Monday, July 4, 2011

beet harvest







in what has been a typically busy morning i went to campus after i visited the corn field to check up on things and to harvest the beets...the maize in the top photo was upright this time and is slowly catching up to the northern tepehuan teosinte that is behind it...the teosinte is actually a couple of feet back and is taller than it looks...both plants are nearing two feet in height...after i harvested the beets ( the haul is in the third photo...1.23kg from twelve individuals in a five square foot plot...nowhere close to perennial tuber production) i planted half a dozen more cowpeas to continue with the green manure portion of the project...i am allowing the winter wheat to dry further since the harvest and will thresh and winnow it soon to provide seed for the fall nitrogen uptake and use as a cover crop to limit erosion...the second photo is zea diploperennis which is over eighteen inches now and all the plants are branching heavily...it is more of a teosinte thicket than a row...the last photo is a group portrait...the gamagrass in in the foreground with the jerusalem artichokes creating the backdrop...one yam is moving laterally along the trellis...the other is poking along to the extent that i haven't had to set up the other half of the second trellis yet...soon perhaps...the spinach has gone to seed but needs to go a bit longer before i bring it in so the garden will have some dead looking stuff for a bit...the wheat grass and asparagus are doing just fine ( the female plant that was mowed has ferned and flowered so it will be producing berries again soon...a resilient plant given proper conditions...i told the lad who apologized for mowing it that he had nothing to be regretful for )...the cowpeas are just getting started but now that the foliage form the beets has been removed the will be accelerating in their growth...no disasters yet nearing the halfway point of the season...if our luck holds there will be a bumper crop of sunchokes and the rutabagas that go in at the end of this month will prosper...stay tuned.

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