stuff i dragged home from campus goes....so it's time to do some serious reading for both new ideas for direction and for a second independent study paper...there's still the indoor zea diploperennis project ( new growth on both plants under the grow light and some serious work on a watering schedule ) and the apple trees ( which still haven't shed their leaves) to bed down for winter...more posts as things develop.

teosinte

2011-11-11T09:55:00.001-08:00

it really pained me to cut down the zea diploperennis...i mulched it but i am not sanguine about the root system of a sub-tropical plant wintering over here...i am still geeked that i managed to produce plants on campus and at home and i have more seeds for planting in the spring...hopefully with the same success...i had a more limited success with northern tepehuan teosinte that i planted at the same time last spring so this year i decided to try to treat the seeds more like they would be in a natural process and put them in now to overwinter...i will still plant in the spring and hope for a longer season so the seeds can fully mature.

progress and casualty

2011-11-07T15:09:00.000-08:00

well...the photos of the winter wheat are in inverse order but they still show growth...the top photo is from today...the second from the fourth of this month and the third photo is from the twenty-ninth of last month...there are a shade over five hundred plants up and running on campus...several thousand out in the back yard...i planted approximately ten thousand seeds ( about a pound )so that's a fair return...the weather is set to turn towards winter later this week , however the plants are easily the same size or bigger than the ones i planted last fall and that crop has become this one...hopefully that bodes well for the future...one of the two northern tepehuan teosinte plants on campus has snapped off just below a node of support roots...wind, critters ( squirrels have been very active around here the past week) human intervention...don't know and it really doesn't matter...its season is pretty much done and it served the purpose of morphological comparison with maize very well...the asparagus is dying back as well and i believe there will be a mulching expedition on an early morning this coming weekend...i have the necessary components...i will look for a comparatively windless day ( i loathe chasing rouge straw around the grounds )

my backyard on the third

2011-11-03T11:22:00.001-07:00

i went out back and planted some blueberry bushes in an effort to expand the fruit crop out there that the birds and i can compete for ( i see the yard festooned in bird tape next spring...perhaps even a scarecrow)...they are not self-pollinating so you need at least two to have any fruit...lots of varieties, i planted bluecrop because they can deal with being in partial shade rather than full sunlight...one of my autumn and winter projects this year is pruning back more of the jungle out there including some feral ornamental grasses i plan to replace with potatoes, tomatoes, beans and peppers...that will also get my apple trees out form under their shadow part of the day...they need sun all day...if i have hundreds of winter wheat plants up on campus, i have thousands here at home...i used two different batches of seeds for the plantings and i have to question the viability of some of the seed i used on campus...i plan to leave the bed in the photo as a crop so i will have a multitude of seed for fall 2012 to use and share wherever...even my half-barrels are filling in with sprouts...it promises to be a grassy spring all around.

perennial garden project 11-3-2011

2011-11-03T11:03:00.001-07:00

stopped off on campus just to check up on things...more winter wheat sprouts have appeared so there are well over four hundred plants in various stages of development...those that make it through the winter will fill in the stand i leave up by spreading rhizomes...the rest will return nitrogen to the soil for the crop of potatoes and wild potatoes that i'm putting in ( and, perhaps, some turnips as well )...most of the asparagus is still green so the mulching will wait at least another week, i believe it was november seventh when i mulched last year...we'll be a bit later this year but seasons are never the same anyway...if you look closely enough ( or magnify the photo) you can see the winter wheat coming up in the long shot of the garden in november.

wheat weather

2011-11-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

but clearly the teosinte finds it acceptable as well...the northern tepehuan on campus is evincing what must be a last spurt of growth as it produces more leaves and even flowers...no seeds unfortunately...the winter wheat is filling in nicely...there are newly germinated sprouts and many of the plants have developed a second leaf...the chlorophyll is gearing up before the plants go dormant...over four hundred up ( in a really unscientific census...there may be an unacceptable margin of error for academic work...but the anthropology is elsewhere in the garden....the wheat is sustainability...the again...trying to develop a culture of sustainability makes it anthropology anyway...win/win...except for the unscientific count business) and the beds and half barrels at home are sprouting prolifically as well...all we need now is some snow for insulation...but not til after the yam/asparagus mulch please...more on that as the asparagus dies back.

campus 10-29-2011

2011-10-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

went to campus again this morning to check on things...you can see in the top photo that the asparagus is in full reproduction mode...three plants have produced seed and some are already on the ground...i am curious to see what will come of that in the spring...the winter wheat is filling in as more germinates...i started some in three inch peat pots in the house and although the green sprouts were only a quarter to three-eights of an inch tall the roots were already out the bottom of the pot...the next two photos were taken a day apart ( yesterday and today) and you can see that the plants are growing, but there's a lot more going on underground as the root systems race to establish themselves before dormancy...the stand that i leave up on campus will fill in rhyzomatically next spring...same for the crop at home...the bottom photo is of eastern gamagrass and zea diploperennis in the northwest indiana autumn...the next step is mulching the yams and asparagus...but the asparagus is till green ( it likes cool weather) so i will be putting that off until it dies back for the season.

home 10-29-2011

2011-10-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

i have been neglectful of apple tree updates of late...i'm pleased to say all three are doing fine out in the back yard...still green...still growing...i have procured stakes and burlap so once they lose their leaves i will get some straw and bed them down for winter along with the one i planted in my daughter's back yard...they have quite a way to go before they bear fruit but my current focus is getting them through the winter...i moved the potted zea diploperennis indoors under the gro-light ( which looks very weird through the viewfinder of my camera...some sort of dissonant wavelength of light between the to of them...it didn't come out in the photo but in the viewfinder it looks like waves of light emanating from the bulb like a waterfall...odd) both plants have new growth tillering out at the base so i am hopeful that i can pull them through downstairs...i may have to re-pot them though if they continue to grow...i have several hundred winter wheat plants up in two of the raised beds and in two of the half barrels...one bed and one barrel will be grown as a crop...the rest will be organic matter to feed the worms and more plants next spring...more on the apple trees as i prepare then for their first winter.

forty-four teosinte ears

2011-10-28T17:18:00.000-07:00

there's a freeze warning ( as opposed to a frost warning) in effect for these parts until 10:00 am tomorrow so i decided to bring in all the teosinte ears...forty-four in all...because they weren't going to get much farther along the road to maturity..i suspect that none of these seeds are viable ( not that that will stop me form planting some next march just to see ) and i really didn't expect to get this far in these northern latitudes...so i am pleased and a bit disappointed by turns..i have more seeds for northern tepehuan teosinte and for zea diploperennis so there will be more of each next year...and probably some maize as well to go along with the red nordlands and their "wild and weedy" ancestors...i am a bit concerned about the winter wheat, although it shrugged off the frost this morning and just kept cooking along...some of it is nearly four inches tall and i am sure the roots are deeper than that...it's not afraid of cold weather but it needs to be a bit bigger before it goes dormant...i went out and bought cow manure, stakes, and burlap today...a couple of bales of straw and i will be ready to mulch the garden and put the apple trees to bed for winter...still a couple of weeks of work ahead outside...then it's back to the books and articles until march...it never really stops,, but it keeps me occupied with something interesting and utilitarian...what more could you ask? only one thing, and that's just not possible...time to be content with what is.

northern tepehuan teosinte ears

2011-10-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

unlike maize the teosinte has produced a multiplicity of ears so i brought a few in today and took some photos...the rest i will leave on the plant, covering it with frost cloth until the weather turns to the point i must harvest...i am curious to see if the seeds become those hard little triangles on the ear of if the harden after harvest...since this is the first teosinte i have grown to maturity i have no idea...we'll find out together.

industrial harvest

2011-10-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

i was out and about today and i replaced my malfunctioning camera, so i had a look at the field off county line road just to check up on the harvest...i tossed in a couple of photos from september just for the sake of comparison ...you can see that the wall of dense yellow number two industrial feedstock has come along since the beginning of last month and is ready to come in...you can also see that the weather really isn't co-operating very well...it's wet again in northwest indiana and there's still a lot of corn in the field...water too, as you can see by the puddles collecting in the stubble ( and that stubble is all that will cover that field this winter...i saw some winter wheat or rye today...but that was in a field that has been fallow all summer and i'm willing to wager is being sown as a crop, not as cover)...the field of beans that was butted up against the corn is already harvested and you can see the amount of water that has run into the low areas...that's where most of the erosion of that field i saw last spring went on...it looks as if it was plowed after harvest and the farmer may have sown a cover crop that hasn't germinated yet...we'll know in a week or two as i make an effort to get out there and see..if not i think i'll be taking pictures of erosion from water run-off sometime in march or april...i'd be interested in knowing what sort of chemical input residue is in that water and how much reaches deep river and, ultimately, lake george, the little calumet river and lake michigan.

