post harvest III

my indoor teosinte has begun to rebound from the aphid infestation...the brew of water, dish soap and cheap cigars has worked pretty well...did in the aphids but not the plants...there is new growth in the larger of the two plants and i am hoping for more...the additional grow light i installed seems to be helping and i packed the pots to the top with mushroom compost to provide some needed nutrients...the soil in those pots has been there since last spring and is probably fairly depleted...when spring and warmer weather roll around i will be re-potting them into larger pots ( provided we make it through a winter in the basement)because i would still like to see them go to seed...i alter their watering schedule a bit...i was watering them once a week but i believe i was erring on the side of caution and not watering enough..so i watered them thoroughly a week ago wednesday and again last sunday...the plants perked up and lost a lot of the droopiness they were developing...i think i will go back to a once a week schedule but will water more thoroughly...trial and error to find the right amount and timing.

it has snowed remarkably little in this mild december which has me concerned a bit...i need some snow to insulate my stands of winter wheat here and on campus soon..it's true that the weather has been less than harsh and so there is no need to worry yet...but a dry cold winter will decimate my plants ( sorry to those of you who loathe snow ...the snow we have had has long melted and we have had some fairly significant rain in the past week so i headed out to look at the cornfields and i have found the beginnings of some erosion gullies running form the fields to the surrounding ditches...i have been looking for erosion figures for porter county but without success as yet, however all the geological surveys i have come across note that the area has soils well suited for agriculture but that the topography of the terrain ( we are located at the end of a glacial moraine ) lends itself to significant erosion...these risks can be mitigated ( but not eliminated ) by techniques such as contour plowing...one of these small gullies is in the same place as the one i photographed last spring...the other is a new development so i will be driving by at regular intervals just to see what happens...particularly if the weather remains rainy as opposed to snowy...we will be sing what the spring runoff does as well.