eleusis in the back yard

however there is a cmapus trip to relate first...out early to have a look and take care of a few things...

over in the asparagus bed there are new spears...

continued "ferning"...

and multiple blooms...there may be "berries" this season...

seven of the nineteen spuds i planted behind the asparagus have come up...

while over in my "official" bed...

there there are now four garlic plants up and running...

with easily as many volunteer potatoes...

i popped up one of the unsprouted garlic cloves and it seems to be inert...this may change...i have never attempted spring garlic before and, given current results, probably will not again...that too could change...

the alflafa is expansive...

and my favorie correspondent will be pleased to learn it is stil scoffing at any sort of limit...

i have a number of potatoes chitting away at home and so brought five to the campus to plant...

i added two to the asparagus bed population...

then moved some rocks around the perimeter of the "official" bed and add three to the volunteers there...after which i headed home...

where i began by checking on the teosinte seed i soaked a few days ago...thirty-three of sixty-five have germinated...a shade over fifty percent and there may be more...so the seed is viable and it is time to prepare a bed...

out back the einkorn wheat is coming along...as well as some native growth that needs tending to...

there are emergent seed heads on the rye by the locust tree...

and the winter wheat on the compost pile...

is "keeping up with the ryes"...eleusis comes to the back yard...

the container spuds are in full leaf and the containers will be back filled shortly...

the strawberries are producing...

and there are signs of grapes to come on the vines in the fir trees...there's more...however that is another post.

i wasn't planning on doing this

nonetheless this morning found me in the portage community garden anyway, putting in a reasonably low maintenace to keep time investment to a minimum...so i cleaned the bed...

turned it...spread and turned in some compost..turned it again...worked it with a warren hoe...

and raked it more level than it was even if it wasn't perfect...

then i took thirty six garlic loves that have been inhabiting my refrigerator for the last six weeks...

some worm castings...

and some sand to get this started...

the sand is an experiment...the purpose is to loosen the soil around the bulb making it easier for it to expand...having never done this before i used sand on only half of the plantings, leaving the remainder as a sort of control...

i dug thirty six holes at least nine inches apart and planted the lot...everyone got some worm castings...

i ran out of plant markers...okay...garlic is fairly easily recognized when it comes up...and that was the extent of the community garden trip this morning...here at home..

there are muted signs of life in the winter wheat bed...

the einkorn is doing just fine...

ramps are up...

and there are daffodils any way you look...still no sign of aspaaragus.

wheat

march is moving along so i went out to one of the half barrels on the south side...

cleaned it out, added compost, perlite, and earthworm castings...

and planted about a quarter of this packet of black tip wheat...now we wait...

while we are dicussing wheat, this is what the bed of hard red winter wheat looks like today...

there are scattered clumps of wheat beginning to look alive out there. however...

this is what that same bed looked like on the fourteenth of april 2019...that was the last winter we had appreciable early snow...there was ample snow in the winters of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022, however the snow came after substantial cold temperatures had damaged the wheat and the harvests those years was dismal...the sub-zero ( fahrenheit ) cold this year came in december well before what little snow we actually got appeared ( and that all vanished in a mater of days as the temperatures were "unseasonably warm" most of the winter ) and the wheat has again suffered...

i prepared that bed last september in the same manner i have each year so i am reasonably sure the soil was ready...i am inclined to blame the weather...

in other back yard news, the ramp bed is showing a possibility of ramps...

and the alfalfa patch i planted a few days back has some young alflafa up and running...more as it comes up.