human intervention

2011-10-26T17:39:00.000-07:00

"we are unlikely to achieve anything close to sustainability in any area unless we work for the broader goal of becoming native in the modern world, and that means becoming native to our places in a coherent community, that is, in turn, embedded in the ecological realities of the surrounding landscape."
wes jackson

it sounds to me like wes is saying that it's high time we ditched the consumerist utopia that capital has unleashed on us and get a grip on living within our ecological means...adapting ourselves to local abundances and shortfalls and learning to eat in season again...becoming cohesive and mutually supporting local communities...familiar with what can and cannot be accomplished...what the "landscape" will tolerate in the way of human intervention and what must be left alone if there is a chance to live within our ecological means...what the coach would call culture...humans used to have it in a diverse abundance until around five hundred years ago...when technology gave some pathologically avaricious people the means to destroy the culture of others and take what they found of value in the process...never realizing that what they destroyed was easily as valuable as what they took...we are probably all gong to pay a fairly steep price for those acts of wonton ignorance and the hubris they engendered...their heirs are still too blinded by their need for more to see we can't really exist outside a culture...its what we co-evolved with...made us human, no?

the teosinte ears are just a prop...part of my local ecology that has migrated to my backyard because technology transported the seeds to me.

winter wheat III

2011-10-24T13:37:00.000-07:00

and after lunch i headed out to campus ( where i saw coach and had a pleasant chat)...to check on the wheat...it is doing better which is cool but i'm still up against the timeframe for it to establish itself before real cold weather hits and it goes dormant...then we need snow to insulate it...a tenuous business but i'll assume biology knows what it's doing...i counted sixty plants up and running today...tomorrow it is supposed to be in the 70s temperature wise then a cool off...wheat is a cool weather crop so as long as a hard frost holds off ( for the wheat and the teosinte) we should be okay...the ears of teosinte seeds out back are starting to shatter even though they are a bright green color yet...i have planted and marked a couple just to winter them over outside and see if they germinate in the spring...the rest i will harvest and dry, planting them before the last frost next spring...i have more seeds form native seed search so, with luck, we will have a few more mature plants next season.

backyard harvest

2011-10-24T13:17:00.001-07:00

i wanted to fry up some sunchokes to go with lunch today so this morning i went out in the back and dug up a stand of eight jerusalem artickoes...the weather was fine and it rained overnight so the ground was soft...those eight, tightly packed plants, which never got tremendously big because the were in half-shade from the locust trees all summer, yielded over sixty tubers...i have one more bed to dig up and so far i have replanted thirty tubers for next year ( plus the twelve or so on campus and any rouges i decide to keep next spring) and still have another bed to replant...they rhyzome barriers all seem do have done the job of containing the tubers...so, hopefully all the rouges ( and there will be rouges) will be on my side of the property line...my neighborhood reputation is weird enough already with out being responsible for an invasion of hardy, ineradicable plants.

winter wheat II

2011-10-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

i drove out to the campus (which is a ghost town today) to check up on the wheat...i have been a bit concerned ( and still am) but today was a bit of a relief as the plant population is finally starting to grow. the third and fourth photos are of some of the fifty sprouts i counted today...hopefully a few more days of moderate weather will allow them to become more established...they need a few more inches of growth before dormancy for any sizable portion to survive winter and do some rhyzomatic spreading...the top photo is the garden as it heads into the mulching season...that's coming up in a few weeks...the second photo is of the stand of zea diploperennis...still up and running despite the cool weather...it will hit a wall at the first hard frost...the bottom photo is of a northern tepehuan teosinte ear in my back yard...i have been covering that plant with frost cloth every night recently just to be safe...this is a race with freezing weather which cannot be that far off...i am curious to see what happens.

sunshine

2011-10-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

i went to campus this morning to see how things were doing after a couple of raw, rainy october days...things are about what i expected this close to the end of the season...everything is winding down like the intermediate wheat grass in the top photo...the seed heads are dry and shatter readily, so the plot is reseeding itself...the second photo is of a cluster of asparagus berries...those plants are at the end of their third season and are established enough that they are reproducing as well...i will wait until they thoroughly die back to mulch the beds and see if the berries produce new growth next spring...the stand of zea diploperennis is still up and running, but i fear their days are numbered...i will be mulching that bed to in hopes of renewed growth in the spring...i am not sanguine about the chances of a sub-tropical perennial wintering over, but i will try anyway...the winter wheat has nor been happy since last friday...i planted it a week later than i wanted simply because life got in the way of the garden...however the weather is supposed to moderate for the next four or five days and hopefully that will encourage them to germinate...i counted thirty plants up...a miniscule portion of the number of seeds i sowed...so to be on the safe ( or ,possibly, hopeful) side i sowed more today both on campus and at home...the last photo is of the northern tepehuan teosinte and the chinese yams...the teosinte lost a limb in the wind and the yams are ready to be harvested...this season is about done..i have preordered seed potatoes and i have wild potato seeds as well as more teosinte seeds...i think next season on campus is covered...from the end of november to the beginning of march is time for reading (there are more books on the way)...more on that and the mulching and winter wheat as it comes up.

winter wheat

2011-10-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

i stopped off at campus after work on what can only be described as a raw, wet october day just to see what ( if anything) was up in the garden...the good news is there are some winter wheat plants up and running...they look a bit beaten down...but that will change...and they are not apparent in the profusion of numbers i had hoped for ( yet...haven't given up)...but it's a start...the seed is viable ( there's some up in the back yard too) and i can always put some more in on friday morning...and probably will since the idea is to create a cover crop and utilize the nitrogen the cowpeas fixed...more later as this develops and the weather improves a bit.

digging tubers

2011-10-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

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.

digging tubers appendix

2011-10-14T08:12:00.001-07:00

blogger seems to have doubled up on the appendix photos since you can only upload five...anyway the top photo is broadcast hard red winter wheat seed which is this year's cover crop...the second one is a bag of wheat seed...third up is the stand of zea diploperennis after i took out the jerusalem artichokes and the fourth one is a photo of no jerusalem artichokes after i replanted the bed...and last is the new look of the perennial garden project, which will last until yam harvest and the mulch for winter.

teosinte seeds on the hoof

2011-10-10T17:46:00.001-07:00

a couple of the teosinte ears have split open revealing some really green seeds...geeked isn't quite strong enough to convey my viewpoint on this...the race with the frost is on in earnest now...i am armed with frost cloth and dowel rods for the next few weeks...even though the grower i purchased them from recommends having at least one hundred plants to insure genetic diversity if you plan to d=save seeds my hopes are that they will be viable...a second generation from seeds that grew in my yard would be cool...more as this develops...more from the campus garden soon as well...i have been harvesting cowpea pods for next years nitrogen supply...the first hard frost will see the jerusalem artichoke harvest and the winter wheat sowing...things will be busy well into november.

first tubers

2011-10-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

it's october and the season is drawing to a close...the weather is fairly mild...the tomatoes in the back yard are ripening and the teosinte ears arc still cooking along...i have been looking into frost cloth and thinking about how to drape a ten foot plant without doing a lot of damage...hopefully that won't be necessary but it is plan b if the seeds aren't quite done when frost is forecast...the cowpeas are still producing pods but some of the foliage is starting to die back...they will run their course soon and that will signal the time to harvest the jerusalem artichokes...you can see in the fourth photo that they have begun to die back in earnest....i will be taking out the plants themselves soon ( not this weekend though...i have a paper to write) and will begin the big dig when the pulses are done...i was on campus yesterday evening and just reached down around the base of one of the plants and puled out four tubers...took them home and ate a couple of them raw and steamed the other two and added some butter and garlic...fine meal...i will be experimenting with some new sunchoke based dishes as well as annoying the purists by frying them in oil and dousing them with garlic salt...it is ,after all, my diet...the last photo is a panorama of the perennial garden project at about four twenty in the afternoon on october fourth (happy birthday andrea) as the shadows lengthened...more harvest news, storage project news, and a first look at the cover crop/nitrogen reservoir sustainability project in the next few weeks.

