concord corn ( again )

how warm is it here?

warm enough that the plants changed significantly...

in the course of seven hours...it's warm enough to watch the corn grow...

and the concord grapes in the catalpa tree and the ones in the fir tree and the ones just attaching themselves to the fir tree are getting ready to bloom....we will see how the fruit develops before we make plans...the harvest from the past two years has been disappointing...hoping for better this season.

may ends on a zea mays note

some of the six newly sprung corn seedlings...

that have joined the three already established hybrid and heirloom maize plants...

and a dozen or so ancestral teosinte plants...a corny thirty-first.

a tramp around the yard

i started an early stroll around the yard with a week old maize plant...

and, a few feet away in the same bed, its ancestor teosinte...there is a certain family resemblance...however it has been clouded by the many generations ( and alterations...all artificial ) between them...

the potted teosinte continues to flower and i count an even dozen ears now...

the winter rye is in full bloom...

while the winter vetch is playing catch up

the chinese yam vine is growing and adding leaves...

and the strawberries are ripening in what seems to be serial fashion...

there is activity in the ramp bed as there are now eight plants preparing to flower...

and some have died back completely above ground...that isn't the whole reproductive story however...

ramps are members of the allium family and they share some morphology and behaviors with other members of that family..including bunching...i dug a couple of the ramps that had died back and the had both bunched in the time since march...two for one...

so i separated them and replanted them in more sparsely populated ares of the bed...as they die back i will be digging them up and replanting, or using, the bunched ramps as my aim is to completely fill the bed and maintain it as a renewable source of wild seasoning...

while i was rooting around in the ramp bed i ran across an earth worm...flowers, ears, ;leaves, reproduction, worms...a good time this morning.

another afternoon...more change

as if the south bed isn't busy enough...

not only does it have its share of wild strawberries, their stolons and daughter plants...

as well as ripening berries...

and spuds and onions...

it is now home to a couple of chinese yam vines ( i know they are yams...you can tell by the leaves ) which seem to have sprung up overnight but were, more likely, simply overlooked by the gardener...

there is other work going on around the yard...i can now count eleven ears on the potted teosinte plants...

over on the north end i can count six ramps preparing to flower...two more than the other day...

and at least one stand of winter rye is nearly as tall as the gardener ( it also has the largest ear of rye i have ever seen..i will be practicing artificial selection and keeping that one for seed for the autumn planting...hoping to grow a lot of plants with large ears )...there will be a harvest in the next month or so...then threshing ( much easier than wheat ) and winnowing ( every bit as much of a pain ) and more storage until it is ground.

accounted for

i got to the garden about seven thirty this morning and the first thing i did was to connect the hose and water all the planted beds...

that accomplished i went to work on the asparagus bed...everything there seems to be doing well...nothing unusual going on...no real need for intervention...so i hoed the bed to disrupt the "weeds"...

then i "hilled" the volunteer potatoes there with compost and wandered down the row to my bed...

where, as expected, i found a cohort of newly risen jerusalem artichokes...they are sparser now but still relentless...i removed them as well as i could without disturbing any corn seedlings...this will go on a while...

i had come prepared to replace any casualties with more corn seed i had soaked in water overnight...this proved unnecessary as all the seeds i planted nine days ago have germinated...some of the plants are even to the point of producing a third leaf...

once again watering the corn had washed away part of the hill exposing the nascent roots and the germ of the seed still feeding the seedling...

so i covered them back up and buttressed the hill with more compost in hopes of keeping them in place until they are more deeply rooted and able to stand on their own...

beyond the jerusalem artichokes i did not find anything much in the way of invasive plants in the bed ( although i did find another volunteer spud back up under the alfalfa ) so i hoed the bed to loosen and aerate the soil...there is rain in the forecast fro wednesday so i may not be making another run out mid week..then again i may just be curious to see what's up.