yams and a grass

dropped by campus to do some watering and get the lay of the land...the top and bottom photos are of the chinese yams that have popped up...i actually did not harvest the yams last autumn at least partly to see if there would be any more growth than there was last year or if the plants would simply store the extra food ( which probably entails harvesting the yams this fall and comparing the weight with the harvest in autumn 2010...something of a difficulty in the close confines of the garden since the yams can be anywhere between eighteen and thirty six inches deep...it requires extensive excavation and there is a stand of intermediate wheat grass in the vicinity )...i have plans to reuse last year's two tiered trellis which worked well for the cowpea vines and still left plenty of sun for the yams...it should easily handle any but the most massive of yam vine explosions...the middle two photos are of the improbable return of last year's zea diploperennis...there are three more shoots up from seeds and i do believe we have some northern tepehuan teosinte peeking out as well...it's still early spring and we aren't put of the woods frostwise yet...but there won't be a hard freeze and there are obviously extensive living roots in the soil so my hope is for a full second season which i will view as a gift...forty six shoots up from last year's four plants ( and thirty eight jerusalem artichokes by the by...culled the first rouge outside my prescribed sunchoke boundary today...there will be more ) it's early but we're underway...potato planting coming up this weekend...i see cutting and callousing beginning thursday if there are no drastic impediments...more stuff in a few days...