planting pachyderms

2011-10-01T06:07:00.001-07:00

it's october first and high time to begin some fall planting..so i took the elephant garlic bulbs i saved when i harvested the plants during the summer outside with a shovel, some composted manure,some coffee grounds, and some markers...i turned the compost and coffee grounds into a corner of one of the raised beds and planted them...pointy side up...about three inches deep and around six inches apart in all directions...sutck in some markers and i'm done until they show up in march ( actually i am pretty much done...they only need water in the event of a sever drought...most gardening books recommend no water beyond rainfall and that has worked out well for me the last two seasons...they are a cool weather crop that is finished before the summer heats up anyway) ...about twenty minutes all told...the cloves i harvested were huge compared to regular garlic and were very mild in flavor...i'm looking forward to some good cloves next june...later this month the jerudsalem artichoke harvest starts...they are a plant re-plant perennial ( well...not really...they just move in and take over, there no real re-planting...they can manage that on their own...i only pretend to establish rows and boundaries...have a look at some blogs from last spring to get an idea of how many rouge plants i had to cull to control the population) and i will replant after harvest...i am going to try to establish some eastern gamagrass from the seeds taken form the plants on campus out in the yard...that failed this last season so i will be putting more in in november...i believe i will try a fall planting of some northern tepehuan teosinte...i have two ounces of seeds so i can plant this fall and next spring just to see what happens...winter wheat goes in this month too...which means the cowpeas have to come out...a flurry of activity before it's time to mulch the yams and asparagus for winter...then a break to do more reading and research before potatoes next spring...more zea diploperennis too...it's okay...the work is gratifying.

september 30th

2011-09-30T11:31:00.000-07:00

"the corn plant has an extensive root system that permits it to draw moisture and nutrients from a wide area. this is yet another factor in corn's high yield. the extensive root system demands relatively wide spacing between plants, which is why there are fewer plants per plot as compared with other cereals."
corn and capitalism by arturo warman p.17.

not with dense yellow number two arturo...the top photo is of some support roots on some field corn in the trusty field off county line road and those plants aren't more than a foot apart in that metropolis of corn...that's where pioneer ( in this field anyway...bayer, monsanto...lots of players in the industry...industrial food is profitable) comes into play...modifying the genetic make-up of the corn so it will tolerate being this close together...science and petrochemicals to the rescue of humanity...for now anyway...the third photo is of some soybeans that are nearing harvest time...not quite done yet but soon...the fourth photo is of the dual monoculture ( everything about industrial agriculture is schizoid) of today's modern farm...feedstock for any number of processes...better living through chemistry...which is true i suppose...but if this field is natural in its use of chemical nutrients ( even if they are sprayed on instead of naturally occurring ) the genes in it aren't...domestication through artificial selection for plant traits is genetic engineering...humans have been at it for thousands of years...but those mutations weren't spliced in in a lab...they happened in a field plowed and fertilized by animals...and no-one owned a patent on them or told someone they couldn't save seed for next year...things have changed in ten millennia...the bottom photo is of the support roots on the northern tepehuan teosinte in my back yard...just for the sake of comparison and so i could take another photo of my plant.

september 30th appendix

2011-09-30T11:02:00.000-07:00

went to campus today on a chilly windy fall day just to check on things...there's not much going on at the moment in terms of actual physical work...just keeping an eye on things...that will change soon...the second photo shows that the jerusalem artichokes are beginning to die back and will need to be removed in the next couple of weeks...but the third and fourth photos show the cowpeas are still flowering and producing pods ( i counted thirty in an informal census this morning)so while i will remove the above-ground plants the harvest is going to have to wait until the first killing frost since i want as many cowpea seeds as i can get to continue with the self-sustaining thesis of this project..i will be digging up the whole plot searching for tubers so it will just have to wait until the rest of the plants finish their season...it can't wait too long though because the winter wheat has to go in and establish itself before dormancy...the timing could be a bit tricky if the frost holds off...i may have to bite the bullet and take out the cowpeas early...the top and bottom photos are the obligatory photos of northern tepehuan teosinte and all its ears.

ears II

2011-09-28T15:48:00.003-07:00

the northern tepehuan teosinte in my back yard is in full bore seed production with a multiplicity of ears...no frost in the immediate forecast so i'm hoping these things can move along to fruition...a silly thing to be so geeked about perhaps...i am none the less...learning...go figure.

slow food distortion?

2011-09-25T12:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/opinion/sunday/is-junk-food-really-cheaper.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

"in recent decades the adjusted for inflation price of fresh produce has increased by 40 percent while the price of soda and processed food has decreased by as much as 30 percent..."
mark bittman

mark bittman has a longish op-ed piece in the n y times today in which he argues that it is actually cheaper to cook at home than eat at macdonalds...he discusses the fast food/ industrial connection...and he goes into the lack of ready access to supermarkets that exist in poorer neighborhoods...and he discusses the fact that cooking is work most people think they don't have time to do...he counters those arguments with recipes for home-cooked meals cheaper than feeding four people off the regular menu at a fast food outlet, the fact that studies show most people live within a twenty minute trip from a supermarket and have access to vehicles, and the health benefits of cooking at home...what he leaves out ( after contradicting himself on the price of fresh produce versus fast food)is the dollar menu and the fact that when people do shop at supermarkets they are mostly buying hyper processed foods anyway...the supermarket is a fast food outlet too except its tombstone pizzas and hot pockets washed down with mountain dew...i know...until a few years ago i was right there with everyone else ( no holier than thou here please...i am not perfect in my eating..now or ever...still eat a burger now and then...chips...some ice cream...no more soda though...that is done and over) read the ingredients on a frozen dinner sometime and tell me it's not industrial food...that is more pervasive than fast food...and it is relentlessly marketed to us all...so mark you may be on the right track with the home cooked is healthy...but you missed the point that no-one cooks much any more...it's not food, it's convenience.

i threw in some photos of jerusalem artichokes to point out that moving away from processed foods isn't of necessity cheaper...if you buy them fresh foods cost more...end of debate... if you grow them be prepared for a non-stop job of work, planning and thinking...it is rewarding and satisfying to eat your own produce...and i'm willing to bet that most people who read this blog already know that

ears!

2011-09-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

the top and bottom photos are of Zea mays ears that i grew on campus this past summer ( and which tasted pretty good)and the middle three are of northern tepehuan teosinte ears that are growing on the plant in my backyard...the family resemblance grows stronger all the time...Zea diploprennis leaves...northern tepehuan ears ( i can feel the seeds developing inside the husks...i think we need about another month ) a bunch of cousins...genetically linked distinct individuals...i can see why beadle thought teosinte was the only ancestor...i just don't know if he was completely correct in that...whatever the case i have become hooked on the morphological connections between ancestors and dometicates...it was sort of accidental this season...it will play a larger role in the next.

now it is autumn

2011-09-24T06:40:00.000-07:00

i went out to campus early today because i was up anyway and here wasn't that much cooking at home...fall is in the air and you can see it reflected om the garden...the top and bottom photos are of aerial bulbs that the yams are producing...there don't seem to be nearly as many this year as last...but it was cool last spring and the yams came out of dormancy late and didn't really start to vine until june so it may be a lesser reproductive season this year...the cowpeas are producing pods in earnest ( and are still flowering ) they will continue to do so until the first killing frost...the other photo is a long shot of the garden...you can see the die-back in the jerusalem artichokes starting to take hold...i will cut them down soon but will not harvest until the cowpeas are done..then comes the big dig for the tubers and the chinese yams..then winter wheat sowing and mulching the yams and asparagus for winter...another month and a half of outdoor activity...then next season to plan...it will be spring soon enough.

nearly autumn

2011-09-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

i went out to the garden on campus after work just to have a look...thinking there wasn't much going on...at least visibly...it's getting on to fall and the jerusalem artichokes are setting tubers...but there won't be any news about those until next month..but the garden is never still and it showed me that again today...the top photo is of the asparagus plant on the southwest corner of the garden...you can see it's busy putting out another spear two-thirds of the way through september...that is the ninth spear from that root ( i swear i planted only one crown in there...i have photos...check out the "asparagus day" post)...it put out seven last year...it must really like that corner...the next two photos are aerial bulbs the yam vines are producing...i remember the appearing earlier last year, but we had a much warmer spring in 2010 than in 2011...everything started later...so i suppose it will be late in finishing as well...the fourth photo is of some cowpea pods that are maturing nicely...by next month i should have enough seeds to plant another generation next year...the green manure project continues in what i hope will be a self-sustaining manner since i have thirty plants in my back yard as well...bottom photo is of the garden at about four-thirty this evening..the jerusalem artichokes are done flowering and are starting to die back...i will cut them down soon ( and bring them home to use as mulch ) but will wait to harvest until the cowpeas die back...then it's time to plant the winter wheat cover crop/nitrogen reservoir amd mulch the yams and asparagus...and the zea diploperennis too, although i am not sanguine about it survival...what did i say about nothing much going on?

