bird tape

the bed of black eagle wheat out back has taken some shots from critters and the weather...but that hasn't stopped it from carrying on its season and it is beginning to ripen quickly...while the birds seem to be fairly indifferent to the rye the wheat is another matter...energy dense seeds ( why we use them ) they are starling magnets and i have been seeing them around..so i decided to deploy some bird tape...metalized polyester, it is shiny and has a prism effect...i stretched it loosely across the bed from the corner posts and put a couple of twists in it before tying it off to the opposite corner...when the breeze blows the tape moves distracting and deterring the birds...the sun glints off the metalized surface as well adding another layer of bird deterrence...it makes them nervous...for a while...like a scarecrow, the tape will need to be moved about once a week to keep the little dinosaurs from acclimating to it to the point hey can ignore it...it is effective and non lethal...two pluses to outweigh the fact that it's plastic...on the north side of the house the ramp flowers are just about fully open...sometime in august ( these are slow movers...one of the sloths of the plant world...once the seed matures and works its way into the soil it can take two years to germinate...no record but slow none the less )those buds will flower and by late september into october there will ( hopefully ) be round, black seeds to harvest...the season progresses...more as it comes up.

plenty of irony to go around

i discovered seed heads on the winter wheat at iu last week and, surprisingly enough, i found a few spare moments today so i went and put up some bird tape ( top photo ) to deter the starlings form feasting on my wheat...it worked well last year...there was also far less wheat there last year so we'll see...i did some selective watering while i was there and i ironically flushed a bird that was sheltering there out of my intermediate wheat grass...so...we'll see if the bird tape deters sheltering as well as feasting...or if it does either...i will try to get a photo of our denizen sometime soon...the secon two photos are of potato plants..the first one up is growing larger and one other has put out three seperate leaves which, i suppose, means three seperate stalks...curious about tuber production later this summer...the fourth photo is of a seed head which is what triggered this flurry of activity and the last phot0 is the "before"photo for the bird tape application...the kerusalem artichokes and chinese yams and asparagus are all fine...the next bit of construction will be the secon half of the trellis for the yam vines...they will have topped the first post soon...more stake pounding later this week.

winter wheat harvest

we recently changed browsers on the desktop and i don't know whether it has anything to do with the fact that blogger no longer posts photos in the order i upload them or not but this is yet another post where the chronology of the photos does not match the chronology of the narrative...you will have to be imaginative...i went to campus to bring in the winter wheat...the third photo along shows the stand of wheat before i started and it is pretty clear that it was ready...it took about fifteen minute using a pair of hand shears and cutting the plants in small groups ( haven't counted them yet)the second photo along is from about halfway through the process...the top photo is the plot after the harvest and the bottom one is the harvest in one of those most utilitarian of devices... a plastic five gallon bucket...for me gardening would be infinitely difficult without them...the bird tape seems to have worked out well...i saw no damaged or assaulted seed heads...after i removed the posts the bird tape was attached to i took the wheat to my truck...when i cam back around the corner of hawthorne hall to water there were starlings in the garden ( first birds i have ever seen there) gleaning the stubble for any grain i may have missed...we'll see how well it works as the spring wheat ripens ( one wonders if i made a tactical blunder by leaving it unprotected after taking out the winter wheat...well...it has been unguarded for the entire season thus far...we'll see when i go back friday if it was a howling error...i think not...my back jungle has a multiplicity of birds in comparison to campus and the wheat here is intact without bird tape)...my plan is to thresh and winnow the grain...weigh it for produce data...and then use it to sow a cover crop on the garden after the cowpeas have run their course...it will act as a reservoir for the excess nitrogen as well as holding the soil together...i will turn it under in the spring ( leaving a stand to ripen and use as seed for a winter cover the following season...part of this project is an experiment in organic self-sufficiency and resilience..my goal is to purchase seed once for as many species as i can and produce new generations on my own ) there should be an entertaining blog post about the threshing business...winnowing seems fairly straight forward, if tedious...can't wait.