less shade

it rained a bit friday and i was busy yesterday so i put off a visit to the garden until this morning and it's just as well i went...my bed ( first photo ) was looking fairly dry...there was a droop to the jerusalem artichokes ( second )...the spuds were looking wilted ( third ) and the teosinte was curled up ( fourth )...so i soaked the bed ( and the asparagus bed as well ).....as i was watering i noticed the yukon golds had finished ( fifth ) so when i finished watering i popped them up ( sixth ) a modest haul of a dozen "new potato" sized tubers from three plants...no extravagance in production....i watered the asparagus bed ( seventh ) mostly for the spuds i had planted there a few weeks ago...the asparagus is fine ( although i see no berries yet ) and has put out eight new spears ( eighth through eleventh )...the volunteer wheat in the asparagus bed ( twelfth ) is as finished as the hard red spring wheat in the back yard...i believe i will leave it to see if more sprouts next spring...i have enough here to serve my purposes...finally...after about twenty minute or so...the curl came out of the teosinte leaves.

spuds, roots, and grass flowers

i decided to spend some time planting yet more spuds ( i believe i am now up to forty-six ) so i cleaned out some containers and let them dry in the sun and then went to work...there were three plants in peat pots still on the deck so those got homes first...the smaller container got an unidentified ( first photo ), viney looking spud which we may eventually id...or not...the second got a cobb lee ( second photo ) and a yukon gold ( third photo ) from bins in the basement and the third got two elmer's blue from the deck ( fourth and fifth )...the two elemr's blue are of radically different sizes and there is a reason for that and it has had an impact on th eplants...it seems pretty clear to me that the smaller of the two ( sixth photo ) was getting more sunlight on the deck ( there are many plants out there yet...there is still work to do ) and as a result put a lot more energy into establishing a root system ( seventh photo )...it was significantly pot bound and i took the peat pot completely off and scrubbed the exterior of the roots lose...the larger plant ( eighth ) was in a shadier area and spent more energy on leaves and stems to collect light, so...fewer roots ( ninth )...while plants need varying amounts of light ( ramps are averse to too much...so is ginseng ) these two plants of the same variety show what a variation in light would do...my best bet is that the smaller plant will produce more tubers...we will see if the larger can catch up root wise...finally the last two photos are of wheat ( tenth ) and winter rye ( eleventh ) flowering...just to prove grasses do flower.

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.

the last potato harvest of 2014 ( for my yard anyway )

the yukon gold plant in the container was finished for the season so i popped the tubers out of the pot and took them in to clean up ( top two photos )...the volunteer russet has gone they way of the dodo as well so i took the spading fork to it and brought those in too ( third photo )...a small haul..not quite half a pound..but, as usual, the garden has another surprise ( actually a couple )...that fist one is recounted in the next post

tubers for dinner

someone/thing snapped off one of the jerusalem artichoke plants in my back yard prematurely ending its seasson...curious to see what was up i dug the plant up and found...tubers...it's early so there weren't as many as i would have liked but that's the way things go sometimes...i cleaned them up and, along with a couple of red pontiac and a couple of yukon gold potatoes, i set about preparing dinner...this may mark me out as a tuber philistine...but i fried them in soy oil because that's the way i prefer them and it was my dinner...as a side note...if you don't want your jerusalem artichokes on the crispy side start the potatoes first...i tried to be uniform in the thicknesses of tuber i cut but the sunchokes got done way before the potatoes ( i had forgotten this since last autumn ) and he yukon golds were done well before the red pontiacs as well...so a starting order suggests itself...took around twenty minutes start to finish..a little sea salt and hey presto! my dinner came from my yard...there will be many more to come made up of solely home-grown produce...but the first is usually the best...and i am stuffed.

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.

a mixed result

failure is a constant in gardening...there have already been failures this season and there will be more...but these are tempered by the successes which generally outweigh the losses and that is the case at the iu northwest community garden tonight..there are now ten sweet corn plants up and running ( top photo ) and the hopi blue maize is topping out around four inches with the largest plants ( second photo )...five of the six yukon gold potatoes i planted are up in the sweet corn bed ( third photo ) and the fifteen red nordlands have already been hilled once and look strong and healthy ( fourth photo )...on the down side one of the hopi blue plant had seriously yellowed ( usually a sign of entirely too much water...it is drowning ) and seems on its way to failure...so i will be soaking more hopi blue seeds tomorrow to replant wednesday both at the community garden and at the pgp which has seen maize setbacks as well...despite these disappointments the season has gone well so far , even with the changes of direction that have been dictated by nature...the next building project will be a trellis for the cucumbers...i knew we would be going vertical with the vines so i deliberately placed them on the north side of the bed so they would not shade the peppers ( where are they? ) and the kohlrabi...placing the taller plants on the north side of a bed is an old design dating back to at least the first world war and reinforced by the victory gardens that were part of the home-based food economy that allowed the u s to feed its military, its allies during the second world war, and a good part of europe after the war...a part of the history of the war that gets little air time but may be a harbinger of a home-based economy to come.