planting

it is a warm may day here...

and i have spuds that are ready to plant...

and this bison seriously needed hilling...

so i covered him up to the canopy...

and since i don;t have a suitable sunny spot where they can go in the ground i put compost in containers...

and planted michigan purple...

basadre...

morene...

and tacna..but the planting wasn't done yet...

when i got home from work and looked in on the teocintli seed i found this...

so i took a hoe to the bed yet again...

and planted the six that were farthest along...four inside the fence and two outside...from the looks of things there will be more...

as i was planting an earth worm wandered through...always good to see...good luck? totemic perhaps...we will see how it goes.

allium on the move

it's getting on to the last week of march...the temperature is in the mid fifties ( fahrenheit ) and there has been some precipitation...all good for the aerial bulbs from the onions which continue to take hold...since the month is nearing its end i decided it was time to have a serious look at the ramp bed...

last autumn i laid down about six inches of leaf mulch on the bed which i scooped off and laid to the side...

and when i did i found four of the egyptian walking onions' cousins had broken surface..which is a fair sign that the work on the bed i did last fall at least did not do any harm and may have helped...

even though the strawberries in the south bed have been seriously browsed ( i am still fingering rabbits for this abomination ) the unmolested are showing good new growth...

to help expand the population i took some of the plants i potted last season by pinning stolons in them and replanted them in the bed proper...these two shared a pot and have developed a large root system...we will see about berries and daughters soon enough...

in the course of replanting i ran across my first earthworm of the season...more good news...

the winter rye...

are doing fine...next step is the wait for ears...then, perhaps, rye bread...

the daffodils are keeping pace...yellow blooms soon enough...pretty soon we'll be talking spuds. after i had a look i spread a thinner cover of leaves across th e bed...there are probably some frosty evenings to come yet...

move 'em out!

as soon as it was warm enough this morning i went out and took the buckets i used to cover the strawberry plants last night and let them back into the sunlight...then i went downstairs...

i did not want to grow potatoes in the basement under the lights...they are not happy there...the light just isn't of a broad enough spectrum for them and the get "leggy"...i only planted them because they had chitted and would have shriveled and died if i had not...it isn't completely pointless...they do produce, small tubers that can be used as seed for an outdoor crop in spring...but these hadn't even gotten that far yet...so...

i took the whole basement population outside into natural light...

the ones i planted in smaller containers as a stop-gap were desperately pot bound, so i loosened their roots...

and planted them each in a larger container as deeply as possible to see exactly what we can achieve through the end of their season...

while i was moving bags of compost i found an earthworm which i happily relocated tot he wheat bed...

finally...this teosinte plant has hit about three feet tall and has also begun to flower...we will see what it does for the rest of the spring out back...there will be more joining it soon as i germinate seed and plant seedlings from the seed i got from the usda...soon enough it will be an all outdoor season...and i can clean the plant room.

unmulched

despite ( or, perhaps, to spite ) of this morning's "wintry mix" i went out to the community garden because today was the day i had planned to unmulch the asparagus and a little weather that wouldn't phase the plants wasn't going to stop me either...

so i pulled back the landscaping fabric i had holding down the straw i used as mulch ( and i bagged the straw to use as a mulch later in the season ) and saved the fabric to remove the landscaping staples for re-use...

then i dug the compost i had covered the crowns with last fall out from around them to make it easier for the new spears to break the surface of the soil since they are not the strongest of sprouts...

as i was digging out the crowns i ran into an earth worm ( always a heartening sight for a gardener ) which i photographed and then returned to an area well below the surface and the cold...

so the crowns are again open to the sun and the elements...i am two days earlier this year than last...and there were spears up within a week in 2017...we will be checking in again next weekend to see if the pattern holds...the plants move to the workings of a different clock than i do...we will wait and see.

visualizing relentless

i took a trip out to he garden this morning to check on things and do a little work on my bed...there are eighteen asparagus spears up and running...none of them of harvestable size just yet..there actuall a number of plants that aren't ready to be harvested this year so i will be making some provision for letting people know what is and is not ready....i dug my bed again in preparation for planting some spuds ( i am going in search of local seed potatoes in a few minutes ) and as i was going over it with a warren hoe i found an earthworm...always a happy sight...so i moved him along to an already worked area so as not to chop him up...while i was puttering around the bed i made a second discovery...there are jerusalem artichokes up and running...two so far..there will be more..the relentlessness begins.