fields and yard

we got a couple of tenths of an inch of rain overnight and into this morning which brings the july total in my yard to 2.35"...it has been warm here as well...not unusual for july...

both of which have the dense yellow #2 in the fields growing so quickly you can almost perceive it..

planted only a couple of inches apart...( although you can see here the planter skipped a bit and left about a foot unoccupied towards the right of the photo )...

and thirty-six inch spacing between rows is long gone...if these are more than eighteen inches apart i will be eating my hat with no salt...they are making the fields denser and denser with corn anymore...still...it is illusory...most of the field is bare soil...although there has been an increase in no till planting...particularly in beans hereabouts lately...any way you look at it this a lot of corn...

there's maize ( heirloom flints I in my yard as well...it is on the left here...that is teosinte on the right...

and it has enjoyed fair growth in the summer weather as well...

the maize has flowered and there are ears coming along...

the teosinte is flowering as well however i have not seen any signs of silks just yet...

the jerusalem artichokes are as relentless as ever...however...

a gourd vine has taken serious hold among them...my presumption is that they are of near equal stubbornness and so detente will ensue rather than a struggle...

gourd flowered have been fertilized and gourds are underway...

as are countless zucchini...

the one ramp that bloomed has been fertilized as well...there will be limited seed this season...

there are tomatoes...

and hot banana and jalepeno peppers...

the chinese yam vine is beginning to produce aerial bulbs...

while the ones on the egyptian walking onions are about ready to walk...

the field peas i planted as a cover crop in the grain beds have irrupted...

as the grapes and mulberries move towards fruition...

and the elm tree back by the alley hosts a colony of dryad's saddles...we are in the middle of a season that is booming along robustly ( and we haven't really touched on spuds, berries, and "ferny" asparagus )...verdant july everywhere i look...been reading about drought and crop failures in guatemala...how lucky can i be? and why is that?

soggy and erosive

i have remarked that it has been a rainy winter and an inch of rain over the past three days has done little to dry the fields hereabouts...it is wet and muddy out there...

surveying the fields, i checked up on some erosion points that have been in existence for a number of years and found them active still...

this one i discovered last year i believe and it is still slowly washing the edge of the field down to the road...

and some jaunts down county roads i hadn't been on before revealed some that have clearly been established for a while and which had escaped notice until today...one presumes there are more and that, while the topsoil here is deep, the soil is not inexhaustible...even though these are not massive cuts in the fields they are a sign that soil conservation could use some tweaking..it is only the latter part of march and the planting season is still a few months away and climate/weather is only predictable to a less than exact point...still i am wondering if this is the beginning of another sodden spring much like last year's around these parts...and that had a significant impact with fields still overgrown after laying fallow last season...we will keep a weather eye out and track rainfall in the yard...and if we get ten inches of rain this coming may i will let you know.

fields on the fourth

took a holiday drive out south to have a look around at industrial food's feedstock...the news is mixed and not all that good especially...i did see farm machinery ( albeit parked...perhaps for the holiday ) in the fields...

the majority of the fields ( and, again, this is a small sampling from a couple of indiana counties ) were planted in beans..and , given the weather in spring, that is no surprise...

i found exactly two corn fields...this one in porter county has plants far smaller than anything i planted in my yard at the end of may...

and this one in the field by the supermarket which was obviously planted well inside the planting window since it is up to almost my waist...verdant and robust...

on the other end of the spectrum there is still quite a bit of acreage that remains untouched...some seems to have been sprayed with herbicide...perhaps preparatory to planting beans...perhaps some other phenomena...still there is not much time left for planting even beans...at least not any that will return a worthwhile harvest...

the stalks in this field tell me it was dense yellow # 2 last season and the still standing water after a few relatively dry and warm days tells me why it is untouched as yet this season...

and the sign tells me it is for sale...farming is not what it once was...the yeoman farmer and jefferson's "republic of townships" are dead...and not coming back...meanwhile dense yellow #2 settled at $188.58 a metric ton yesterday...up $14.47 in ten days...that crop by the supermarket may pay off well come autumn.