was it my watering in the campus garden yesterday that triggered almost an inch and a half of rain in the ensuing twenty-four hours? unlikely...still that is what happened and there has been more since i took that photo...
a few of the plants are looking over watered...some maize is going pale green on its way to yellow and there is already serious yellowing on some spuds...
yellowing and rain aside, there were things to accomplish...i planted a geranium in my bed on campus as a repellent for japanese beetles and i had the rest of the tray to put in out back...
after i pulled the blooms and buds off ( i know...the flower petals are the toxic part for the beetles but i am trying to get the plants to focus on rooting first so i get more blooms later )...i planted...
two by the grape vines at the south end of the house ( these will have no impact on the vines in the trees..if i discover beetles there i will have to resort to neem oil )...
and one out by the zucchini...where i popped up a friendly earthworm preparing the bed for the geranium...
i planted another by the maize..again, not for that plant but for the beans i plan to grow there once the corn has reached the proper height...
and i placed one each in the east and south beds near the wild strawberries ( the ones by the zucchini and maize are close enough to the strawberries in the north bed to cover them )...that done i went to take a look around to see what was what out there...
out in a half barrel by the back fence all three of the bogota market mashua tubers i planted a few weeks ago have sprouted...miniscule though the leaves may be there is no mistaking them...
the dwarf syrian wheat has joined the blacktip wheat in producing ears...no surprise here...the dwarf wheat produced ears earlier than the hard red or emmer last year and it seems to have upstaged the einkorn as well..the surprise was in a container outside the wheat bed...
regular readers ( if there be any ) may recall that last october i found an ear of wheat that had germinated in a puddle of water on my basement floor and that Jean and i decided to plant it...
and it spent the winter under the lights in the basement...
on april twenty-second i moved the puddle wheat outside at Jean's urging to allow the enfeebled grass to end its days outdoors in the natural light it had never seen...
fifteen days later while puttering around the yard i found what looked like new growth at the crown of the roots...
in the ensuing thirty-three days that new growth burgeoned into a stand of hard red spring wheat from a root system eight months old...well beyond the normal life span of any wheat plant in the wild...
this morning i discovered the plant had produced its first ear of wheat...so Jean's puddle wheat has a happy ( or, at least, meaningful ) ending...i may be sending a few ears her way...and saving the seed separately to grow another generation...
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