viable?

forty-eight days ago i had a look at the twelve foot behemoth from the zea family ( i am not at all certain exactly what it was in the family however it was unmistakably zea ) that had begun to sprout silks and ears...it was late in the season...still it did produce ears...

and while some of them remained distressingly green until the first freezes killed them...

some of these odd ears may have come along far enought produce viable seed...

so out of curiosity i took two likely looking ones...

placed them in some unbleached paper towel soaked in distilled water...

and into a baggie in a dark place for a while to see what happens...

i did not soak the seeds in hydrogen peroxide to break dormancy as i would have with teosinte...mostly because i don't think this is teosinte...the plant they came from was allegedly maize...at least that is what the seed package said and they certainly looked like maize kernels whan i planted them...there was teosinte interplanted in the bed and there may have been some cross pollination...and these seeds many not germinate...or i may have a hybrid on my hands...who knows? we will be seeing...more in a week or so.

puttering

it is a fairly quiet time of year however i invested some time from a day off to wander around the basement...

where the spuds i have planted under the lights down there...

have stems...

and leaves that are greening up...so an indoor season well underway...

while outside in the yard where it is "unseasonably warm" even after a couple of hard freezes...

and what the drought monitor calls "abnormally dry" with this being the rainfall total for the month...in my yard at least...

none of which would seem to have had a negative impact on the garlic...

the egyptian walking onions...

the winter wheat and rye...

or a cpuple of dandelions i found out by the alley...winter seems to be hesitating...we will see for how long...and to what magnitude...

zea mexicanan ears are opening and shattering...

i took a handful of seed that looked reasonably viable from one...

which i broadcast and raked into a known patch of open space ( after i removed the catalpa tree pod ) just to see what comes of it in spring...perhaps nothing...perhaps a pleasant surprise...we'll see...

finally, for anyone who might be interested, this swhat the 2345 zea mexicana seeds i harvested this year looks like...i will be sorting them, mostly by color, saving some to germinate and plant in spring, and freezing the rest...more on that later.

winter quarters II

i put three shriveled and almost expired seed potatoes i found outside in pots a while back just to give them a chance...

all three took advantage of the opportunity and since the outdoor temperature was forecast to hit freezing i brought them into the basement last night...this morning...

i dug up a container...

and transplanted the three of them into it...the largest is clearly working on setting a tuber already which is destined to become another plant in this conatiner before winter is over ( we are looking at a january or early february finish here )...

as usual this time of year the early harvest ( june ) seed potatoes are chitting away so i gathered the sprouts out of the bin...

and planted them in three more conatainers...my expectations are low...i will be adding worm castings and compost as i back fill the containers, however my experience tells me i am likely to get no more than potato bushes and small drops for spring planting...that's fine...it gives me something to do on winter evenings...next project is seed sorting.

winter quarters

it is what the media would call "unseasonably warm" here ( people are out mowing their yards...i am agahst )...what "seasonable" is anymore should be a matter of hot debate for all of us...but somehow that "political will", or lack thereof, gets in the way...they do tell me the weather is preparing to return to autumnal standards for the area so i did some winterizing...

so i got out the black and decker leaf vaccuum...

and mulched the ramp bed i cleared out last week with a couple of catch-bags full of leafe detritus...

then i moved my four year old (!) shared ownership maple tree to his winter spot...

surrounded the container with a pile of straw to create dead air space...

and topped it with three bags of mulched locust tree, catalpa tree, maize, and, probably some of his own, leaves ( natural self-sufficiency ) to hold the straw down...it's breezy and no doubt there will be maintenance work to do on this as the seaon progreses..i am, however, done for the day...at least outside.

two different directions

"unseasonably warm" is what they might call it in the media, and the signals seem mixed but are actually pretty clear...

there are still green ears on the teosinte, however since there have been a couple of hard frosts i am thinking there will be no more viable seed produced...i have harvested around two thousand seeds so not an issue for me...

i did not take it all though...i allowed some ears to ripen and shatter just to see what might happen...

over in the east bed the asparagus is dying back...

while the winter wheat and rye are enjoying the weather...

there is still a green pod on the field peas i left standing when i planted the grain beds...

there were not many pods to begin with, however hopefully the half dozen i found will render enough viable seed to run a small bed in the spring to grow more seed for autumn...

and meanwhile, i had found some sprouted spuds in the basement that were not going to make it much longer so i put them in small pots outside to see what would happen...despite the frosts they have begun to green up in true spud fashion and so will be coming in for the winter under the lights...when the weather dictates, not before...unnatural but necessary.