kiuna

kiuna is a quechua name for quinoa..so is chisiya mama ( mother grain )...at least according to "lost crops of the incas" they are and possibly more appropriate than the spanish quinoa ( what do you think coach? )...whatever you choose to call them the plants seem to be doing fine under the light along with their andean contemporaries the wild potatoes...the potatoes continue to sprout new leaves and the kiuna leaves are developing slowly ( you can see just to the right of center in the third photo a kiuna leaf with part of a seed case still attached )...i have zero experience with either of these ( although the kiuna seems to be growing itself without much of any intervention from me...the potatoes have my attention riveted )so i am all questions and finding answers is proving somewhat painstaking...no one seems to grow wild potatoes...or, at least, they aren't talking about it...that's fine...i had zero experience with teosinte either and i have learned as i have gone along to the point that i am secure in my recognition abilities and i know how and when to plant it...trial end error with a good deal of error...but that's what makes the lesson stick and i am growing my data base on kiuna and the agonizingly slow growing potatoes...while we are discussing trial and error, the yema de huevos in a basket project is winding down its first planting and there is some trepidation as i contemplate digging around for tubers to replant...they are dying back steadily and i wonder if there was any success..the first planting may be the last...either way we will be learning... growing "wild" plants indoors is always perilous and whatever the outcome we will have gained something...the good news is that it is about the right time frame for them to have set tubers...the potatoes that they produced outdoors were not very large which is normal....even small tubers will grow another generation so there is a possibility of success...this was an improvised experiment necessitated by the tubers refusal to be dormant...either way they would have been lost...this was an attempt to preserve them for another outdoor planting...more on this when harvest ( hopefully ) time rolls around.

potato basement

forty-nine days into the indoor potato season and it seems to be going fine...the yemma de huevos plants are between six and eight inches tall and exhibiting new growth continuously...i have pared the watering schedule back to once a week and that seems to ample moisture in the basement which is fairly stable as far as humidity goes...forty-nine days is a bit past one third of a one hundred and twenty day season so we may be alright...that would mean another indoor planting of another restless generation under the lights before an outdoor return in the spring...the storage project is fine as well...the ollalla, early blue, and roja narino ( in descending order of photos ) are still firm and i see only a couple of sprouts...still a long way to go though...for all the spuds down there...still no sure thing.