northern tepehuan teosinte

2011-09-18T17:08:00.000-07:00

just a few photos i took of a mature northern tepehuan teosinte plant in my backyard on a rainy evening...those structures look like miniatures of the mazie ears i grew on campus this past season...i am really hoping that the seed formation beats the frost here...when i calculated this out in 2009 for kathy i had it pegged as a very close affair...if the first frost held off a few days past its average date we had a chance to see the cycle through...about a month left to go and there's no real telling what will happen...i have a bunch more seeds i bought form native seed search and i have more zea diploperennis seeds form the germplasm introduction station in ames iowa....so there will be more teosinte next season...still that's no guarantee of a complete cycle if it fails this season...i'd much rather succeed now

odds and ends (mostly odds)

2011-09-14T14:47:00.001-07:00

i ran across an artifact from the industrial side of fast food today stuffed in as ballast in a unit of cartons...tubes for a tartar sauce caulking gun apparatus to douse your mercury tainted fish fillet in corn based lubricant...neat...i can't wait to patronize the golden arches in my community...good to know they have the means to palliate our hunger and slake our thirst...all from the local cornfields ( maybe...nothing is more fungible than liberty link or round-up ready dense yellow number two).

my Solanum acaule seeds arrived from sturgeon bay wisconsin's usda potato introduction station...fifty tiny seeds for bitter tubers...but this is about morphology, not good eating...the red nordlands will have to accomplish that...a big bed of tubers on campus and at home next spring...can't wait.

many crazy grasses

2011-09-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

i love a random upload, don't you?

the top photo is of some japanese bristle grass i yanked out of a bed in the back yard as i was taking photos of the zea diploperennis (second photo) because the usda sent me fifty more seeds (photo three) so i can grow some more next season ( the whole wild potato Solamun acaule project is still in limbo...aphis says i will get the seeds, but i have had no word on progress in a week)...they are subtropical perennials that i assume will only grow as die-back annuals this far north ( which won't stop me from mulching the heck out of the beds and hoping to see green next spring) so more seeds leaves me a happier man than i was...the bottom photo is of the bristle grass root system and the real reason for this blog...as i was heading towards the compost heap i took a look at it and saw the support roots it had grown...so these aren't limited to the zea family...a morphological characteristic of any number of grass species...i obviously need to look around more.

a touch more morphology

2011-09-11T10:46:00.001-07:00

i was on campus this morning just to check things out...life has intruded and i haven't been able to manufacture the time for a visit since thursday...everything's fine...the cowpeas are producing pods and the jerusalem artichokes are quietly setting tubers...harvest will be the next phase of this season...then the cover crop program and preparation for winter..i took some photos and just wanted to poat a couple...the top photo is of the wall of corn on the north side of the road by the trusty field off county line road, and the second is of a stand of zea diploperennis teosinte on campus...just a comparison of ancestor and descendant...more family resemblance.

pulses and yams

2011-09-09T06:46:00.001-07:00

things are starting to wind down on the season...the top photo is of a cowpea flower bud that i took yesterday and which will probably open today...the second photo is of a cowpea pod that has formed form one of the flowers that i photographed earlier this week...so there will be another generation of seeds produced in the garden to create next season's green manure...that is the sort of cycle i am interested in perpetuating and a subtext to the garden's exploration of annual versus perennial staple foods...the third photo is of the yam vines starting to die back along the trellis...i retrieved a handful of aerial bulbs from that vine but this is nothing like the hundreds of bulbs these same plants produced last year...i noticed that at the nodes along the vines where bulbs formed last year, this year new vines sprouted...the plants produced far more leaves this year than last and i can only think the root system has expanded...it will have to wait for harvest for that story to be told...but i am concerned about how deep the yams will be...they were approximately eighteen inches down last year, but i am told they can be as much as three feet deep...a harvest that would require a large hole in a small garden...you can see in the bottom photo that the jerusalem artichoke blooms are diminishing...i dead-headed the spent bloom this year and so the plants produced more flowers...i am curious to see what harvest i get from the same number of plants that i had last year...the leaves on the plants are beginning to die back from the bottom up and it will soon be tome to take down the stalks...harvest will wait until mid-october as is till have work to do on the storage project in my back yard...hoping to simplify the frozen ground issue...hoping not to be a public failure...but that is how we learn...i have threshed and winnowed all the winter wheat...i am prepared for the cover crop/nitrogen reservoir phase over the winter...i am still geeked...now if only i can untangle the bureaucratic mess around the wild potato seeds i will be ready to move forward on another morphology project ( the seed potatoes are already bought and paid for...the campus garden will see spuds again next spring )...always something to do.

river of industrial corn

2011-09-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

i was feeling a bit restive...edgy just hanging around the house by myself...so i took off down county line road to go to the park and have a stroll by deep river just to get some sort of perspective on the day...after a couple of miles on the trails i left and stopped by the corn field just to see how things are going with the industrial monoculture...i lucked into a field of soybeans butted right up to the cornfield so i could photograph both feedstock populations at once (top two photos)...the national corn growers maintains that despite the cool, wet weather in the spring this will be a good harvest year and form the looks of things they are correct...lots of hot pockets and soda out there just over the county line...the bottom photo is of the wall of dense yellow number two lining the road opposite the tandem field...tombstone pizza anyone? ( if the corn isn't in the cheese it will be in the sausage...or sausage substitute ) the third photo is from my stroll by the river...lots of trees in the water today and the one standing up looks like it's due to go any time...nature...nothing lives forever...the fourth photo is of a quiet stretch between the trees...if i'd had a canoe i wouldn't be writing this...but i can't help but wonder what the nitrate level in that murky water is.

river of industrial corn photo appendix

2011-09-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

top and bottom are a snag in the river...two and three are of the mesh they put on a badly eroded bank...and the fourth photo is john wood's mill

backyard discovery II

2011-09-05T09:12:00.000-07:00

those are secondary flowers i do believe...they bear a striking resemblance to the larger flower the older they get...however...about six inches down each branch with a secondary flower i find a thickening of the branch where it meets the main stem...ad there appear to be tassels forming...that is exciting news ( geeky, i know)these could actually be the seeds i am hoping for...the zea diploperennis is showing lots of new growth, both at home and on campus ( and i will mulch the heck out of it in hopes of bringing some through the winter even though i am not sanguine about that)...but shows no sign of flowering...so here's hoping the annual strain provides some seeds and another lesson in ancestor morphology.

late summer

2011-09-02T07:29:00.001-07:00

the season has advanced quite a way since april when the first plants began to appear and it isn't over yet...the older cowpeas have begun to blossom...i saw two today ( top photo ) and counted six appendages with bids forming...i also saw ant scrawling along the vines and feeding from the sugary secretion the plants produce at nodes just below the blooms...the ants help in pollination, but the cowpeas are self-pollinating...the flowers open in the morning, close by mid-day and fall off the same day they bloom....not a lot of time to depend on the insect pollination strategy employed by numerous flowering plants...lavender with purple highlights, they are more flamboyant than the low-key floers on the northern tepehuan teosinte...most grass is unobtrusive in its blooms...the yams and cowpeas have filled the trellis and the garden looks a bit more organized than last year...kathy called it a "jumble" on her only visit and this year an alleged ( she made the allegation ) master gardener called it "disorganized" until i explained the purpose of the beds...then she said "okay" ( and for a master gardener she was certainly uncertain of what to do about the japanese beetles that were devastating her grape vines...just so you know, geraniums, foxglove, and after-fours are all toxic to japanese beetles...if you inter plant them with plants the beetles attack they will act as a repellant...under no circumstances should you use pheromone baited traps...trust me you'll simply lure every beetle in the neighborhood into your yard)...the garden is as organized as it needs to be and since the eventual aim is to move towards a permaculture there never will be neat little rows of vegetables that are weeded, mulched , and doused with miracle-gro...perhaps nature organizes itself along lines that aren't particularly to human's liking...hence all the tinkering with it...almost all landscapes are anthropogenic these days...i'd like to put some compatible perennial plants together and see how they arrange themselves.

