rain

i have been busy lately...so has the weather...

almost five inches of rain in the past four days has put a damper on many things...however this evening i went and took a look around...

the behomth maize has ended its season...a bit over ten feet tall from its support roots to the flower and one of the plants in the yard produced an identifiable, if not viable, ear of seed...

it is the purple flint i have been planting and i am at a loss to explain why it is expending so much energy in heigth and so little in seed...i'd say it is the shady nature of my yard if the maize in the sunny community garden had not done the same thing...just one anomaly here this evening...

i have collected almost eighteen hundred teosinte seeds from my yard so far...there are still green ears out there...however i have been collecting ( sixteen so far )these out there as well...

teosinte seed that appear to be on rudimentary cobs...something i have not seen in a decade of growing zea mexicana...is this a variation within the ancestor's genes...or has it cross pollenated with its decendants i was growing back there? don't know..so...research...we will try to find an answer...

down in the basement the legumes...

have shown good growth in the past eighteen days and are pretty much dead ringers for cow peas...if this continues they will take over the plant room.

mistimed?

october 2021 here has seen tempreatures in the eighties ( fahrenheit ) which, while not unheard of, is still unusual for so many days in a row...today's tempreatures are passing for what is probably "seasonable" these days...still mild when you consider in my younger days it had already seen the first snow by this time...and i am not really complaining...

portions of the winter wheat bed were looking a bit sparse wheat-wise so a bit ago i brodcast more seed into the bed and virtually all the newer wheat now has a second leaf which means we are good for winter...if the snow cooperates and arrives before serious cold sets in...

and a sizable proportion of the garlic i planted is up and running...again, should be good for winter...still, the mild and springl( if not summer ) like weather is having a different set of impacts...

anyone who knows me, or any regular reader of these screeds, knows that the bed of my truck is home to a thriving colony of new york strawberries...

and any annual that finds its way there ( one imagines by bird...only the strawberries were deliberately planted )...this year it has been black nightshade which, since it is autumn, is in the process of dying back...all good so far, however...

finding newly sprouted legumes of some description on the twelfth of october is not...the timing is unnatural...odd...not that i haven't seen soybeans and volunteer corn in harvested fields doing this...this still strikes me as odd...

no doubt these are legumes...there was a bush bean back there last year, however i am thinking these are cow peas sprouted from seed spilled last spring...the mystery is why they took so long to germinate if that is the case and, if not, where did they come from?

they ( there are three ) all had well developed root systems that were running laterally ( there is not a lot of depth to the growth medium in the truck bed )...however well developed roots were not going to help these plants when the real cold hits...so...

it was down to the plant room where i prepared a container...scooped out three holes...augmented them with worm castings...

planted the newcomers and lowered the growlight to the lowest possible position, starting the 2021-2022 indoor season...there wil doubtlessly be spuds later...there are always spuds

entropy?

well there certainly hasn't been much to tell so far this autumn...

the bees are lethargic...

the temperatures are moderate ( which is fine...we will get to why in a moment )...

rainfall has been sporadic, however adequate despite the occasional need to water...which may be adding to the inertia rather than remedying it...

of the fifty odd garlic cloves i planted two weeks ago i think one is up...

and while the bed of rye has filled in fairly well...

the wheat is looking a trifle sparse...so i scrounged up some more seed...

and broadcast it into the bare areas of the bed...the seed looks to be willing and if the above mentioned moderate ( but boring ) weather holds they may actually make it...

one of the ten foot maize plants out by the teosinte has sprouted an ear of sorts...again, if the moderate weather holds, it might actually mature...i would like some viable seed...and while both teosinte and viable seed are on topic...

i have, so far, harvested upwards of five hundered zea mexicana seeds...next year's crop and some for the freezer...there may be more over the next week...there may not...things are slow.