viability

it is a warmish afternoon for late february and i decided to go out and clean up the yard a bit and turn over the bed i have in mind for the wheat for the first time...i will be turning it a few more times to disrupt any "weeds" before i plant wheat later next month...no lkater than the third week...

the new york imports have overwintered well and are soaking up some sunshine...

what attracted my attention most was the number of tesointe ears that had overwintered without shattering..the earsoin this photo hadn't even opened...

so i brought them in and removed the seeds...

soaked them in hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes...

and into the requisite damp paper towel in a baggie and into a dark place to see if the seed could possibly be viable...my expectations are low...i have also been surprised before...we'll see in a couple of weeks.

devil pantry

i have quite a few potatoes stored in the plant room in the basement...the steady temperature along with stable humidity and indirect lighting are all traditional; methods to keep stored potatoes from sprouting in storage...it works and we would call them "winter keeping potatoes"...

enter the pantry...which , in contrast tot eh plant room, is warm and dark...someone ( not me ) put some all blue and a couple of other varieties of spuds ( i see an elmer's blue and what look like german butterballs ) in there and when iwas rummaging through it today i found chits everywhere...

so i found space for them ( it is a very crowded plant room at the moment ) and planted them to preserve them...

the container with the shriveled spud i found on the bookshelf a few weeks ago has been back-filled to the brim and the spud is looking robust...

three days ago i found this potato which had already sprouted and leafed...

and it is happily soaking up light in the nursery...so now there are eighteen potato plants down there where i had intended for there to be none...i had wanted a more controlled season in the basement...my plans have been subverted by the nature of plant/replant perennials and the vagaries of stuff crammed in the pantry...

there are multiple teosinte ears still maturing..

the yacon...

and three of the four mashua plants ( the fourth is, i am afraid, a goner ) are doing fine...

and kind-hearted Jean's puddle wheat perseveres despite showing no signs of ears of grain...yet.

water

water issues come in various forms..usually either too little or too much...thirteen days ago there was considerable snow in my back yard...this has since melted and was followed by around four inches of rain in the middle of last week...

this has induced local creeks and rivers to abandon their banks for the surrounding countryside...

leaving behind silt and debris as their levels fell...all that water had to run off from somewhere and, in this particular stretch of deep river, that was from the surrounding fields...

which exacerbated old breaches in the field's berms...

and opened some fresh ones where there had been none before...these are not no til fields and the washed out areas in the fields will be filled in again with spring plowing in preparation for planting of field corn or soy beans...the berms probably will not be filled in..and next year that much more erosion will go on...this was not catastrophic flooding...there were some issues in suburban areas...roads were closed and there was doubtlessly water in many basements...i haven't heard a word about injuries, much less loss of life, though...and it is happening here more regularly...becoming expected...routine...events that would have been rarities decades ago are becoming a new normal...there is no dearth of water this late winter verging on early spring...wondering what summer will be like.

next month will be different

i hadn't been out to the community garden for some time so when the time became available this morning i went out to see what was what...and i saw pretty much what i expected which was snow...

i did find a few other noteworthy things...some of the tomatoes that were still on the vine last time i was out there have been freeze-dried...

and this one, for lack of better terminology, has shattered and dumped its seeds...there will be volunteer tomatoes soon enough if the bed is left to its own devices ( unlikely given that gardening is wholesale human intervention...still..one or two may sneak through a spring weeding )...

it has been a bit warmer and sunnier the past few days and the black fabric i used to cover the mulch on the asparagus bed is showing through as solar energy warms the fabric and has begun to melt off the snow...that will all be coming off next month as the early season begins...

despite all the intervention that has gone on in the beds i still ran across what can only be termed a "non-food" plant...plants abhor empty space and colonize it quickly...i suspect we will be seeing more carolina horse nettle in a month or two...what i removed from the garden was very deeply rooted...it is a perennial nightshade...kin of the potatoes and tomatoes we have seen out there..it can thrive where they do despite being a true non-native...i have a penchant for growing native perennials myself, however, this coming season i do believe i will be culling out the jerusalem artichokes from my bed and putting in some more "traditional" garden plants ( oh i may sneak in a few oddballs...i am me after all ) which fit into an organized concept of a "garden"...the back yard is another matter...the experimentation is coming home.

some basement news

the shriveled spud i found on the bookshelf and planted twelve days ago has sprung into leaf...i will find room...somewhaere...it may even be able to finish outdoors...

while we are talking spuds, this one has sprung up in a container with one of the mashua plants in it...how it got there nobody knows....it is there none the less...

the older two yacon plants have had a growth spurt...

so have the newer arrivals...these will definitely finish outside in spring...

a young tesointe ear has appeared since my last basement post...

and the huskless seeds are still very green...

the two ears on this plant are becoming better defined...

and these emerging silks tell me the plant has a nascent third ear coming along...a very pleasant surprise for the evening...

finally, Jean's puddle wheat, its cohabiting onions, and the guest spud they are sharing their light with are all looking robust...still no sign of wears on the wheat...i am uncertain if there will be..we hold out hope, however the ethical deed here was in the plantging...there be no need of harvest...Jean has a kind heart.