signs of green

temperature is up a bit...

and there's been a bit of rain this morning...

so it seemed a fair time to have alook and see what might be going on out back...

sixteen days after i planted it both the einkorn wheat i harvested from the campus garden last summer...

and the remainder of the seed i purchased in spring 2022 have begun to come up...so the ancient dna can still fire up for a season of reproduction...

and ten days after planting the black tip wheat is sprouting...the hard red winter wheat is beginning to make something of a recovery as well so we will wait and see where that leads...i am thinking that i will give that bed a break from wheat in fall and plant winter rye or, perhaps, winter barley there in autumn...

among the native growth there are clear signs of ramps in the ramp bed...come septemeber, when the ramps are dormant, we will be giving that bed a thorough cleaning, sepaarating any ramps that bunched, and replanting the ramps we do not utilize...

the mooseberry bush is giving clear indications of its intention to leaf fairly soon...as i recall i had some concerns about it in its first spring season...doesn't look like a dead stick this year...

there are growing populations of daffodild and other spring flowers..the russian olive and winter jasmine will be blooming soon as well...there is no sign of asparagus yet...we wait.

wheat

march is moving along so i went out to one of the half barrels on the south side...

cleaned it out, added compost, perlite, and earthworm castings...

and planted about a quarter of this packet of black tip wheat...now we wait...

while we are dicussing wheat, this is what the bed of hard red winter wheat looks like today...

there are scattered clumps of wheat beginning to look alive out there. however...

this is what that same bed looked like on the fourteenth of april 2019...that was the last winter we had appreciable early snow...there was ample snow in the winters of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, however the snow came after substantial cold temperatures had damaged the wheat and the harvests those years was dismal...the sub-zero ( fahrenheit ) cold this year came in december well before what little snow we actually got appeared ( and that all vanished in a mater of days as the temperatures were "unseasonably warm" most of the winter ) and the wheat has again suffered...

i prepared that bed last september in the same manner i have each year so i am reasonably sure the soil was ready...i am inclined to blame the weather...

in other back yard news, the ramp bed is showing a possibility of ramps...

and the alfalfa patch i planted a few days back has some young alflafa up and running...more as it comes up.

april showers

over the past two days my back yard has been pummeled with two inches of rain and last night it was bludgeoned with hail as well...fortunately with very little damage...mostly because it is early in the season yet...

things are moving along in the ramp bed...i count thirty-six up...they are coming into leaf and i am hoping for a robust florescence later this season...if that works out there wil be a scattering of seed...

the winter wheat is looking healthy...

and the winter rye has already topped six inches in height...

the black tip and emmer wheat i planted on, i believe, the twenty-fifth of march have finally put in an appearance...

while there is asparagus coming along among the strawberries, the eldest of my plants has remained inert which is disturbing...gardening teaches loss but this one would be unfortunate since it is asparagus grown from seed that originated in the perennial garden project almost a decade ago...the ones up and running are also in a direct line of descent from the pgp so it is not a complete disaster...perhaps there will be "berries" in the yard this year and there can be a further planting...

i found this mass growing in a crack in the patio where i was removing wheat and rye ears from the stalks last summer...my suspicion, having run across this sort of thing before, is that it is one of the two...you may remember puddles, the wheat that germinated in the basement...

she grew in the basement under the lights and then resurrected outside in the april sunlight to go on and reproduce...her container is still out there and, suspecting this may be another cereal grass, i replanted it there...we will be seeing what transpires as the season goes on.

calling it spring

plague or not it is spring and time to start...

it is the end of march and high time to plant spring wheat...einkorn has tough little husks so winnowing some to plant... to plant took a few minutes...i was successful and the ancient wheat is in a container and i planted some black tip wheat as well...emmer and more einkorn are in the works...

the winter wheat and rye out in the beds continues to green and is looking like it will do fine this year...at least that is the indication to this point...

no word from the asparagus just yet...however a berry has come calling for the season...one surmises that the radical difference in root depth will allow congenial cohabitation...

fancy yellow flowers will be here any time now...

and there are stirrings in the ramp bed..spring is on...time to get things going.

varieties

the ancients...emmer...

and newly emerging einkorn...mesopotamia in the back yard...

nearly ripe hard red winter wheat...

and the long awned black tip wheat.