...but a bit peculiar none the less...but then it's been a peculiar season so far anyway...the jerusalem artichoke plant that is topping out just over a meter in height in the top photo is the tallest of the bunch on campus...and yet some of the shorter ones are starting to bud and acting as if they are going to flower soon...the texts all say jerusalem artichokes flower in late august or early septemeber...which is fine, but in the last two seasons of growing them mine have begun flowering in july and carried on until early septemeber at which time the plants began to slowly die back...once again we're almost a month ahead of schedule ( remember the winter wheat ) oddly the jerusalem artichokes in my back yard are almost five feet tall and they are showing no inclination to flower...so what's up? more research and observation apparently...some of the sixty odd terminal spears on the proaxes of the eastern gamagrass have begun to mature...that's what's left of a shattered seed head in my hand and the first seeds for autumn planting here at home...they look like chunks of wood and are devilish hard to start...once they do you get clumps like those on campus which are huge this year and destined to get bigger ( on my watch anyway )...the season's cooking along and i have a few more photos of maize and teosinte form today that i plant to post later for anyone who's interested...i am curious to see what the sunchokes do and will be monitoring all the plants that i have going to compare behaviors and results...i have also received a message from the potato introduction station at sturgeon's bay wisconsin and i will have news about new potato landraces going into the gardens.
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