backyard discovery

2011-08-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

i wandered out into the jungle a minutes ago...just to check on the apple trees, jerusalem artichokes, and sundry other plants...when i got to the northern tepehuan teosinte i noticed it had produced three new structures, lower down the main stalk form the flower...these will bear some observation...they may be secondary flowers since this particular plant is over eight feet tall and doesn't show much in the way of signs of slowing down...or ( and this is my hope ) they could be seed ears beginning to form and ripen...more on this one as it develops.

let's talk morphology

2011-08-31T06:24:00.001-07:00

campus was eerily quiet at six twenty in the morning of the second day of fall semester classes...but i suppose not all of us are comfortable with getting out of bed at three and getting moving...i like to watch the sun come up...i use to do it after staying out all night...but that's a story ( or stories ) for a different venue...what i was doing there was maintenance and taking some more photos to compare some facets of zea family morphology...the top photo is of the northern tepehuan teosinte flower at about 6:30 this morning...if you have a look down at the bottom photo you'll see a maize flower on the 24th of this month, just before i took the plants out of the garden...not carbon copies of one another...but they still bear a strong resemblance in the individual petals...close enough to be relatives...the center three photos are of support roots...seond from the top is northern tepeuhan teosinte...the middle photo is zea diplopersnnis, ad the fourth photo is of maize roots out on my sidewalk...all theer plants sprouted support roots, the biggest difference being that both the teosinte strains have sprouted multiple tiers of support roots while the maize kept things to just one set...the zea diploperennis has multiple branches ( tillers) emanating from a central root...individually these branches are taller than the maize plants were but they lay over closer to the ground, due in part, i think, from the greater weight stemming form all those leaves...the support roots have sprouted where the stalks are touching the ground ( i lifted them up to photograph the roots) i don't see any sign of them actually extending into the ground the way the maize roots did so i am not sure if the supplement the main roots in feeding the plant...making them a sort of stolon...or if the structure is solely for support...the northern tepehuan teosinte has sprouted multiple tiers of support roots ( five actually ) but it is by far the taller of the zea family plants both on campus and in my back yard...there certainly is physical evidence for the relationship between these three plants...i'm currently reading some papaers by mary eubanks about where eastern gamagrasss fits into the maize family tree...as soon as i feel i understand her ( and that may be a while...not because her prose is impenetrable, but because i don't have her background in genetics and that may be where the relationship is more evident than in physical appearance ) i can begin to compare structures between maize and gamagrass...if there are any that are obvious to my brain.

northern tepehuan teosinte

2011-08-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

on campus top photo at home on the bottom.

transpiration

2011-08-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

well...the narrative doesn't match the order of the photos...again...it must mbe my inability to figure out the way firefox does things...but anyway...an acre of corn transpires between three and four thousand gallons of water a day and you can tell that it really needs some rain or some irrigation when the leaves start to curl up...i haven't been to campus since friday...but it has not bee particularly hot either...sunny and breezy though...and that must have been enough to dry out the zea diploperennis because when i got there the leaves were screaming water me! (bottom photo) so i dumped six gallons of water on four plants and about an hour later ( top photo) hey presto the curling had disappeared...just another connection ( morphological or genetic or both?) between zea diploperennis and zea mays.

i cross pollinated the northern tepehuan teosinte plant on campus with the one in the back yard today as well...a month and a half or so until the first frost date..i am hopeful of some seed ears before then...if not, there is ample fresh seed for more plants next season...i will just plant more seeds than this year in an effort to get more than two mature plants.

two years

2011-08-27T02:40:00.001-07:00

the perennial garden project marks its second birthday today...two years ago, after a summer's worth of emails about a lot of stuff including food and food production, kathy forgey and i began an exchange about the land institute and the efforts of wes jackson and company to breed grain plants that were perennial rather than annual...this led us to a discussion of the reasons behind the predominantly annual nature of staple food crops...she suggested a research garden on campus and set things in motion by acquiring the necessary permission...the actual groundbreaking wasn't until septemeber....but the germination of the idea and the beginning of the process started in august...since then we have grown six species of perennial food plants, jerusalem artichokes, potatoes, asparagus, and chinese yams...we also grew perennial species of spinach and tomatoes as die-back annuals because we are well north of the range of winter survivability for those plants...we also grew the prennial strain of teosinte, zea diploperennis, as a morphological comparison with maize and the perennial eastern gamagrass...also a maize ancestor...nine annual species were grown...seven for a comparison of productivity with perennials...winter wheat, spring wheat, arrugula, beets, turnips, rutabagas ( in progress)and maize...we grew the annual northern tepehuan teosinte as a morphological comparison with maize and cowpeas are in the garden as a "green manure" fixing nitrogen in the soil rather than being grown as a food crop even though they are edible...winter wheat will serve double duty as a productivity comparison and a winter cover crop to act as a binding agent for the soil to reduce winter erosion and to act as a reservior for the nitrogen the cowpeas are fixing that would be lost to leeching if we didn't save it....an innocent series of emails has led to two solid years of gardening and research and there is more to come...i have broached the subject of a second independent study paper with dr. stokely ( aka "coach" [she's my academic advisor in anthro...at least to the extent that i am advisable] and "captain" for her captaincy of the kiva lending team she established ) so there is at least another year of work to do...now if the usda would only do some work and approve my import permit for wild potato seeds from peru i could get down to some serious research and planning...papers don't write themselves...still a lot to do.

Zea mays root system

2011-08-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

the maize on campus has pretty much run its course...i harvested the ears a few weeks ago but was leaving them be to take a few more photos to use as a comparison with the teosinte...the time had come however, so i dug them up and brought them home to get a closer look at the root system...soaked them in a bucket like the wheat roots and laid them out on the sidewalk...the top photo is of two sets of roots...you can see how the support roots had actually extended below the surface and added to the plant's nourishment as well as buttressing the stalk...one of the stalks had a secondary ear complete with husk and tassels...the third photo is the plants on campus just before i dug them up and the last one is simply three root systems...nowhere near as deep as the wheat, coming in at a shade over seven inches deep ( about the same depth as jerusalem artichoke roots, although the sunchoke roots radiate out over a considerably larger area than the maize roots do...all those tubers have to go somewhere) and tightly packed, it took a while to soak the soil out of them...moe on root systems as the underground harvest ( sunchokes and chinese yams ) takes off later this autumn.

apple trees

2011-08-23T17:31:00.001-07:00

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" fruit trees...purchase dispersal with a pay-as-you-go system. for fruit trees it would be counterproductive to satiate their dispersal agents, so they tend to produce regular crops and they do not mast. instead they protect their seeds by making them toxic. apple seeds and peach seeds, for example, contain cyanide."
from "an orchard invisible: a natural history of seeds." jonathan silvertown

have to wonder how fruit eating animals/dispersal agents survive the treat...perhaps a low dosage? i don't eat apple seeds...i only try to grow them...of the sixteen i started with four are planted...three in my back yard ( top and bottom photos ) and one in my oldest daughter's...the ones out back are doing just fine and i am researching procedures to get them through their first winter...i see mulch and burlap in their future...there may be a few years before i eat some of my own apples...but only if i can succeed in preserving them until spring...more on the process as it develops.

the flowering teosinte has grown to over eight feet tall as it searches for fruition...i will be collecting pollen form the plant on campus and from this one and doing my best to get some ears of teosinte seeds...it would be gratifying to succeed this year...however i do have a supply of seeds and a bit of experience...a bigger plot and more plants ( i had a total of four...two flowered) should improve our chances next year if this doesn't work out.

more zea family news

2011-08-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

if you have a look at the bottom photo you'll see that some critter has been in the teosinte bed in my back yard again and has busted one of my zea diploperennis plants..upsetting to a degree but also beside the point...what i noticed while i was assaying the damage was that, like the northern tepehuan teosinte and the zea mays, the zea diploperennis is sprouting tiers of support roots...even if it is a bit later in the season...they are more compact and lower to the ground and may not have felt the need for additional support until recently...i went out to ( second, third, and fourth photos )campus later this morning and the zea diploperennis there is developing them as well...so there is a morphological connection between the three plants and more evidence of their being reasonably closely related genetically...the zea mays/zea diploperennis realtionship is buttressed by more than just tghe remarkable similarity of the leaves and the leaf nodes )...the top photo is of a zea mays flower ( albeit about done in) and a northern tepehuan teosinte plant flowering just behind it...unlike the support roots, the blooms don't bear much resemblance to one another apart from being a typically subdued grass flower...genetic similarities and mutation are what make evolution plausible.

in a garden, but not zea, related story, i got my level 2 usda account verified this morning and applied for a permit to import seeds for wild potatoes from peru this afternoon...intermediate wheatgrass and wheat, teosinte and maize this season...Solanum acaule and Solanum tuberosum next and we can move the morphological comparisons into cultural anthropology ( i'll tell you how after i write the paper ) still geeked about this project, and moving it in different directions...sustainability first...then we'll work on permaculture...inexhaustible subject ( for me anyway )

northern tepehuan teosinte

2011-08-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

flowers, leaves, plant, and support roots on campus.

reproduction and food.

