hilled, mulched, and trellised

the yams have resisted my efforts to have them move laterally so i set up a couple of treated two by twos for them to vine up on...if they actually do so i can festoon the posts with mason's string and give them more area if they want it...we'll see what happens over the next few weeks...it isn't permanent in any way...if they don't use it i'll remove it...the rest of the photos are of the process of hilling the potatoes...i saved the straw i used to mulch the garden for winter when i opened it up this spring and today i brought a bag along with some compost ( 120 pounds) to use...first i watered the potatoes, then i laid down a layer of straw about two inches deep and covered that with compost...mostly to keep the straw from blowing all over the campus, but also to help create a medium for the straw to rot in ( it will...slowly)and put the organic matter from the straw back into the soil rather than throwing it away...this will keep the tubers from being exposed to sunlight and "greening" (green potatoes are toxic), help prevent moisture loss, and mulch weeds down...i will be hilling the potatoes again as they grow and tomorrow i get to do it here at home...i also mluched the jerusalem artichokes in much the same way as i hilled the potatoes and for pretty much the same reasons...so why is one mulching and the other hilling? near as i can tell because i'm only doing the jerusalem artichokes once and the potatoes will need to be done at least one more time.

no wheat grass is up yet...i watered the bed just to keep things cooking...perhaps it's abit too cool yet...i know the tomatoes are staying in peat pots under the grow light until things heat up...and speaking of grow lights i now have fourteen Zea diploperennis seedlings going an the zea perennis seeds have germinated and will be ready to move to peat pellets in the next few days...i will start the northern tepehuan teosinte today and the zea mexicana is stubbornly refusing to germinate at all...i still have thousands of seeds th eusda sent me and i will be stubborn in my attemps as well...but i am beginning to wonder if i got some bum seeds from florida.