yam mulch

after the harvest i replanted the tops of the roots with about eight inches or so of stored carbohydrates to fuel next spring’s emergence and backfilled the harvest excavations…i marked the plants’ locations with grade stakes and then covered the area with forty pounds of composted cow manure ( i am closing in on a ton and a half of compost dumped on that one hundred and sixty square feet of ground since 2009…the worms are happy…and abundant )…i put a layer of about six inches of straw over the compost and then anchored the whole lot down with landscaping fabric and staples…this has been a efficacious method over the past two seasons and i don’t see a real need to experiment with other methods…it protects the plants adequately ( although we will see if it can preserve the zea diploperennis for another winter or if the second season of that stand was a serendipitous consequence of the mild winter last year ) and it keeps straw from blowing all over campus and getting the gardener in hot water…the asparagus is slowly dying back and i will most likely be out there again early next Saturday cutting back, marking it, and mulching away…that will close out the season for the pgp this year and leave the way open to follow the progress of the semi-domesticated wheat grass from the land institute and see how well another batch of hopi blue maize does as well as some notrthern tepehuan teosinte ( plus the yams, asparagus, gamagrass, and [i hope] zea diploperennis )…it has been an odd season…mostly, i think because of the unnaturally warm march and the early start for the perennials…because the annuals didn’t seem to have too much trouble if i kept them watered…i am curious to see what next spring willdeliver and if the warmth was an anomaly or if it is an indication of a new “normal” and how tht will impact the native perennials i have been populating the pgp and my back yard with…more as it comes up.