mother's day out back

with seventeen trees in my back yard and five in the front areas of full sun are at a premium and confined to the south side of the yard and house...since part of that is a driveway i have taken to growing what needs full sun in containers...

so i purchased a couple of twenty gallon totes, which were cheap since they did not have lids...shipping and/or ordering error one supposes...drilled drainage holes in the bottoms and covered them with a thin layer of garden soil...

i had cut some red nordland seed potatoes yesterday to allow them to callous...i put them in one container and covered them with more garden soil...

i did the same with some russian banana fingerling potatoes which i did not cut and callous...

and i gave them a shot of water with marigold's help...i will move them into the sun and as they break surface bury them again until they reach the top of the containers...and we will see how well this works ( or not )...

elsewhere around the yard, mason bees are just waking up and getting to work...so far they have filled seventy-five tbes in two bee houses with larvae...the next generation is well under way...

the asparagus continues to produce new spears which i am harvesting although i have left a few to "fern" early to feed the roots...

the ramps on the north side of the house are doing well...hoping for bunching and for flowers both...

the mooseberry bush ( aka high bush cranberry for those of you berift of the bullwinkle j. mooose reference ) is blooming...

the strawberries are blooming as well and beginning to bear fruit...

a dense stand of jerusalem artichokes in one corner of a bed will need close monitoring or they will take over...

the first chinese yam vine of the year has popped up...there will be more...another colonizer...

and, finally, the potato that had been under the lights in the basement has been outside for going on a week...it has clearly shocked and is expressing its ambivalence about the environment it finds itself in...i can relate...more as it comes up.

i did not expect to see garlic...

...and i did not...at the campus garden today..and, i suspect, at the "other garden" when i visit ...probably tomorrow...

i did find happy alflafa...

and, since the garden hose has been brought out...i gave the bed a thorough watering in an effort to produce happy garlic as well...

the "unseasonably warm" weather is due to take a trun for the spring-like...however never trust the weather...it may rain...it may not...either way the garlic is watered...

over in the asparagus bed there were thirty-three spears up all told...

including a few that had grown so quickly they have begun to "fern"...

to forestall further ferning" i made a small harvest...then headed home where things to a somewhat more interesting turn ( in my estimation anyway )...

there is happy alfalfa in the back yard as well...

there are now eight rows of einkorn wheat...although some of last year's seed has misfired...

the ramp poulation is expanding...and then i stumbled on ( actually i didn't stumble, i am consistent in taking a tramp around the back yard to see what is what on a daily basis...i like to keep track of what's going on... ) some surprises in terms of timing of appearance...as i mentioned the weather has been remakably warm for mid-april around here...still i was surprised to find...

not one but actually two chinese yam vines up and running...may is the usual time for them to pop up...

the new york import strawberries are blooming fully nine days earlier than last year...

and that is a jerusalem artichoke...in the thirteen years i have been growing these they have not once appeared before the tail end of the first week of may...so we are three weeks ahead of schedule here...these are native plants, not imports...they evolved here and are a fair index of the fact that the climate around here is changing...a few years ago the usda quietly modified their "hardiness zone" for this area and the sunchokes seem to be seconding the change...certainly this is the earliest i have ever seen them...if there's an el nino summer we'll see how they all do...could be a tough season.

just some stuff around the yard

ripe and ripening...

a young maize morphology...

a venerable ancestor ( complete with ant colony ) and some ancestral ears...

and egyptian walking onion has "walked"...when that membrane disintegrates the aerial bulb in it will begin to take root for next season...

ramp stems and flower buds...looking to me like nothing so much as something from war of the worlds...

there are actually more potato plants than strawberry plants...the difference being there will not be any more spuds unless i plant them..the strawberries are defying me to take control of the beds...

on the subject of defiant...this colony of jerusalem artichokes ( with spud accompaniment ) is looking lush...

there are at least two types of vines up and running at the moment ...grape and chinese yam...i am waiting on mashua and will be planting nasturtiums as well...

finally the alfalfa is beginning to bloom...just in time for the alfalfa leaf cutter bees...amazing how that works out.