the jerusalem artichokes continue to bloom...they do give the garden a sunny disposition and i am becoming attached to it...many of them are above the top of my head as well as the plants continue to grow...the flowers have been attracting quite a few bees to the garden but i haven't found any lady bugs yet...drawing beneficial insects into the garden's ecology was supposed to be one of the advantages of planting sunchokes and i hope we can move beyond bees.
the intermediate wheatgrass (third photo) is beginning to mature and go to seed...i'm going to have to develop a method of collecting the seeds from a few plants before those seedheads dry out and begin shattering, i'd like to get a handle on a reasonable average seed production in those just to have the data...the gamagrass won't seed for two more seasons but even so i'd like to have a basis for some sort of comparison...if i can overcome my teosinte difficulties it would be useful in that comparison too.
in the first fifty-two days of the season, from 2 april 2010 to 24 may 2010 i used two hundred and seven gallons of water over the rainfall on the garden...in the following fifty two days that ended yesterday i used two hundred and forty gallons...this struck me as counterintuitive at first...the jerusalem artichokes, chinese yams, and asparagus are all well developed ( except for the runt asparagus which had been living in the shadow of the spinach and arugula until recently...i hope it does some catching up now that their season is through ) and should have deep enough root systems to utilize some groundwater...some of the potatoes have been harvested ( and the rest will probably come out this weekend )and i wasn't watering the elephant garlic at all...a little thought brought me to the realization that as i harvested i was replanting the area with cowpeas to help the garden along for next season...the weather has warmed up a bit and despite continued rainfall the garden's surface soil has been drying out more quickly between rains...while the perennials have extensive and deep root systems the cowpeas are annuals that are rooted more closely to the less moist surface...couple that with the need to keep the soil ( i feel more at ease calling it that now than i did last fall ) watered to allow the newly planted cowpeas to germinate and the increased water use becomes better explained.
we are hurtling toward autumn and the end of the garden's first season...i am all anticipation over the yams and sunchokes...digging down three feet to get to the yams should be really interesting...can't wait to see what turns up!
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