the indoor season accelerates

all eight teosinte plants under the lights are looking robust today...the season seems to be taking off as the plants are now all between six and nine inches stall and generating new growth...soon it will be time to transplant them to larger quarters...and i am thinking yet another fixture will have to be acquired to accommodate them all even at two to a container...six days ago you couldn't see the top of the container when i photographed that purple valley...this morning it has topped it and is looking out on the vista of the expanding plant room population...time for some rearranging and new space allocation...so far, so good.

chitting

got home from work to find potatoes chitting away after being out of the ground for a couple of months...top two photos are purple valley...the third is a yukon gold...the fourth is an early blue and the bottom photo is a still out of control craigs snowwhite...these will be ready to plant with the new year and should be finishing up just in time for spring planting...ninety to one hundred and twenty days under the lights...the seed potato project is gaining some traction in the basement...with a few refinements last year's successes should be broadened...nothing teaches like last year's mistakes.

potato project 2014 V

i stumble don another unused pot and so went out to plant another purple valley for the seed potato project and finished just before yet another round of rain hit the area...all of the pots i am using have ample drainage holes that i drilled in the bottom but it has been s saturated with rain here recently that the pots are waterlogged and i am afraid the tubers will rot...particularly the ones that were cut and calloused...were they calloused enough? i propose to go fishing around in those pots to see...they shouldn't have sprouted yet and even if they have a little time out of the pot drying shouldn't hurt given the circumstances...there is more work to do here on this project before month's end...i still have ten drops to find homes for...i may be purchasing pots yet this season.

potato project 2014 III

so selection for the project begins...i've already planted a couple of red pontiacs and there's another "drop" ( a spud weighing an ounce or less ) in the top photo along with some ( redundantly mentioned ) purple valley, ollallas and yukon golds...the bottom photo is for identification purposes...ollala on the left, yukon gold on the right...more on this as it progresses.