reproductive cycles

downstairs this spud is showing signs of dying back at the bottom...and a smaller plant in the same container has already run through its season...

it produced three "drops"...small tubers that wull be seed for plants in one of the beds i have reserved for the coming season at the community garden...

there are other tubers stored down there that are announcing the nearness of spring and a fairly urgent need to find soil...they may start in pots...they may hold out until next month...we will see...either way , the time for planting is "soon"...the dna is urging an opportunity to replicate...relentlessly...and that replication is not confined to the spuds...

there's movement over at the berry colony as well...

some berries are done and replete with seed ( which we will be saving and planting )...

and some are still cooking...two things i have noticed...one is that not every berry is on a stolon, however every stolon has a berry...and the second is that the blooms that would produce new berries seem to be on hiatus while the berries that are mature...one can hope for another cycle of blooms but no buds are in evidence...

the stolon that i pinned in a peat pot on moving day...

has formed roots so i replanted it without the pin...a secondary reproductive mechanism in action and a clear indication of this berry's membership in the same family as strawberries...

another stolon has come to roost in a container...i did not pin this one simply because it did not seem to need to be encouraged to stay put...gravity seems to be helping me out here...so the colony is growing in artificial conditions...relentless dna again...the plants will go back out in spring to further colonize the ysrd with berries and yellow blooms..a few people have asked why i did not do this with the wild strawberries i have out in the yard...i could...however they only bloom and produce once a season in late may and early june...they would produce daughters in the basement in winter without fail, however i am uncertain that i have the periscapacity or thechnology to create the day length conditions i suspect have a great deal to do with traditional blooming strawberry reproduction...an everbearing variety may be an answer to that ( the wild strawberries clearly are not everbearing ) they are not wild though...seriously "improved" domesticates...that is a project for another winter.

more winterizing

with employment, such as it is, over for the day i traveled out to the garden on campus...where by the by, i met with an actual member of the community surrounding the garden who shook my hand and thanked me for the garden which she had clearly been utilizing ( the collards drew special praise ) i assured her sh was welcome and encouraged her to utilize what was left ( collards, tomatoes, peppers ) until the season collapses...at least in terms of harvestable produce...i am working on extending the season in my bed in an effort at year-round function...

i put a shovel in the bed of my truck before i left home this morning which made removing the rest of the maize roots much easier...

after i turned, hoed, and leveled the newly opened bed i broadcast more hare red winter wheat...

then i raked it in to about a quarter inch in depth...

and i doused the whole bed with a good soaking to get them going...

possibly not the best of photos, however there are sprouts up among the seed i planted sunday so hopefully things will move along smoothly...

there are deepening signs of autumn everywhere...i count twenty ripening asparagus "berries" still on the plants...

and down the row the beds are dying back...

there's still life out there yet though...plant...

and insect ( the picnicing squirrels seem to have vanished with the maize ) this will go on a while longer...then things will quiet down...still...we aren't nearly finished.

deconstruct...rebuild

rather a bizarre set of circumstances ( which will have to wait until a later date for a thorough investigation ) brought me to the garden at about quarter past six this morning and the first thing i noticed was the grass had been cut...

the asparagus is still going well...the squash vine invader has called it quits though...

more "berries" are ripening...a fair crop of asparagus seed this season if anyone is interested...

around the back side one of the volunteer spuds had died back...it yielded a fair haul of elmer's blue fingerling spuds...

i have harvested what maize the squirrels didn't get from my bed...the plants fulfilled their function and it is time to begin the process of winterizing the bed...

so i cut down the stalks...

and began the process of removing the maize roots ( note to self: bring shovel next trip ) which, given the depth and spread of the roots and the paucity of appropriate garden implements, was not the simplest task...

after i hoed the cleared area i broadcast winter wheat seed into the bed, raked it under to a shallow depth, and gave it a shot of water to let it know it could germinate...i will be making more frequent trips for a time to keep the seedlings well watered...

there are still tomatoes taking their sweet time ripening and there is still a potato plants entwined in the alfalfa...so i have not cleared the season out of the entire bed yet...it will be a process but the wheat needs to be in over the next week or so if it's going to have a chance of wintering over...i may be pushing things along a bit...and...

and look who is making a comeback...the next few months will tell if i have actually manage to control the jerusalem artichokes or if the shade and the roots of the maize were simply forcing the colony into a sort of hibernation...i knew it would be work...it always is.

basement sunday I-holy chit

went rummaging around in the basement potato bin and found that some of the spuds are still wintering over just fine ( top photo )...on closer inspection i found that some are not ( second photo ) the ollala in the third photo is indicative of the state i found some in...the early blue in the fourth photo too...sprouts and roots everywhere you care to look...so...off to the garden center for peat pots and potting soil to preserve the tubers that are shriveling...i separated them by varieties, six in all, early blue, all red, red pontiac, german butterball, ollala, and yukon gold...made plant markers for each and took them downstairs to pot them...more on that in the next post down.

perhaps not as much relief as i thought

"...only four of these building blocks circulate in the atmospheric commons. the rest are in the soil, and they are all water soluble. managing these elements and water is accomplished by a diversity of roots below the surface. this management scheme occurs in millimeters and minutes. "consulting the genius of the place : an ecological approach to a new agriculture" wes jackson p.151 __________________________________________________________ lots of lightening and thunder as i sit here typing...rain has ended the drought in lake county and more is on the way seemingly ( although none has fallen yet...just light and noise so far )but is it enough? these are summer thunderstorms that are spotty in their areas of coverage and they tend to move through quickly...not all-day soakers...some fields are lucky, others not...even though it has rained you can see the curled leaves in the third and fifth photos and they show that the industrial corn is still losing lots of water...more, perhaps than they are absorbing...no real diversity of roots here ( although the bermuda thistle in the fourth photo still shows a marked lack of atrazine on this field...many of those plants have gone to seed and farmer brown will be turning under a new batch in the spring to keep the rows weedy )...last year i posted photos of the root system of the sweet corn i grew on campus...they don't go very deep which is an issue in most ( but not all ) of the county...it's located at the south end of lake michigan on a glacial moraine...much of the area is underlain by sand ( dig down eighteen inches in my back yard and that's what you find ) so water tends to drain away quickly from shallow root systems...one reason why asparagus likes it here so well...but that's another blog...which could mean that the rain isn't doing the annuals as much good as one would think...the exposed ear of green industrial corn with stunted and missing kernels in the third photo could be backing me up here...the palmer drought indices may say we're in the green but the corn in the fields doesn't...a visit to the soybean field next to strack's is probably in order...tomorrow after a visit to campus....the top photo is the two ears ( so far ) on the hopi blue maize on campus...i threw it in as a contrast of heirloom versus industrial to compare with the three plants in the second photo that are representative of industrial corn's habit of producing only one ear per plant ( unless the planter skips and leaves two feet between plants..then you might see two ears on an industrial plant )