i need more data...

...and most likely some help in interpreting it...but that's for later...i arrived on campus this evening at the tail end of a doozy of a thunderstorm that both saved me the effort of watering and didn't do anything in the way of damage beyond leaving some of the jerusalem artichokes listing towards the southeast...and ( coincidentally ) the top photo is of the garden's stand of jerusalem artichokes exactly one year ago tomorrow...they were topping out about six feet tall and there isn't a blossom in sight...just a bunch of native plants thoroughly at home...the second photo is of the jerusalem artichokes on campus this evening...a shade over four feet tall with some feeble looking flowers...so what's up? it was a mild winter and an exceedingly warm march which got the perennials and the winter wheat that went in in october 2011 all started early and they seem to have been out of kilter since...i'm wondering if the uncharacteristic weather has them confused...northwest indiana is part of the jerusalem artichokes' native range...they evolved to live here so has a glitch in the climate thrown them a curve? there is another native species in the garden in the eastern gamagrass...last season three plants produced a grand total of four proaxes between them and a handful of seeds...this year there are seventy plus proaxes and their attendant seeds in a berserk display of propagation...i won't know until harvest how many tubers the sunchokes will have set but the anomalous behavior of the plants seems directly tied to the climate...in an effort to see if this accelerated season extends beyond the perennials and the annual that wintered over in the garden and so got an early start as well i asked Dr. Ellen Szarleta if i could track the maturation of the annuals that were planted in the iu northwest community garden ( she said yes...thanks again )...since i know exactly when thy were planted and have a range of dates for their maturation ( 90 to 110 days for the potatoes in the third photo, 72 to 75 days for the peppers in the fourth, and 65 days for the eggplant in the fifth ) any variation in their season should be easy to spot...i'm looking at introducing more native species since their behavior seems to me to be a fair gauge of whether this sort of behavior is just part of an anomalously warm spring or if there's something more long-term at work...obviously this won't happen overnight...or even this season, but i never perceived this a s a short-term project ...more form the gardens and my back yard as it surfaces.