zea mays mexicana II

three days in and we have significant greening...

and the first true leaves on the teosinte...

so i dressed them with earthworm castings ( and, seemingly, a centipede )...gave them a shot of distilled water...

and lowered the light...the winter season has started...we will see how it goes...

zea mays mexicana

while i was rooting around in the plant room downstairs i came across some teosinte seeds from 2019...so i took five of them and soaked them in hydrogen peroxode for twenty minutes to break dormancy ( or attempt to...no idea if five year old, unfrozen seed, would be viable ) and put them in a dark place in a baggie wrapped in damp brown paper towel for a couple of weeks...

and a reasonable forty percet actually did germinate...

so i planted them in a container of garden soil and gave them a healthy watering...

and lowered the light...if they develop well i wil be planteing some of this seed outdoors in spring rather than thaw out a batch...stay tuned for develpments if you're interested

zea mays parviglumis and popcorn

i have the teosinte variety zea mays parviglumis growing in a number of places around the yard that i planted in late may...it has a long growing season...155 days if i am not mistaken, it has been a while since i found that information and, despite varied queries, the interweb is not cooperating in puking the information out today...i do not have that much time for the plants to mature so seeing silks and ears, much less seed, is unlikely...i simply grow it for the morphological comparison with its descendant maize...despite the low probability of a complete season ( one cannot tell exactly what the climate and/or weather will do )...

several of the plants have begun to flower so we may see mature male blooms if nothing else...i will take what i can get here...

that, simply for comparative purposes, is a popcorn plant and an "improved" genetic relative of teosinte...no tillers here at all, unlike its ancestor...

grown from a seed found, almost incredibly, germinating in a straining screen in a shower drain...odd things can happen here.

just a morphological note

that is a kernel of maize without a husk that has formed just below a stunted flower on a tiller...

which would seem to be a habit it picked up from its ancestor teosinte which was doing the same thing last season.

arrival

fed-x delivered the bee cocoons on the twelfth and, as usual, i put the tube n the refrigerator for fifteen minutes to calm down any bees that hatched out ( always the boys ) in transit and then took it outside...

i was mildly surprised to find no active, if somewhat dopey, bees when i opened the tube...

and even moreso when i began to pour out the cocooons...

i placed the cocoons in the hatchery...

secured the anti-critter netting...

and zip-tied down the roof...

as i got to the end of the tube three of the boys that had hatched out in transit did appear, however by that time they had warmed enough to be fully operational and off they flew before i actually got any good photos...

they seemed pleased to be out of the tube and out in the world, going off to explore...

last year one of the hatched boys was missing a wing...he hung around the hatchery for a while and then vanished...i'd like to think to safety however there are a lot of predators in the yard...the good news this year is everyone took off with an even chance...always good to find a plus...i will keep an eye out for hatching girls...they keep to their own schedule so keeping an eye out may not equate to seeing.

preparedness

it was a busy season for mason bees out back...however their season is over...so...

i took down the boxes they have nested in...

and placed them in preditor resistant mesh bags then put them away in the tool shed...

after which i placed new bee houses in the old sites...

then i spruced up the hatchery and placed new cardboard on one end to black it out, leaving the other open...why? tomorrow my leaf cutter cocoons arrive and they need places to both hatch and to nest...one hopes for as active a leaf cutter season as the masons produced...we will see...in the meantime there will be an arrival blog soon enough.

nineteen days in the life of a dryad's saddle on the dead elm

10 may

12 may

13 may

14 may

15 may

16 may

17 may

19 may

20 may

21 may

22 may

23 may

24 may

26 may

27 may

28 may

29 may

31 may

2 june