spuds

there are twenty-seven asparagus spears up in the campus garden, however none are quite ready to harvest...

aside form that the garden is looking rather austere..this will be changing a bit later this month as, among other things, tree planting on campus is on the menu...

there is some growth going on in my bed...the smaller of the two alfalfa plants i transplanted eleven days ago had adapted well while the larger plant seems to have shocked a bit..there seems to be less green than there was...still there is green and we will look for new growth next time out...

kimberly always told me to plant potatoes on good friday..and here we are so i turned the bed again and dug two trenches a shovel deep and a shovel wide and spread compost along the bottom of the trenches...

in the trench along the west side i planted morene...

tacna...

michigan purple...

basadre...

and a german butterball at the very north end...

in the trench on the east side i planted four elmer's blue, another german butterball, and a bison...

i back filled the trenches to cover the spuds to a depth of about three inches and now we wait...i left a space on the north end for some maize and the center of the bed will probably be populated by peppers and tomatoes...if the winter's indoor seasons pays off well enough the may be a couple of mashua tubers going in as well...and perhaps some sweet clover around the edges for the bees...after the spuds are established and the trenches filled back in.

a sheaf and some tubers

the small stand of winter rye is done and it is supposed to rain tonight so i decided to bring it in...not any sort of record sheaf by agricultural standards...however, since the plan was to grow seed for a bed of winter rye...once either the potato bed or the bed of wheat comes in it will go into winter rye...and i will use the other for another attempt at winter wheat...the spring wheat will be a disappointment although it will provide seed for emmer, einkorn, dwarf syrian, and pacific bluestem to grow in containers next season...along with seed from Jean's puddle wheat for a new generation from that unexpected plant...there will be rye production data after threshing an winnowing...

the seed in the ears on the potted teosinte continue to mature and will be done soon enough...

it may take a moment to see, however this teosinte plant has four branches, each with a flower at the end...

and each branch has three or four ears forming...i am beginning to hold extravagant hopes for seed this season...

some of the spuds i planted in april have begun to die back...

initially i found four but after rooting around a bit that increased to half a dozen fair sized tubers that weighed in around one and a quarter pounds...that bed should be entirely done in the next few weeks...except the blues..which will go on until there's a frost or i pull them in ...probably the latter since i will be wanting the space for winter rye/wheat in september...

finally a photo of "puddles" for Jean... a nine month old wheat plant...we thought her about done when i brought her up from the basement in april...she had other ideas and her resilience insisted on producing fifty-five ears of grain...some will find its way to Jean...some will produce "puddles'" offspring next season...we will be propagating a new generation late next march.

an afternoon with some andean tubers

the largest of the basement mashua plants has died back and it has decided to leave me with three healthy sized tubers from a season in great indoors...i am inordinately pleased...

yesterday i acquired some half barrels so i took two of them out to the east side of the yard and drilled drainage holes in them...

one i filled almost to the top with a mixture of compost and soil...and a few earth worms i found along the way...

and i planted all three tubers as deep as they are long in it and now we will see if this has the desired effect...

the other barrel i filled less than a third of the way and planted a mix of german butterball, all blue, and elmer's blue potatoes...we will continuously back fill this and see just haw many spuds are in a barrel...

some of the government spuds had started to chit and so i placed a shallow layer of soil in two of the infamous blue buckets and planted the two bison potatoes each in their very own habitat...another back fill to the top experiment...if fact all the newly planted outdoor spuds ( there are many yet to do ) will be of this ilk...

for the DTO-2 ( i have no idea what that designation means...names like viking and barbara are given by the breeders who "develop" the variety from the potato's genetic diversity...grow some from seed sometime and you will be surprised by what comes up...i promise ) i did the same shallow layer in a ten gallon pot and planted both...so...andean tubers in the soil a long way from home...they have done well in the past ( even if last season's mashua was a disappointment...too much shade where they were planted i think...they will have more sun this year )...there is a zea day coming soon enough...japanese beetles too i'l wager..all in a season.

second planting

four days ago i brought in the first spuds ( top photo )from my bed at the garden...the reds did very well so i decided to put in more spuds for a fall harvest...there was nothing in the back side of the asparagus bed but biomass( second ) so i cleared it ( third ) and dug a hole ( fourth ) threw in a handful of compost ( fifth ) planted a tuber ( sixth ) and filled the hole ( seventh )...repeated that five more times, alternating elmer's blues and butterballs, in a row out of the shade of the asparagus and the bed is in use...i filled in the space i had emptied in my bed with some single german butterballs (eighth ) and i dug two trenched for the rest of the blues ( ninth and tenth )...september sometime should see the butterballs done...the blues will go on until i pull them or the frosts come.