the garden is still green

got off work and went to the garden just to see how things are...there has been enough rain in the past few days ( about an inch and a half in the past week ) that there was no need to water...just reconnaissance today...

and there is still quite a lot to see...there are green tomatoes in my bed and just about everywhere else as well...and there ar still multiple blooms on the plants...

they may be monochromatic...

they still have a striking family resemblance to their potato cousins...

and, to a lesser extent, to another cousin in the garden, carolina horse nettle...

the squash plants are still blooming and producing...

the asparagus is still very robust..we are a bit more than a month away from the traditional mulch...

one of the plants is still producing "berries"...

and another has come out in a rash of very late flowers which, unfortunately, probably won't amount to much in the way of seed...

over in my bed there is more than a few tomatoes going on...

the winter wheat is in various stages of development...there are new sprouts...

and more than a few have produced second leaves which is a good sign in over wintering terms...this will be going on fro a time yet...no idea when the first hard frost will be...october fifteenth is the first average frost date...but averages lie and last year it was more toward the end of the month..we will see as we watch the garden shift seasons...but not stop.

soaked and nettled nightshades

it was already a shade over eighty degrees ( fahrenheit ) in my back yard when i got home form the campus garden about quarter to eight this morning...

after yesterday's heat and in preparation for today's i went out to soak the beds thoroughly...which i did...

looking around i found five tillered maize plants...

and some really nice support roots doing their job...

that was not the most interesting discovery of the day however...in the citizen's police academy alumni bed...along with the collards...i found the non-native and invasive perennial carolina horse nettle with all its little ( and, word of warning, vicious ) spikes...the discovery did not end there however...

when i backed up from the bed, there was one in full bloom...

and when i moved a bit farther into the lot i found four more in bloom...ready to make fruits...even if they don't succeed in going to seed they are not going anywhere...a deeply rooted perennial they will be back every year and, eventually, succeed in seeding more...clearly the original individuals which were confined to the old biology club bed have moved out to colonize the lot...i have ( often ) pointed out that these plants are well beyond their native range of the southeastern seaboard...they should not overwinter here but clearly have...a new environmental niche...and just one more line of evidence for climate change being an actual event, not some liberal or chinese conspiracy...we verge on a rant which we may reserve for a different blog...let us move on to nightshade morphology...

these are carolina horse nettle blooms...

and this is a potato blossom...aside from the color ( which varies from variety to variety of potato...i am unsure of color variation in horse nettle...i can only remember seeing them bloom in this color...however i haven't see that many ) the salient difference is that the segments of the pistil of the horse nettle are separated while those of the potato bloom are closed...not that you need that...the thorns on the horse nettle are a dead giveaway.

abundant warmth

the second week of june is dry and is feeling a lot like the latter stages of july or early august...which has me wondering just exactly what are those particular months going to be like...at the moment we will leave that aside but it will need to be addressed at some point...the heat has not deterred growth ...the chines yams ( second photo ) are going berserk and the new growth on Jean's wild strawberries ( third and fourth ) is impressive..the alfalfa is blooming ( fifth ) for the alfalfa leaf cutter bees ( well timed even if it is me saying it )..up in the front potato patch there are clear signs of blooms to come ( sixth ) while in the back patch the blooms have arrived ( seventh through ninth )...the pacific bluestem wheat ( tenth ) is doing well fro volunteer wheat, however i am much more geeked by the emmer wheat ( eleventh and twelfth )...one of the earliest wheat domesticates it has been around for ten thousand years or so...ancient dna in my yard...the bogota market and mashua blanca ( thirteenth and fourteenth )seem unfazed by the temperature...they may be acclimated and the corn ancestors zea mays parvaglumis ( fifteenth ) and norethern tepehuan teosinte ( sixteenth ) are at home in the heat just like their descendants...you can watch them grow...we'll see if it stays hot and dry and we irrigate or if the rainy spring gives way to a wet summer...it will all come out eventually.