i suppose you could call it a harvest...

the isla caucahua plant was pretty much done so i took the spading fork to it and found potatoes no bigger than the ones i harvested from the half barrel here at home...this plant wasn't much more than eight or nine inches tall and it was in full sun its entire life so i am going to conclude that either this landrace produces small tubers or there were some daylength issues at work...the potatoes i planted in the spring weren't all that much bigger than the ones i have harvested...i was thinking the potato introduction station was saving the taxpayers money at first...but now i am not so sure...the third photo is of the zea family ( i have adopted it ) and the fourth one is of a ladybug on the hopi blue maize...the second one i have found this season and this is a much better photo since i'm becoming more accustomed to my new camera...the last photo is the perennial garden project on the morning of the last sunday in august 2012...breezy and not as hot as yesterday...the fall semester starts tomorrow so i tidied up...did some weeding and hoeing...dead headed the jerusalem artichokes...and then i watered...have to impress the freshmen.

success/failure = gardening

if there weren't a failure or two to puzzle over and learn from ( and to keep me honest ) this would become a self-congratulatory litany of success...and while the season has gone well so far we are still in the real world and stuff goes wrong...the red nordalnds i got from the potato introduction station in sturgeon bay wisconsin were done a month ago..the negra ojosa and isla caucahua have been dying back for about a week so i decided it was time for them to come out...the isla caucahua produced three smallish tubers ( top photo ) but as i recall the tubers i got from wisconsin weren't much larger...no behemoth idahoan russets...so they will go into the basement with the red nordlands as part of the potato storage project to see if i can keep some seed potatoes until spring...unfortunately when i dug up the negra ojosa i found no tubers...zip..zero...nada...just roots ( second and third photos )...they were in the same half barrel on the south side of the house as the others..plenty of sunshine and well watered so what happened? they are classified as a "primitive cultivar" not an "improved" landrace that has been selected and adapted to grow outside its native range ( at least as far as the research i have done so far indicates...emails sent to the international potato center in peru for, hopefully, more clarification )...like oca, ulluco, and mashua, potatoes are andean tubers that are sub-tropical and sub=tropical and tropical plants have day length issues...they don't like long ones like we have here in summer...they'll grow but they won't set tubers ( "unimproved" varieties that is...strains of oca that will grow and set tubers this far north have been developed i'm told ) and i am wondering if that's what's going on here...i have another isla caucahua and negra ojosa plant on campus that are still in so we'll see if the campus plant set tubers...if it did then there was something here that it disliked...if the campus plant fails i will stick to day length explanation until something ( or someone ) comes up with a more plausible explanations ( gardening skills?)...the fourth photo is of the more successful ( but still oddly behaved ) jerusalem artichokes at the pgp as well as the flourishing brussels sprouts ( bottom photo )...still more good news than bad...more on the potatoes as i dig things up.

potato patch

the potato patch gets its own post since i couldn't fit the photos in the last one...the top photo is an isla caucahua potato plant that i got from the usda ( all of which are up and running here at home )...the next two are red nordlands i got from oregon and planted last month..all forty-two are up...along with the government potatoes and the four volunteers ( i found yet another one ) i have forty-nine potatoes going which may not be all that much comparatively but we're talking about my suburban back yard...i am geeked if no-one else is...the fourth photo is of a butterfly that came to rest while i was out there...i always like to photograph visitors so i took a few before it flittered off...the bottom photo is of the primitibve cultivar" negra ojosa...aptly named due ( and this is amateur supposition about folk taxonomy ), i imagine, because of its much darker color..we'll see if that holds up as they mature and as i do more research.

government potatoes

the radishes i planted are up ( top photo ) and so are the turnips ( bottom photo )...that's good news...still waiting on snow peas and scarlet runner beans...i spent part of this afternoon preparing a bed for my red nordland potatoes which i cut yesterday and which i will plant tomorrow...while i was at it i prepared the last open half-barrel on the south side if the house by pulling all the weeds out of it and mixing in a healthy dose of composted manure so i could plant half my allotment of government potatots...the first potato photos is of a primitive cultivar called negra ojosa...that tuber's shape is what they call compressed in the potato trade...in ethnobotany too...the middle photo is of (surprise!) a nordland potato which is ovate shaoed and the fourth photo is a tuber called isla caucahua tha looks a bit more like a russet than the other two which are obviously reds...it too is ovate shaped...what other characteristics they develop remains to be seen...i planted them sperately form the seed potatoes i bought from oregon because the potato introduction station said they could not guarantee them disese free and the suggested that they be isolated from any crop...i have potatoes in the ground on campus but i wanted to plant the second sample of each of these there as well...i will have to give it some thought since the potatoes on campus are intercropped with the wheat and it will be difficult to find a place to isolate these there..i have forty-two pieces of tuber to plant tomorrow and i saved the coach a potato that should be good for at least six...add in the ten on campus and the thirty-three in my daughter and son-in-law's back yard and the four pounds did yeoman's duty...now all i need is for the wild potato seeds to gerninate.