the teosinte in the basement is doing fine...a couple of plants became too"leggy and toppled over and a couple germinated but did not grow...nothing unusual in either...there are still eleven plants under the lights...we will see how it goes...
the wheat is a nice shade of green and growing...i am in untested waters here...i have some idea of what to expect from the teosinte...the wheat will be an eleusinian mystery for me...
the mashua harvest was not the greatest...however it has, hopefully, put me in a position to produce seed tubers for next season...there will be a container crop next spring if this succeeds...
i have been collecting teosinte seed ( more on that in a minute ) as it matures, however numerous ears have already opened and shattered on leaving as scattering of seed on the ground...
i am inclined to leave them to see what transpires...
even ears with green and immature seeds are opening...
i have had a number of seeds drying indoors for a week or so and it was time to sort them, mostly by size and color, into batches of varying perceived viability...actually the viability of all this seed is suspect and only a test germination ( next spring so any that do can be planted outdoors ) will tell...
i separated out the seeds that were still green and those for which the seed case had not completely covered the endosperm ( like ones in the open but unfinished ears in the photos above ) and set them aside...
i sported out a second group of light colored, smaller, but not green seeds into a second group ( you can see some unfinished seed here too ) which may yield some usable seed...
and, finally, a group of two-hundred and eighty larger, darker seeds i perceive as having the best possibility of being viable...we will see in a few months...i will continue to look for mature seed however i am thinking the season for that is done...this has been by far the longest growing season i have had for teosinte since i started with it seven years ago..we will see what it has yielded soon enough.
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