climate, sunchokes, and more seeds in the mail

i received twenty-nine ramp seeds ( top photo ) from southern seedman in vanleave mississippi today and the bed that i cleared of winter wheat yesterday will become their home next weekend...this may be a long-term germination...they need cycles of both heat and cold to break dormancy and it could take two years for them to come up...fortunate that this is an even longer-term project than that ( at least i hope so )...i am not sure how clearly this will be discerned but with the second and third photos i am trying to provide a contrast of the jerusalem artichokes' behavior last season compared to this...the second photo is of the perennial garden project on july 28. 2011 and the third is on july 28, 2012...the sunchokes this year are much sparser even though i planted the same number of tubers...in one or two plans a smaller size could be an inherited trait but this year's crop seems thinner and shorter...last year ( and the year before ) the plants were so dense the shade they created made them self-mulching and there was no need to weed...i have found myself going over the gaps in the plants with a warren hoe this year to root out grasses and aerate the soil which has become badly compacted...smaller plants...earlier blooms...i won't know the true impact of this until harvest but i have been reading that farmers in this drought ridden state have been finding corn cobs with no kernels and soybean pods with no beans...droughts can be cyclical but eighty degree days in march are anomalous no matter what way you cut it...we will, i suppose, have to wait for march 2013 to see if it is something that continues...and for the 2013 crop of sunchokes ( although there won't be any on campus...only out back ) to see if it has any similarities that can be called a trend toward a climatic shift..my hope is that the behavior of native perennials will provide some clue ( which is another reason for the ramps...besides a taste for leeks )...the fourth and fifth photos are of the eastern gamagrass clumps on july 28. 2011 and today...they have grown and are reproducing wildly...still cycling terminal spears through proaxes flowering and maturing seeds that i can only have harvested a fraction of...an odd perennial season so far and there will doubtlessly be more to tell.