corn sweat II

i work a few miles from the garden and it had rained there this afternoon...still i went to the garden to have a look anyway and it is just as well i did...what i found was some drooping jerusalem artichokes ( first through third photos )...hardy natives, when they begin to droop it is time to water...the teosinte ( four through seven ) was curled from transpiration...another sure sign of the need for water...so i doused the bed with the hose and about fifteen minutes later the curl had vanished ( eight through ten )...a trait the teosinte has passed on to its descendant maize...the spuds that were planted a few weeks ago are coming along ( eleven and twelve ) and the onion is still in full bloom...finally i found some wheat growing at the base of the asparagus...something of a surprise since i can recall only ever having planted winter rye in this garden...perhaps a seed stowed away..it's possible.

water II

with all the recent rain and yellow leaves around the garden i was surprised to find that the leaves on the sweet corn had curled up lengthwise...a sure sign of transpiration in the zea family and a sign of a need for water as well...there are a few things that could be contributing to this...first it has been a bit warmer the past few days...second there has only been .65 inches of rainfall so far this month and that has been spaced in fairly light amounts..add in the fact that these plants are on the southwestern corner in a bed exposed to the prevailing wind...altogether that could be enough to dry the soil and plants..so i did a bit of selective watering of maize ( and gave the tomatoes in the bed a dash as well )...soil moisture in the rest of the beds seemed to be good enough and the plants happy enough to put off watering until thursday...if it doesn't rain by then.

wilt II

i had expected the zea diploperennis on campus to display signs of water loss after my trip to the industrial field yesterday and i wasn't disappointed...he stoma had closed to curtail water loss and the leaves had curled throughout the stand..a good soaking with the hose had them perked up in about a half hour,,,but they are beginning to die back for the season...when i cut them back last autumn i wasn't sanguine about a second season...sub-tropical grasses aren't native here and i had no real expectations of them wintering over...the mild winter was probably why the survived to this year...we'll see what happens next year...the jerusalem artichokes ocntinue to bloom and die back...still weirdly counter-intuitive....they have always died back more or less in unison before,,,another oddity this season...the garden is slowing...the hopi blue is done and the sunchokes are finishing...but the overall cast to the project is still green...chinese yams, cowpeas, and brussels sprouts still chugging along and the fall planting for the pgp and home garden still have a way to go....won't be mulching until november.

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 )

hot + dry = more transpiration

life got in the way of garden maintenance yesterday so i missed a day of watering ( i knew i wouldn't be able to be there yesterday so i soaked the garden sunday evening...but it's bloody hot ) and the plants told me about it this afternoon...the hopi blue maize had some seriously curled leaves when i arrived on campus and so did the zea diploperennis...i watered them thoroughly and then strolled over to the i u northwest community garden to take some photos and measurements...when i came back i soaked the garden again but the grasses had recovered well in the thirty minutes i was gone...their leaves had uncurled and a second dose of water can only have helped...one wonders if and when the heat and drought will break...or if daily visits will become the norm.

transpiration II

although it has rained a bit this month all that has accomplished on the palmer drought indices is to bring the short-term and long-term drought projections into line as "moderate" ( as opposed to a moderate long -term and severe short term ) so the rain hasn't had much impact as evidenced by the water i'm using on my gardens...i hadn't been to campus since sunday...i skipped yesterday because it was fairly cool...but when i got to campus this evening i go a message that told me to come out more often for a while when i saw the curled leaves on the zea diploperennis ( top photo ) ...water passes through the plants and evaporates as part of the water cycle...when the plants begin to lose too much water the stomata close and the leaves begin to curl...the second photo is of the same leaves about twenty minutes or so after i began to water...like its descendant maize, teosinte takes up water quickly and the stomata open causing the leaves to flatten out to their original shape...it is going to be hot according to the forecast with no chance of rain before the end of the week ( and i will believe that when i see it )so i will be doing daily visits to the garden to keep things well watered...dry or not the jerusalem artichokes are indeed about to burst into yellow blooms almost a ,month early ( third photo ) they still aren't more than three feet tall and their rush to bloom is odd to me...especially since th e far larger plants in my yard are in no seeming hurry to do anything of the sort...no even nascent buds back there and they are pushing five feet in height...none of them are water starved so i have to think its a sunlight issue...the plants in my back yard get some shatde and the ones on campus are in full sun all day... the fourth photo is of another zea diploperennis plant and the fifith is of hopi blue maize which is growing rapidly ( as it is in my backyard as well )...there are some brussels sprouts up on campus...which is the only place i have any...lots of peas, beans, kholrabi, turnips, potatoes, sweet potatoes, sunflowers, maize, garlic, squash, wheat,beets, herbs, and jerusalem artichokes...but no brussels sprouts...hope the ones on campus are productive.