zea news and other movement

the zea mays pavaglumisd i planted two days ago is showing clear signs of zea-ness...a reddish-purple base on the stem topped by green...soon enough we are going to see some true leaves that seriously resemble young maize..i may find some heirloom variety 9 say hopi blue ) to plant as a morphological comparison...further back in the yard my second year asparagus has "ferned" nicely and there is a second spear on the way...good news...the roots are strong enough to support a second spear which will supply the roots with more energy...a positive feedback loop...finally the last photo is one that should chill all but the most foolhardy of gardeners...it rained heavily here last night and this jerusalem artichoke seems to have bobbed to the surface, tuber and all...i am partial to these...so i put it in a container populated by "weeds"...it will win the battle.

corn, maize...i call it zea

the bear paw maize is coming along and has been spared ( until now anyway ) by the squirrels...the plant in the first photo has four ears growing off the stalk that you can see in the second photo..one is piggy-backed on another branching off to the left of the stalk...the swelling on the main stalk to their immediate right is another and further right and a bit lower in the frame you can see the silks of a fourth...it's not done yet though...the third photo is of a tiller off to the left of the main stalk and it has a fifth ear establishing itself...further down the row another plant ( fourth photo ) has two ears going on ( fifth ) and the tiller on the left in the sixth photo is producing a flower ( seventh ) which means more ears on the way ( given the reprieve from the squirrels continues )..lets see dense yellow #2 do that...the last photo is the obligatory "wild and weedy" maize ancestor teosinte...there's a lot of that there too and the squirrels won't touch it...hard, unforgiving seeds.

freeze warning

there's a freeze warning posted for tonight and, probably, tomorrow night too...something had to be done with the teosinte and i was nominated and elected to do it...since the plants re trying to lay over to disperse seeds the first thing to do was to contain them in the bamboo supports which i did with jute twine once that was accomplished i wrapped the bamboo and wire cages around the bases with frost cloth conveniently secured wit clothespins...only took about an hour and fifteen minutes...why the bother? trying to ge the seeds in these ears to maturity and frost would put the kibosh to that...if ti doesn't get too warm tomorrow i believe i will leave them wrapped.

stranglehold

it's a jungle out there and i have the photos to prove it...the winter vetch tendrils in the top photo have that wheat seed head in a tight grip...actually distorting its growth...they are winding around the intermediate wheat grass in the second photo as well...the third photo is of new grape vines wending their way through the elm tree at the end of the patio...ancient greeks planted their vines by olive trees and let them vine through the branches in the days before formal vineyards...i am at home with this tradition...the spuds in the fourth photo are in the clear but there is a tangle of alfalfa and winter rye going on behind them ( along with some winter vetch and intermediate wheat grass )...and you can see by the fifth photo that the rye is producing seed heads..the seeds are much smaller than wheat seeds and so there is a comparative profusion of awns...i know it's early but i am inclined to let the asparagus spear in the last photo "fern" to feed the roots and to provide a source of home grown seed now that the pgp is defunct...the back yard is alive with the new season...tomorrow is planting day in the community garden so that season will be expanding as well...there will no doubt be multiple entries for that event...stay tuned.

connected

“ grape vines were grown alongside olives, wheat, and barley, and were often intertwined with olive or fig trees in the mycenaean and Minoan cutltures of the second millennium bce.” A History of the World in Six Glasses, tom standage. __________________________________________________________my back yard has an inadvertent connection with the second millennium bce...with minoans and mycenaeans...and i find it compelling that it was unintentional...yes, i planted the vines and i planted the wheat...but i envisioned grapes along the hurricane fence and a fall cover crop...not a tree full of grapes that replicates the prehistory of vineyards and an early domesticate that has as long a story...connections are everywhere if we bother to look...social...historical..cultural...human...stunning..to me at least.

brassica, helianthus, zea

all twelve of the cauliflower seeds i stared for the community garden have erupted from the peat pellets...twenty days to transplant in the cucumber bed...then purple cauliflower this autumn...the jerusalem artichokes in the bed on the south side of the house continue to bloom...easy to see that they are part of the sunflower family....and the two sturdy northern tepehuan teosinte plants in the bottom photo are beginning to flower which bodes well for seeds if the weather holds long enough...any number of teosinte plants on campus to cross pollinate with...the hopi blue is flowering as well...gene flow from ancestor to domesticate? traditional agriculturalusts in mexico and peru who grow "wild and weedy ancestors" around the margins of thier potato and maize fields say the plants make their crops "stronger" [brush]...perhaps they will be allies here as well.

human intervention

"we are unlikely to achieve anything close to sustainability in any area unless we work for the broader goal of becoming native in the modern world, and that means becoming native to our places in a coherent community, that is, in turn, embedded in the ecological realities of the surrounding landscape."
wes jackson

it sounds to me like wes is saying that it's high time we ditched the consumerist utopia that capital has unleashed on us and get a grip on living within our ecological means...adapting ourselves to local abundances and shortfalls and learning to eat in season again...becoming cohesive and mutually supporting local communities...familiar with what can and cannot be accomplished...what the "landscape" will tolerate in the way of human intervention and what must be left alone if there is a chance to live within our ecological means...what the coach would call culture...humans used to have it in a diverse abundance until around five hundred years ago...when technology gave some pathologically avaricious people the means to destroy the culture of others and take what they found of value in the process...never realizing that what they destroyed was easily as valuable as what they took...we are probably all gong to pay a fairly steep price for those acts of wonton ignorance and the hubris they engendered...their heirs are still too blinded by their need for more to see we can't really exist outside a culture...its what we co-evolved with...made us human, no?

the teosinte ears are just a prop...part of my local ecology that has migrated to my backyard because technology transported the seeds to me.