late april progress

the ramp bed has come alive...today's count is sixty-five up and running...

most of the ramps are one or two years old...ones i bought or transplanted tot he new bed i put up on the north side of the house...when the older ramps sprout two robust leaves emerge from a sheath ready to deploy like this one...

this one is nowhere near as developed...small and spindly it has what appear to be very small leaves just beginning to grow...there is an explanation in that this plant has emerged in an area i seeded with some of the bumper crop of ramp seeds the plants produced last season...they need a period of heat followed by cold in order to germinate so they can take two years to begin growing...i planted those seeds in august of last year so i seem to have been on schedule to have them appear this spring...we will see if any more crop up in the next few weeks...

the wild strawberries imported from new york state are showing good new growth...

and the hard red spring...

einkorn...

emmer...

and dwarf syrian wheat have all begun to produce second leaves...hoping for tillering soon...this is just getting started...from yacon and spuds to teosinte there is a long haul ahead...finally out of the basement.

transitions

no matter how early or late it is in the season i can always find movement...which isn't surprising since life is movement and mutability...some plants out there are moving towards their "adult' selves...the nasturtium in the first photo and the bogota market mashua in the second are showing a family resemblance that will increase with time..the larger red seedless grape vine has latched onto the trellis with a second tendril ( third and fourth )...that is gratifying after last season's debacle...the lone asparagus plant is prospering well enough to afford a second spear ( fifth )...about three inches tall now..it will "fern" soon...both the northern tepehuan tesointe ( sixth ) and zea mays parvaglumis ( seventh ) have produced a fourth leaf...big news in the zea world...the winter rye ( eighth and ninth ) is coming along well...and there are multiple ears of wheat ( tenth and eleventh ) around the periphery of the yard that promise hours of threshing and winnowing fun...finally the last photo shows that for some of the very early starters changes are coming that mark, not an end, but a shift in the cycle...the leaves on the ramp plant in the last photo are clearly dying back leaving the stem for a bloom exposed...energy shifted from production to reproduction...hoping for many seeds.