reproductive cycles

downstairs this spud is showing signs of dying back at the bottom...and a smaller plant in the same container has already run through its season...

it produced three "drops"...small tubers that wull be seed for plants in one of the beds i have reserved for the coming season at the community garden...

there are other tubers stored down there that are announcing the nearness of spring and a fairly urgent need to find soil...they may start in pots...they may hold out until next month...we will see...either way , the time for planting is "soon"...the dna is urging an opportunity to replicate...relentlessly...and that replication is not confined to the spuds...

there's movement over at the berry colony as well...

some berries are done and replete with seed ( which we will be saving and planting )...

and some are still cooking...two things i have noticed...one is that not every berry is on a stolon, however every stolon has a berry...and the second is that the blooms that would produce new berries seem to be on hiatus while the berries that are mature...one can hope for another cycle of blooms but no buds are in evidence...

the stolon that i pinned in a peat pot on moving day...

has formed roots so i replanted it without the pin...a secondary reproductive mechanism in action and a clear indication of this berry's membership in the same family as strawberries...

another stolon has come to roost in a container...i did not pin this one simply because it did not seem to need to be encouraged to stay put...gravity seems to be helping me out here...so the colony is growing in artificial conditions...relentless dna again...the plants will go back out in spring to further colonize the ysrd with berries and yellow blooms..a few people have asked why i did not do this with the wild strawberries i have out in the yard...i could...however they only bloom and produce once a season in late may and early june...they would produce daughters in the basement in winter without fail, however i am uncertain that i have the periscapacity or thechnology to create the day length conditions i suspect have a great deal to do with traditional blooming strawberry reproduction...an everbearing variety may be an answer to that ( the wild strawberries clearly are not everbearing ) they are not wild though...seriously "improved" domesticates...that is a project for another winter.