what's up II

i didn't include any photos of garlic in the first post because most of what i unmulched looked a bit scrawny and pale like the garlic in the first two photos...you'd be at least a bit discolored if you'd been under a pile of straw and compost all winter too...but when i went out again i found the plant in the third photo which has obviously disregarded my regard for its health and disrupted the mulch to emerge and both grow and fully deploy chlorophyll...i will admit to being a bit startled to have missed it...definitely time for a trip out to the community garden to see what's up out there...the issue is there is a possibility of snow in the forecast for next weekend ( not spring until next sunday )...there will be some waiting before unmulching i think...i have only unmulched part of the garlic bed..the rest i will be leaving covered..finally, is that little seedling in the last photo eastern gamagrass? i will admit that it has been so long since i germinated any that i cannot remember...i planted a gamgrass seed in that container last autumn ad let ti winter over outside like it is supposed to be done...but gamagrass is notoriously infertile...last time i got a 10% germination rate...this would be a shade over 16%...i have seed i stratified in the vegetable crisper to work with if this fails...but there are no guarantees with gammagrass.

stratified and set out for winter

before i went out to the garden this morning i stratified half the remaining gamagrass seed much the same way i did the grape seeds...used sphagnum moss moistened with distilled water to lessen the chances of fungal issues and put the container of seed into the vegetable crisper ( i may be hearing about this...just wait until the bees arrive ) until march or so when i will be trying to germinate them...difficult as it is to start i am determined to have some sooner or later...i also put the seven pot i started yesterday out for the winter after i got back from the garden...then i took some teosinte photos because i am me...including some of some shattered seed ears with seeds still hanging on by their silks...we'll be looking around for zea family grasses out there come spring.

eastern gamagrass

those things that look like chunks of wood in the top photo are eastern gamagrass seeds...i collected them from the stand of grass in the pgp before i did them in in an effort to try to re-establish some here at home...they are of notorious low fertility ( can't imagine why )...the three plants i had on campus represented the germination of exactly ten percent of the thirty seeds i planted in november of 2009...so i am somewhat skeptical about what sort of success this experiment will encounter...they usually have to winter over to break dormancy, however amongst all the information mary eubanks form duke has sent me over the years is the little nugget telling me that , like teosinte, a soak in hydrogen peroxide will break dormancy as well as a winter in the ground...it takes a bit longer though..two hours instead of twenty minutes...it has always worked on teosinte, so i am giving it a try here mostly to see if the seed has any viability at all...one seed germinating will be an unqualified success...how long? who knows...there is no sign of the burdock i planted last month ( perhaps time for another shot at that...i am told that tow weeks is the outside for germinating burdock...may have been a dud seed )so who knows how long something as recalcitrant as gamagrass will take...if anything happens you will be among the first to know.

o ye of little faith II

the pgp may seem all brown and dormant from a distance...but it isn't...there is considerably more green in the eastern gamagrass ( second photo ) than there was the last time out and that trend will continue right through to terminal spears and seed heads...the intermediate wheat grass is greening as well after reaching a very short state of complete dormancy...it won't waste time waiting for warmer weather either...the time is now...while i was there i picked up more than four hundred chinese yam bulbs, saving me the trouble of culling them later ( not that there won't be a cull...i cannot have found them all...may will see the battle against the invasive critters truly joined )...next saturday will see the ritual planting of annual teosinte seeds and the equally ritual unmulching of the asparagus...another crop that isn't going to wait around for "spring"...the season has started.

winter's last gasp in the pgp

went out to campus to check out the calm before the storm that will be spring this year...it is quiet in the garden but that won't last...spring is a time of movement and this one will be chock full of it...you might not perceive it as a possibility at this particular moment...true, the mulch covers are still down on the teosinte and the asparagus but that will change by the end of the month....and there are still silks attached to the teosinte ears but they shattered long ago and if the basement seed is any sort of indicator there should be another generation of the annual strain already to go...the intermediate wheat grass has reached a state of complete dormancy...but there are pastel streaks of chlorophyll in the eastern gamagrass and that will only increase over the next couple of months...there's snow this morning but it cannot last...temperatures above freezing in the day and below at night signal maple syrup time...asparagus is not far behind.

pgp in winter

the season has changed in four months at the pgp and things have quieted down...the gamagrass that was lush in august is dormant and snow covered today...there is s till some photo synthesis going on in the intermediate wheat grass...but that is the only limited activity i saw...the mulches are in order...the snow is an insulator...and the tesointe goes in in march...rest while you can.

perennial garden project 12-15-2013

the intermediate wheat grass in the top photo hasn't quite found dormancy yet...still chlorophyll in evidence, but it is on the way...no such equivocation form the gamagrass in the second photo...it's asleep until late march or early april when it will begin to "green"...but eve it hasn't totally let go of last season...there's still a terminal spear with a seed head that has ( so far ) refused to shatter...we'll see how long that lasts...the seed ears on the teosinte look as out of place in the snow as the ones in my yard do...they continue to open and shatter..the only question is if they are viable and we won't know that until spring...things are sleepy now...in about three months or so that will begin to change...more as it comes up.

post-holiday campus trip II

i made a stop at the pgp while i was out there and autumn is advanced there as well the gamagrass looks dormant from a distance and pretty much is...but there's still some green in there along with a few seed heads that haven't shattered yet...they were the really late bloomers and i doubt that the seed is very viable...in four months the gamagrass will start "greening" for a new season as chlorophyll returns to some of the old growth from last season...it doesn't entirely regenerate new foliage so i'd call it dormant, not dead...a hardy native perennial it will be back in 2014...the seed heads that i left on the northern tepehuan teosinte have begun to open and shatter like the ones in my back yard and i have found seeds on the ground...they will overwinter there and i will be interested to see if this plant ( not a "stand" really since it is one plant ) becomes self-generating...i will be watching that particular area of the garden as closely as i will be looking in on the stand in my yard...the mulches in the pgp are holding up as well...i really didn't expect any issues...the process that i used has worked for several years without a hitch so i think both gardens are good to go through winter...another look at seed heads and dormancy sometime next week.

changes II

you can see how the gamagrass leaves and terminal spears have spread out and lowered to the ground over the last month to allow the shattering seed heads to spread the seeds as far away from the parent plant as possible...ganagrass is difficult to germinate ( i have had about a ten percent germination rate...and it is native here ) so there are a lot of seeds produced and scattered in a season...slow moving but relentless colonization...a deep-rooted perennial i'll wager it is difficult to eradicate once established as well...the pgp may be a long term project.

gamagrass flowers

a few photos of gamagrass terminal spears in full flower at the perennial garden project.