losses and gains...a natural economy

it has been a week since i put the last round of leaf cutters out so i went out to the bee house to pull the mesh bag out...i did not find much of any sign of bee activity in the house...however since it was infested by ants when i put them out and they may have returned it is not surprising...

there are more than enough alternative sites for bee nesting around back there...the old nurse logs from the dead wild cherry tree are supporting plant life and have myriad holes and nooks a be might find inviting...

when i dumped out the mesh bag i found the balance of the cocoons had hatched...

inevitably though there were some misfires...

and, more distressingly, some outright fatalities...unfortunate but natural...

on the gains side there are silks and ears of maize emerging...

there are ears and silks on the teosinte plants too...

green tomatoes...

and ones that are coming along...

hot banana peppers are multiplying and the kohlrabi is nearly done...

and the jerusalem artichokes are blooming like they do everything else...relentlessly...

i found a live bee ( not a leaf cutter ) and a moth having a sip of nectar...so there's a balance of sorts out there...a microcosm ( there's that word again ) of a wider natural economy we, as a species, seem determined to undermine and upend...how much longer will i find native plants and insects before they are replaced by carolina horse nettle and asian longhorned ticks as native ranges are invaded by alien ( and disease carrying in the case of the ticks...disease gradients move north as well ) species...i wonder.

surprises and issues

the season has its ups and downs...the mashua balnca in the first photo ( taken a few days ago when it was sunnier ) and its cousin the nasturtium are boomning along ( nowhere near one another after last season )...difficult as it may be to see the leaf cuutter bees have plugged a fourth tube in the nesting block ( third )...the dwarf syrian wheat in the fourth photo is about done and the emmer in the fifth is nearing...brussels sprouts are looking more like themselves ( sixth )...the egyptian walking onions are developing huge aerial bulbs ( seventh )...the zea family representatives, northern tepehuan teointe ( eighth ) and the maize in a bucket ( tenth )are both developing support roots ( ninth and eleventh respectively )...and the issue? i am grossly displeased by the continued presence of japanese beetles anywhere near my grapes and yams..they persist in diefiance of that displeasure...so i resort to neem oil...that battle continues.

around the yard

pod corn top...northern tepehuan teosinte second...one of the cucumber vines on the fence, third...and a hot pepper on the bottom.

maize

the maize that we stood back upright after monday's storms is doing just fine...it bent instead of breaking in the wind and being a member of the zea family it is tolerant of laying down anyway...we probably could have left it laying over but for aesthetics and just to be safe we stood it up...the zea diploperennis in the second photo illustrates what i mean ( to a degree )...the central stalks of the plants grow straight up like maize ( its domesticated descendant )...but the tillers that come off the base splay outward from the roots and lay along the ground as they grow longer...they actually grow support roots along the bottom of the stem that look something like the maize support roots in the third photo...annual tesointe can be eight or ten feet tall and it seems to want to lay across the ground rather than support its weight...i staked the ten footers in my back yard upright last season and they still strained to lay down..so...no harm,no foul...all the maize that has been hill upright in the garden looks good today...there will be ears ( and squirrels ) soon enough.

support portraiture

the maize in the community garden is getting fairly tall ( three feet for some of the hopi blue which has a longer season and around five feet for the sweet corn ) and they are beginning to need additional support...the sweet corn plant in the center of the top photo has developed some sturdy support roots and is well into a second tier...the hopi blue n the third photo is still working with one tier but as it tillers they will expand into multiple tiers as well...the northern tepehuan teosinte in the fourth photo has a much longer season ( 155 days to flowering, much less developing seed heads )and is much shorter but its support roots are forming as well...i have grown teosinte with four or five tiers of support roots and expect to see that before the season ends...support roots are not limited to maize or its direct ancestors...last season i pulled a rather mature japanese bottle grass plant from one of my beds and was startled to find support roots...i suppose i shouldn't have been since they are all grasses...too focused on maize.

teosinte and hopi blue maize

while i was in the garden i noticed that one of the hopi blue plants and one of the northern tepehuan teosinte plants both shared the same peculiar ( in my experience ) coloration...they are akin to one another and they are both annuals so i am left wondering if it is genetic or if it is environmental...they are located near to one another in the bed...but none of the other plants share this trait...more research i see with some more observation thrown in...if it is a genetic trait i wonder if there's folk taxonomy for it...questions questions.