2011-08-14T11:12:00.001-07:00

the chinese yams have begun to produce aerial bulbs ( top photo) as their reproductive cycle booms along with alternating hot weather intermixed with cool, rainy spells...there is a significant difference in the way rootstock ( rhyzocarpous) and tuberous perennials reproduce and that has a lot to do with how much edible produce they generate in a season...most of plant energy is geared to reproduction ( dna is persistent stuff ) and if the reproductive mechanism is what we eat then we get relatively more produce form a plant than if it isn't what we eat...jerusalem artichokes are tuberous perennials...the parent plant sets tubers in the late summer or in autumn...the parent plant then dies back and the next seasons plants are produced from the tubers...jerusalem artichokes produce multitudes of tubers...the second photo is of eighty-eight tubers harvested form one plant ( when i grow potatoes, which are also tuberous perennials, i usually get only two or three tubers per plant as a comparison) last october with a weight of 2.38632 kg...the third photo is of chinese yamns growing at the bottom of the plant's root system...it's basically stored energy for th eplant's early spring growth ( i was careful to leave about eight inches of rhyzome at the bottom to make sure the plant had a good start this spring ) i have two chinese yam plants on campus and between them they produced just 814.2 grams of edible produce because most of the plant's energy went into growing vines ( bottom photo ) and producing aerial bulbs for another generation of plants ( last year i harvested nearly five hundred bulbs from the yards of vines the plants produced )...think about it ( if you haven't...doubtlessly old stuff to some of you )apples, tomatoes, potatoes, maizes, wheat, soy beams, pears, grapes, squash...plants that generate a lot of produce do so because we eat the reproductive systems...rootstock perennials ( like the chinese yams and asparagus in the garden) require a large population of plants to produce significant quantities of produce and are generally specialty foods grown more for taste or status than as staples...the bottom photo also caught the cowpeas which are filling the trellis and that dark green color tels me that their bacterial buddies are churning out the nitrogen in quantities greater than what the plants can use...i have a plan to capture that excess nitrogen and save it for next season...but that will have to wait for autumn to start...more on that as it develops.

teosinte

2011-08-14T10:55:00.001-07:00

just some teosinte photos...top two zea diploperennis...third northern tepehuan ( just beginning to flower ) and zea diploperennis on the bottom.

northern tepehuan teosinte

2011-08-12T04:49:00.000-07:00

the northern tepehuan teosinte in my back yard flowered during the past week and has grown in the process ...it's now standing 75 1/2 inches and i think it has more to go...this explains the multiplicity of tiers of support roots it has sprouted ( even though i had staked it up some time ago because it kept falling over)...one of the two survivors on campus if beginning to flower as well so there is the possibility of cross-pollinating the two in an attempt to insure seed production...if the season lasts long enough...i am told teosinte is slow to set seed and there may not be enough time

vigna unguiculata and teosinte

2011-08-09T16:28:00.001-07:00

went out to campus to check up on it after work today and things are coming along...the yam vines in the top photo are nearing ten feet in length and are still developing auxiliary vines at the nodes spaced along them...no sign of flowers or aerial bulbs yet which is a puzzlement, but i've only been growing them for two years so till time to learn...the second photo is of the northern tepehuan teosinte on campus developing flowers...good news...now i can cross pollinate the one at home with the one on campus so hopefully there will be seeds...we'll see how long this takes to develop and if we can beat the end of the season...the bottom photo is of the cowpeas...they are vining furiously and filling in the trellis and climbing the posts soon to reach the yams...both are tenacious plants so i don't anticipate trouble...the cowpeas are the same deep green color they were last year as the sugar/bacteria/nitrogen symbiosis accelerates...i collected 454 grams of winter wheat seed form 383 individuals that grew in the plot on campus, so as the cowpeas' season ends i will be sowing the wheat to act as a reservoir for all that nitrogen...saving it for next season when i turn most of the wheat under prior to planting ( i will be leaving a few stands on campus and at home [i have cowpeas in all the raised beds that i have harvested here] to keep the program going)...a simple green manure/nitrogen retention scheme...farmers in northwest indiana used to do this in their fields every year when i was a child ( used to see it all the time on the way to my great aunt and uncle's house in fair oaks ) now chemical inputs have replaced the old system ( for now0- so i just borrowed the idea once i found a source of nitrogen ( any pulse will do just about...garden peas fix nitrogen too...illinois bundleflower will as well if you can stand the smell)...this year all the winter wheat i saw was left to mature as a crop because wheat prices are up... i'll give it back if they ask...but i want to see how it works first

seed heads...shattered and emergent

2011-08-06T08:09:00.000-07:00

dna is relentless in its drive to replicate itself and the plants in the garden are chock full of it...the evidence is all over...photos one and five are what really have me geeked today...the northern tepehuan teosinte in my backyard has flowered...cool beans! now, is teosinte self-pollinating? i don't know just yet...if it is we may just have some seeds here...if not there's hope the largest one on campus could flower and they could pollinate one another...if that doesn't happen then at least i know it can have a long enough season here to flower and i may be able to produce seeds of my own next year ( i already have seeds from native seed search for next season)..a killing frost is still along way off...several months at least...hopefully enough time for seeds to form... whatever happens i know more than i did in march and that's why i'm here...the second photo is of three more gamagrass seed heads that the second clump has produced...all on the same stalk...the whole seed head in the fourth photo ( which was taken four days ago ) has shattered and those are the seeds i recovered from the ground in my hand in photo three...more viable seed to plant this autumn to make an attempt to establish gamagrass in my yard...all agriculture is the distortion of natural plant behaviors into an anthropogenic system that benefits humans...tinkering with dna...i've been growing "wild and weedy" ancestors of domesticates to get a better grasp of plant morphology and the traits early agriculturalists would have found desirable or useful...it would be nice to have the same success with teosinte we had with wheat and wheat grass.

pgp 8-4-2011

2011-08-04T16:10:00.001-07:00

just a routine maintenance visit really...no special projects...just needed to check up on the garden...weed a bit ( university crabgrass mostly)...water some things and take a few photos...i noticed last time i was at the garden ( yesterday) that the yam vines are behaving differently this season...you can see in the first two photos that the vines are sprouting new vines at nodes interspersed along them...last year those nodes flowered and produced aerial bulbs...these yam roots are now in their third season and i am curious to see if the root system is big enough that it is driving more vine growth and so produce more bulbs before the season is over...they came out of dormancy quite late actually ( remember i thought the mole damaged one was a goner)...when i harvested last autumn i left quite a bit of yam at the end of the root ( there was none on the root when i first received it for planting in fall 2009 ) perhaps that extra energy impelled more vigorous growth...i am looking into this...but i think observation might be a better teacher...if you click on the middle photo and enlarge it you'll find a dragonfly perched on the yam trellis...it was a toss up whether to post this or a photo of yet another asparagus spear emerging in summer, but we've seen a lot of asparagus and this is the first insect photo of the year i think...photo four is teosinte support roots ( still geeked that this grew...i was on a mission on this particular species...wish it had succeeded a year ago)...bottom photo is the jerusalem artichoke stand in full flower...neat.

