abnormally dry...

is what the national drought monitor is calling it...which, i believe, i have already pointed out somewhere or other...it's a holiday and a day off so i did garden maintenance this morning and i will present them in inverse order since the campus garden was a bit later in the morning and is the best illustration of "abnormally dry" as you can see by the lawn there...

there are clear signs of water stress and more than a few bare spots developing...

even though i watered thoroughly last trip out the soil in the beds was dry a couple of inches down...

so i watered again...thoroughly...

things were so dusty dry that the peat moss was floating on top of the water when i started and it took a few minutes before it had absorbed enough water to sink...admittedly peat moss is fairly powdery anyway however the water was raising dust clouds...

dry or not there seems to be a fairly robust potato community cohabiting with the asparagus...

on the other side of the bed, "ferned" asparagus has already begun to topple over...

so i drove in what will be the first of many stakes in the bed and returned the miscreants to upright for their own good...

as the season progresses the spear production has lessened...and i saw no signs of harvesting...

over in my "offical" bed, the garlic is still spluttering...

however there are a couple of new, healthy looking, volunteer spuds up...

my very favorite correspondent will be pleased to see the alfalfa is still enggaing in patenetly reckless defiance of limits...

and my surmise that the alfalfa was preparing to bloom from the last visit has proved true...

while i was there i also planted five hopi blue maize seeds ( i am uncetain about the viability of the third one in the second row...we will see )...

and took note that the carolina horse nettle was ignoring the dryness and going strong in both the beds and the lawn...

the campus garden was the last stop...the portage community garden was the middle one, where i went to water and have a look at things...

here too there are healthy looking spuds...

the garlic is spluttering ( one imagines this will be my only foray into spring garlic...autumn planting here on out )...

and, unsurprisingly, none of the dozen spuds i planted there in another bed two days ago have broken surface yet...it is warming...give them a week...

if you can call my back yard a "stop", that is where i started...after i watered i turned some compost into a bed...

and planted some hopi blue maize...and that is enough gardening for the holiday.

around the yard

it is a holiday weekend...i am not working ( if you can call what i am doing work ) so i had some time to stop and look around...and things are coming along fairly well in spite of a dearth of precipiataion...they tell me it is to be an "el nino" summer and the forecasts are contradictory at best and the emprical evidence ( so far ) puts the lie to most of them...the old farmers almanac calls for a hot and wet summer here...the national weather service says hot and about normal precipitation over the next few months... while the national drought monitor calls the area "abnormally dry" and that i will subscribe to given what is up in my back yard which is watering since there hasn't been much of anything like rain so far this month ( and it is getting late )...however it turns out, the tesointe i have planted so far ( more on the way ) is definitely looking corny as it leafs...

the dryad's saddles are back on the old dead elm...

the winter wheat on the compost pile has broken out in flowers...elusinian mysteries next up...

even the wheat in the dismal wheat bed is blooming...some seed for a bed somewhere in the fall...however not in this bed...

awns are beginning to show on the black tipped wheat..a "decorative grass" you could eat...

the spuds in containers out by the teosinte are fine...

and some of the spuds i planted in the dismal wheat bed have begun to tentatively sprout leaves...

the asparagus i have not harvested has "ferned" and has begun to flower...perhaps some berries as the season progresses ( i have seen many bees [ bumble only ] so far this season...none of them seem willing to haold still long enough for a photograph...i have leaf cutters arriving in about two weeks...there will be photos then...and more pollenators )...

the strawberries are producing...

drupes are appearing on the mulberry trees...

and there are clear signs of grapes out by the fir trees...so far so good...it's early yet though...we'll see how it goes.

peat moss

a short shift left time for a garden run to do some work...

the potatoes behind the asparagus look well, however after the powder dry soil last time out...and with no rain to be seen in a forecast...i wanted to do something about soil moisture...

a rock mulch would be impractical and i have no desire to pull rocks out of this bed so i dug trenches about three inches deep around the plants...

and filled them with peat moss to retain mositure...and actually mulched the entire bed as well...we will see how this works...the soil was reasonably moist from four days ago so i did not water quite so much today...i will be checking in a day or two to see what is up...this will be covered with compost as i "hill" the spuds and has the advantage of being turnued into the bed at the end of the season and, hopefully, that will not diminish its ability to reatain moisture...

over in my "official"bed there is a bit more garlic up...however not as much as i had hoped much less how much i planted...so some hopi blue maize may go in here soon...unles the garlic picks it up a bit...

the alfalfa is doing well...

and my very favorite correspondent will still be pleased that it is ignoring limits...

and that, unless i am grossly mistaken, it is preapring to bloom...

and, as a final note on the campus garden, carolina horse nettle is putting in a late spring appearance...and it will not be deterred...meanwhile here at home...

the backyard teosinte that i planted has begun to green up...there have been a few misfires and i have soaked more seed to add to the crop ( i was getting just a shade over 50% germionation rate and i want more plants to see if ic an improve viability and genetic diversity )...there will definitely be hopi blue maize going in back there directly...more on that before the end of the month.