seeds on september's last day

those are carolina horse nettle fruits on the left and potato fruits on the right and they are soft enough to process 9 i tried this a couple of weeks ago when they were not quite ready...today saw better results )

and here's one of each still oriented left and right...

and here sliced open...

the carolina horse nettle seeds are large relative tot he size of the fruit...

while the potato seeds are not...

and the seeds of their nightshade cousin the tomato are even larger...

the nine carolina horse nettle fruits produced...

...far fewer seeds than an equal number ( albeit physically larger ) of potato fruits...the potato seeds are so genetically diverse it will be impossible to predict what i will get in the way of tubers when i germinate them in the spring..i have to wonder about the horse nettle...we will be growing some of that in very controlled conditions next season as well...

outside the nasturtiums continue to bloom...and will until there is a hard frost...

and where there are blooms there will be seeds..i collected thirty more today and now have over one hundred from a handful of seed i planted in may...no need to purchase seed in spring of 2018 ( and i will happily share )...

and, finally, the obligatory teosinte ears...it is almost october...only about a month and a half of this to get through yet..you can handle it.

short zea update

northern tepehuan teosinte ears continue to emerge and develop...as autumn progresses so do they...

and if you look closely at the bulges on the center ears in this photo you can just make out the nascent seeds...

while the emerging flowers behave lake all grasses from gamagrass to rye to wheat...

and while we are talking flowers, my supposition that those serrated edges on those oddly bunched leaves on the zea mays parvaglumis were an indication of incipient flowers has proved correct...i found three this evening...still no expectation of viable seed from such a long season...there's always hope though.

teosinte

the teosinte ears out back...

are beginning to show a more defined separation from the stems...

in ways that more clearly show their relation ship to the domesticated ( and here, highly engineered ) descendants out in the fields of dense yellow #2...

even though they both may produce multiple ears on a single plant i am inclined th o think the ancestor does it more elegantly..

meanwhile, over at the zea mays parvaglumis...

the peculiar way these leaves are unfurling with serrated edges indicates that a flower is about to be deployed...about on schedule...it is nearly october...the chances of any sort of viable seed from these plants is virtually nil in this climate...still..things are changing...nothing is certain anymore.

suburban industrial beans

i had a light afternoon agenda so i took a walk down by deep river ( which is a counter-intuitive name for it at the moment...snag river might be more like it )

on the way home i noticed that the industrial beans were beginning to finish up pout in the fields...

so i stopped off at the field behind the big box stores ( which is stil for sale by the by...property taxing agriculture out of business in favor of developers...however we need to leave that behind lest we carom off into a rant about "new urbanism" being a cover for gentrifying developers )...

the leaves on the plants were ranging from green to yellow to...

to brown, dead detritus on the ground...

which left the finished pods alone on the stalks which, i am assuming, is a trait selected ( if not engineered ) for to simplify the harvest which should begin reasonably soon...

i have grown a selection fo pole and bush beans over the years an i cannot recall the leaves dropping off to leave behind harvestable beans...then again the beans i grew were in production continuously all season and not feedstock designed to be harvested all at once

helianthus tuberosum

i was out back digging up some spuds that had finished...

when i came across a couple of jerusalem artichokes...

not especially small ones either...the classic, irregular, pain to peel shape they enjoy...

so i brought them in with the spuds and cleaned them all up...

all blues, early blues, yukon gold, and a few german butterballs with the sunchokes...i know someone who's having these for lunch tomorrow...it's already planned...

and the teosinte ears continue to develop.

zea

a little bit of the morphology of a "wild and weedy ancestor" and its domesticated offspring...

dense yellow #2 in the field by the supermarket...

and northern tepehuan treosinte in my yard...

and again in the same order..

and again...

and one last time...

corn flowers ( tassels...i am corrected time and again...however it is a male flower )

and one from the teosinte...the family resemblance is strong in many ways...the way the ears emerge from the stalks is very close to the same...however since teoasinte has no cobs it can have multiple ears emerge from the same node as in the eighth photo...there are several examples of multiple ears on the plants...nothing uncommon about it...one thing is sure...teosinte has much more interesting support roots...