catastrophic sexual mutation

2011-08-02T15:55:00.001-07:00

the trellis seems to be working fine with vines form the cowpeas running along the lower level and the yams across the top..if the yams reach the end of the trellis they will not move downward but the cowpeas will go up...here's hoping intertwining vines won't trouble one another...the northern tepehuan teosinte on campus is developing a third tier of support roots as well...almost four feet tall i had to add some support form outside to keep it from toppling over...and while we're on the topic of the zea family...some of the ears of maize are ripe and so i harvested them...looking at the husks i was reminded of hugh iltus's theroy of "catastophic sexual mutation" in which zea mays developed a husk that denied it the possibility of reproducing with out human intervention...i am inclined towards a gradualist view of evolution...even the punctuations in stephen jay gould's "punctuated equilibrium can last thousands of years...so anything "catastrophic" ( and suicidal to boot ) in terms of a mutation that evolves through natural selection does not sit well...a thin membrane that protected the seeds and was modified by , in mary eubank's words, "intense, targeted artificial selection by humans" seems more likely to me ( and for those of you who have been paying attention i just tipped my hand on where i stand in the corn war)...whatever the case the maize is done, harvested, weighed, and will be consumed...the fourth photo is of the seed alignment in the gamagrass seed head....more corn war stuff and why gamagrass is in the garden..another ancestor...finally the jerusalem artichokes are in full flower on campus and about to begin setting tubers...haven't had any since march and i will enjoy them this fall.

more zea morphology

2011-07-31T17:12:00.000-07:00

( i adore a random photo upload...you will have to excuse the fact that the narrative does not match the order of the photos )
the maize in my backyard (photo two) has developed support roots around the base growing from a ring of nodes on the stem...as the northern tepehuan teosinte has grown taller ( photo three...it's a bit over three feet tall) it has developed a second and now a third tier of support roots ( photos one and four...if you click on photo four and then enlarge it you'll get the better view) growing form the same sort of nodes around the stem that the maize is exhibiting...this must be standard fare in every basic plant morphology text in the most basic, entry level botany class anywhere you'd care to name...but it's new to me...i never invested much thought into how maize and field corn plants support themselves or where such a trait may have come from...in the four months since i planted teosinte i have gained a better insight.

late july movement

2011-07-31T10:42:00.000-07:00

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it's still hot here and it has not rained in a few days so i went out o the campus garden to make sure the shallow rooted plants were watered well enough...i don't usually worry too much about the more deeply rooted perennials ( asparagus, the yams, and the gamagrass ) unless it is as hot and dry as it was week before last...it rained pretty well at the end of last week and the perennials are responding...the top photo is of clump of gamgrass that is the farthest west in the garden and it has produced three seed heads ( second and third photos) its neighbor seeded earlier this season which was something of a surprise since my reading was telling me not to expect seeds until the third season...good news...more viable seed to try to establish some stands of eastern gamagrass here at home...the fourth photo is of yet another new asparagus spear emerging...that is two this month i believe...so conditions must be fairly optimal for both those perennials this year...the bottom photo is the perennial garden project at about 11:30 this morning...the jerusalem artichokes are blooming (tubers!) the chinese yam vines are doing well and should flower soon...and there are asparagus berries that are maturing and preparing to seed my beds with more plants...the garden never sleeps...changes every time i visit...still geeked.

pungent pachyderms

2011-07-30T12:11:00.001-07:00

a stop by the perennial bed on a tour of the backyard told me that the elephant garlic was ready to harvest (top photo ) so i went downstairs and got the spading fork and popped them up (photo number two)...three nice sized bulbs and thirteen smaller cloves growing off the roots to replant for next season (photo three)...three plants last season produced only three cloves to plant for this year...the current season was far more productive and the only difference i can come up with beyond the fact that i grew it on campus last year and did it at home this, is that the plants on campus were in full sun and the perennial bed on the south side of the house is n partial shade during the day...perhaps they don't particularly care for full sun...with thirteen cloves to plant this autumn i believe some will receive full sun and some will be partially shaded...that experiment may provide some answers...then again perhaps not...won't know for a year...i am learning patience in all this...or maybe it is just a way to get away from the rest of life's little turmoils...either way.

some perspective...

2011-07-30T08:05:00.000-07:00

...on how tall some of the plants in the photos i've been posting are...the top photo is of the ( depending on which side of the corn war you're on ) maize ancestors zea diploperennis and eastern gamagrass...second in line is a photo of the jerusalem artichokes that are about eighty-two inches tall (ten inches over my head)...the gamagrass is almost forty inches tall while the teosinte has hit three feet...the bottom photo is the pgp at about nine-thirty this morning...well watered combined with a sunny warm day means they'll be bigger tomorrow.

yams and artichokes

2011-07-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

it has rained and thoroughly watered the garden the last few days so the maintenance needs have consisted of a minimal amount of weeding...mostly pulling the crabgrass from the university lawn out and aerating the soil around the plants...the jerusalem artichokes have begun to flower in earnest and will cycle through all the buds over the next month or so...the buds are multiplying and i counted well over five hundred today on the fourteen plants...no shortage of big yellow flowers for a while...the second yam has finally reached the top of the trellis post so i put the second one in and strung some mason's twine across for it to spiral around..i also put another line across about mid-point in the trellis posts so the cowpeas will have somewhere to vine besides aruind other plants...the rain has returned the eastern gamagrass to a lush state and the clumps are expanding their territory..by nest year i'm thinking the two clumps at the eastern edge of the garden will have nearly met making a gamagrass border on that side as a counterpoint to the asparagus and intermediate wheat grass beds on the western side...with jerusalem artichokes on the north and the other asparagus on the south that will leave only the middle open of new plants...i have requested germplasm for wild potatoes from the international potato institute and dr. david tay tells me that he will happily send it...just waiting for the bureaucracy to process things...wild potatoes are perennials and they are not plant/replant like domestic potatoes so once they go in they will be another permanent denizen along with the asparagus and chinese yams...i will grow potatoes next year on campus as a morphological comparison of ancestor/domesticate much like the teosinte/gamagrass/ maize grouping and intermediate wheat grass/ wheat that was grown this year..the one hundred and sixty square feet are filling up....within another season or two ( providing the university tolerates it) it will be on its way to permaculture with only a ground cover left to be selected ( new zealand or okinawa spinach?)...then the perennial garden project will be living up to its name and the morphological stuff will be confined to my back yard ( wild potatoes will grow here as well)

Zea diploperennis

2011-07-29T09:41:00.001-07:00

just some photos showing Zea diploperennis alternating leaf nodes and internodes...to my eye field corn resembles teosinte much more closely than sweet corn does.

food tax

2011-07-27T14:43:00.001-07:00

"...heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are all in large part caused by the standard american diet (yes, it's sad )...yet the food industry appears to be incapable of marketing healthy foods. and whether its leaders are confused or just stalling doesn't matter because the fixes are not really their problem. their mission is not public health but profit so they'll continue to sell the health damaging food that's most profitable until the market or another force skews things otherwise."

mark bittman from an op-ed piece in the n y times 7-23-2011

"..our current just-in-time food system and agricultural practices are hugely risky. as the current economic crisis tightens, those involved in food production and distribution strive for further efficiencies and economies of scale as deflation drives their prices down. the lower prices help maintain welfare and social peace, and make it easier for consumers to service their debts, which in turn supports our battered banks, whose health must be preserved or the bond market might not turn up at a government auction. as a result it is very hard to do major surgery on our food systems if doing so required higher food prices, decreased productivity, and gave a poorer investment return."

david korowicz. "on the cusp of collapse: complexity, energy, and the globalized economy."

i'm inclined to agree with bittman that the current food system does little to "maintain welfare" but i think that korowicz brings up a valid point when he says that changing the food system as it stands won't be all that easy...i've heard "tax bad food out of existence" from any number of sources as i have read about agriculture as it stands...the standard american diet may not be healthy but it does have a function is preserving social peace...fast and junk food are amazingly cheap because of the subsidies the government give to agriculture, particularly corn ( yes i will recommend the film "king corn" once again) and it is no coincidence that those who suffer most from poor diets are the poor...the dollar menu is a staple when that's all you can afford...growing your own food takes time, space, and investment both in acquiring plants and maintaining them...more things poor people don't have ready access to...vegetables aren't cheap no matter how you come by them and i can't help but think that taxing bad food out of existence will not have the beneficial effects that taxing cigarettes to a prohibitive price has ( yes...he does address that)...it will simply make poor people hungry and that will not aid social peace...the food industry has huge sunk costs in its system of acquiring, processing and distributing its manufactured goods...the up front costs of tearing that system down would inflate the cost of food for at least the time it would take to build a new food infrastructure...does anyone have that sort of cash? i don't think the bond market will fail if people start eating a healthier diet ( it seems to be able to fair badly enough on its own) but i'm not sure a tax that makes cheap food more expensive but doesn't make healthy food more affordable quickly is going to do any good...the change has to start with how we produce and utilize food and that will be something of a drawn out process...no quick fixes here...stroll over to the land institute's web site and check out the "fifty year farm bill" that's there...it will give you a better perspective on the amount of time needed to undo all the interconnectedness that korowicz is on about.

