perennials

we have mostly perennials in the garden ( as if you couldn't tell by the name of the blog) and they reproduce in different ways, some of them seemingly redundantly..the intermediate wheatgrass in the top photo is producing seeds, but my research tells me that they do not disperse very widely, falling mostly near to the parent plant...like many grasses, wheatgrass is rhizomatous...it sends runners out underground from its main root system and colonizes the surrounding area...the crabgrass in the university lawn does the same thing, constantly invading the garden around the perimeter, and has been the biggest "weed" problem we've faced this season. the crabgrass rhizomes spread abovegroung however, and are called stolons. the eastern gamagrass is a bunch grass that does not produce runners. it reproduces soley through seeds which it will not produce until its third season. it moves slowly, but it can reach eight feet in height , and the crown can be four feet in diameter...it chokes out its competition and expands slowly but steadily.

the second photo is of the rootsystem of a jerusalem artichoke i harvested friday ( and there are some tubers down in the bottom left corner ) and the third photo everyone should recognize as potatoes...these perennials reproduce themselves by setting tubers which produce the next season's plant...the plant and roots die-back, and you can see that for a seven foot tall plant the roots didn't go down very deep...so potatoes and jerusalem artichokes are perennials, but we eat the perennial part so we have to save "seed" for the next crop...i am told i will have to be aggressive in my harvesting of the sunchokes or we will have more volunteers than we can control next season...potatoes aren't so prolific, but. left alone would continue year to year and expand their territory.

the chinese yams in the fourth photo ( on the trellis in front of the jerusalem artichokes ) and the asparagus in the fifth ( the "ferny" looking things on the left ) are rhizocarpous or rootstock perennials...the aboveground portions die-back each year, but the roots store food and will produce a new plant next season and every season thereafter as long as conditions will suppport them...in addition they both reproduce above ground....the female asparagus plants produce berries with seeds in them ( we don't have any by the way...the crowns i planted are all males...they produce more spears than the females because they are not investing energy in seed production and so are what are planted to produce asparagus ) which is how the aparagus expands its range...the yams have invested a large ammount of energy and growth into producing vines that are yards long and , from about four feet off the ground, have produced hundreds of areial bulbs to create a new generation...i purchsed twenty of those bulbs last year when i aquired the year old roots i planted in the garden...every one of those bulbs germinated and i now have twenty yams in my yard that will vine next season ( at least the ones that survuive the winter will ) the hundreds of bulbs these plants have produced reinforce the invasive classification that these plants have been given by the usda....along with the jerusalem artichokes they will have to be monitored closely to make sure they don't crowd out anything else we try to grow.

a variety of reproductive strategies in one classification of plant...some prolific, some not so much so...some that will have to be fostered, some that will need close monitoring....i have a much clearer idea of how things work after most of the first season and my plant recognition skills ( at least as far as what we have grown this year ) are much improved...i will be able to recognize and shepherd volunteer sunchokes and yams in the spring..i will try to keep plant chaos at bay