intermediate wheat grass and wheat

2011-07-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

there's been a lot of traffic to this blog the last few days from people searching for information and images of wheat grass, wheat, and wheat morphology...for information on wheat and wheat morphology...or perennials in general i suggest you surf over to the land institute's web site...knowledgeable ( far more so than me) and friendly towards polite inquiry you can probably learn more form them...as for images...those i can provide to some degree...i have a lot of experience in searching for plant images and finding a hodgepodge of photos of seemingly unrealated plants all assembled together...so the top and bottom two are photos i have taken of my intermediate wheat grass bed over that past week as the seeds mature and are beginning to be ready to collect...the middle photo is of a winter wheat seed head on the left, and intermediate wheat grass seed head in the middle, and a spring wheat seed head on the right which could shed a tiny bit of illumination about wheat morphology...hope that helps...at least you can be reasonably certain that the photos are what they purport to be.

sunchokes

2011-07-24T12:38:00.001-07:00

took a quick trip out to campus this afternoon...just to check up on things after the rain...like last time the maize was leaning over and had to be hilled back upright ( buffalobird-woman says that beyond productivity issues the maize hills needed to be spaced far enough apart that soil could be pulled up around the base of the plants to support them as they grew...another major difference between traditional and industrial agricultural methods)...beyond that i found plants under a lot less stress after some rain and a bit of a cool-off...the jerusalem artichokes are beginning to blossom in earnest and will do so for the next month or better...in an unscientific census i counted four hundred and twenty four blossoms or buds...time to give them all the water they want...last stage of growth = tubers and a dearth of water inhibits their production...the sunchokes here at home are budding ( remember most of then are rouges culled form the campus garden and running a bit behind the campus )but none have sprouted flowers...more as the display develops

home garden I

2011-07-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

"several thousand years before european colonists and african slaves would make that region an integral part of the capitalist western world, the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard grew corn as their dietary mainstay."

"traditional european crops and agricultural techniques had to be rejected as unsuitable. indigenous techniques and plants were used instead because they allowed the land to be used immediately. these methods relied on fire in order to clear the forrest and allowed for sowing crops between the stumps without uprooting them first."
Corn & Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance" [warman 2003]

"it was easy to make a hill in the ashes where a brush heap had been fired, or in soil that was free of roots and stumps; but there were many stumps in the field, left over from the previous summer's clearing. if the planter found a stump stood where a hill should be, she placed the hill on the side of the stump or beyond it, no matter how close this brought the hill to the next in the row. thus, the corn hills did not stand at even distances in the row in the first year..."
Native American Gardening: Buffalobird-Woman's Guide to Traditional Methods. [wilson 1917]

traditional maize needed room to be productive...it had a high ratio of grain returned for grain sown...around 150:1 compared to 9:1 for wheat ( this is traditional, pre-industrial agriculture we're talking here not transgenetic industrial stuff )european colonists turned to maize as a staple because it was adapted to the environment producing more grain than european imports could...much of the genetic changes made to industrial corn have been geared towards increasing its ability to grow closer together and still produce large returns of grain...that's why the corn you see in the fields is spaced a foot apart by the mechanical planters while buffalobird-woman made her corn hills at least three feet apart..." i would plant six or eight grains in a hill"[wilson 1917. p22] to insure at least on germinated plant per hill...even spread out across a field ( wheat, oats, or rye were simply broadcast into the field ) maize out produced the crops europeans brought with them until both the crops and techniques were adapted to the american environment.

the top photo is of the maize ears on campus.
the second photo is of maize support roots.
the third is of northern tepuhan teosinte support roots.
the fourth photo is of a maize ear that is just emerging from a plant in my back yard.

home garden II

2011-07-23T11:12:00.001-07:00

the apple trees are doing well...all exhibiting new growth...i have been keeping them well watered ( even before the current blast of summer heat ) and they receive full sun most of the day...i haven't had time to do much research about the number of years it takes for an apple tree to produce fruit...for now i am simply occupied with keeping them healthy through the first year...fruit is an issue for the future...the bottom photo is the perennial bed on the south side of the house...i had fits and starts with the yams but they are coming along now...the vines are winding their way up the trellis and should be feeding an expanding root system to carry the plants over to next year...the elephant garlic has begun to die back and will be harvested soon...hopefully with enough viable bulbs to allow another planting...the jerusalem artichokes at the back have begun to form buds and will flower soon...they are running a bit behind the plants on campus which are already flowering but they are in shade part of the day as opposed to full sunlight which may explain the gap in behavior in plants that sprouted at virtually the same time.

HOTTER

2011-07-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

clearly i do not yet understand how firefox interacts with blogger's photo uploader...my frustration is as boundless as a politician's arrogance...but anyway...the top photo is of the zea diploperennis plant that is in full sun all day...its leaves were curled again this evening and the ground that i soaked after i mulched it was bone dry...so i soaked it again and the bottom photo is the same plant at pretty much the same angle about forty minute later...the curling was much less pronounced as the plant once again displayed its powers of recovery...the second photo is of some decidedly distressed jerusalem artichokes curling their leaves away from the sun...when the native plants are showing signs of unhappiness you know something is up...i soaked them as well...the third and fourth photos are support roots on northern tepehuan teosinte in the back yard...the morphological proof of a familial relationship with maize could not be clearer to me...it's still in the 90s out there ( it was 84 at 4:00 am) and i hear thunder in the distance...i can hope for rain, but i will plan on a trip to campus tomorrow to soak the roots again.

one big zea family

2011-07-20T18:30:00.001-07:00

so i went out a bit ago to check up on the droopy teosinte in my yard, hoping it would perk up as well as it did no campus ( it has )and as i was nosing around in the bed i was startled to see that the northern tepehuan teosinte has developed support roots the same way my maize plants have...another bit of morphological evidence ( that multitudes doubtlessly already knew about...but i did not...that learning stuff again ) that links teosinte with maize in the zea family...the "wild and weedy ancestors" hold just as much fascination as the domestic cultivars do...i wonder if the international potato center has any germplasm for wild potatoes...they have thousands of potato accessions ...perhaps there are some ancestors available too.

HOT

2011-07-20T16:07:00.001-07:00

it has been exceedingly warm and dry hereabouts the past few days so i have been making daily trips to campus to water ( and then going home and watering...no-one [particularly me] said these projects weren't labor intensive...always something to do...or read about...or write about...but that's exactly the point...to be engaged by the environment, contribute to it, and learn something from it ...even failure is a learning experience...as much as any success...perhaps a bit more so ) with good reason...when i got there at about 4:07 ( the freeway is open again...much quicker ) the zea diploperennis in the top photo was fairly unhappy...since i took the spring wheat out it is exposed to full sunlight all day ( the ones behind it get some shade from the jerusalem artichokes on one side and the gamagrass on the other ) and today some of its leaves were curling in protest of the heat and water loss...i immediately dumped a gallon of water on it ( i used thirty gallons to day, altogether ) and then went back to my truck and grabbed all the loose straw, leaves, stems. stalks, dead roots, and any other organic matter i could find as well as a bout half a bag of composted manure...i utilized this to do a mulch job on the fly ( i knew there was a reason [ beyond a slight preference for things on the point of decay ] that i hadn't cleaned that stuff out of thee bed )...by the time i was ready to leave about an hour later the leaves had begun to uncurl and the plant was looking decidedly happier...the sunchokes in the middle and the cowpeas on the bottom are in their element and doing just fine...there are about twenty cowpeas up now and the jerusalem artichokes are so intertwined that they are self-mulching...it is dark,cool, and damp under there...a hide-out for toads, mosquitoes, and dragonflies...predators and prey...a niche in the environment...things are moving along.

just photos...no potificating

2011-07-19T16:36:00.001-07:00

just some photos i took when i went to campus after work to dump water on the plants that uploaded in a fairly random order...the top one is the support roots on one of the maize plants that have developed as the plant has matured towards its fruition ( literally )...the second one is of the buds on the jerusalem artichokes just starting to open...by the end of the month there will be no mistaking their membership in the sunflower family...the third photo ( which was supposed to be juxtaposed to the first one ) is of the ears of maize growing...time to de-tassel soon...the fourth is the old standby zea diploperennis which is demanding more water in the july heat...last photo is the pgp at iun on july 19th 2011 about 4:40 pm...always happy to be here.