change is forecast

took an early trip out to campus to see what was what...

i found the asparagus in an upright position...

and the most recent spears about the diameter of a pencil...that, along with a forecast calling for deep summer like temperatures this coming week, tells me the edible sprear season is pretty much done so i back-filled the trench with compost to feed the roots...unfortunately the photos i took of that process came out so badly as to be useless...so you will jsut have to take my word on the back-fill...

the einkorn wheat behind the asparagus has reached what is very near its full height ( this is an ancient and "unimproved" variety...altogether a far more intractable a grain that say hard red winter wheat...there will be no "amber waves"..or, if there are, they will be easy to sail over )...

and i see signs of ears emerging soon enough...

over in my "official" bed ( i am the custodian of the asparagus, however if no one else wants to plant the back of the bed i do....hence the einkorn )...

the hopi turquoise is coming along well...

and both the alfalfa that has fled the compound...

and that which remained behind, are in full bloom...good for the bees...

the volunteer spuds in the bed are hinting at blooming as well...given the expected increase in temperature it seems unlikely the blooms will produce fruits...we will see...

and while solanum is in focus here, i heard talk...somewhere...of eradicating the carolina horse nettle in the garden...this is, of course, nonsense...a plant far more determined than humans that spreds by seed and rhyzomes is not going to succumb to any sort of "normal weeding"...agent orange...maybe...but not pulling digging, or cutting...a very short servey revealed thirty plants around the beds and deep into the lawn...one should adapt...

finally, anticipating the coming heat i established a rock mulch around one of the hopi turquoise plants...if no one mistakes it for a "weed" and yanks it out of the ground this season, i may eastablish more...again, we will see

noticeably drier addenda

when the natives start to look like this...

"noticeably drier" is an understatement...jerusalem artichokes are among the last to wilt and i do not generally water them...that may change...

national weather service needs to get a grip...and...more morphology...

new maize...

new teosinte.

july first

first of a new month and the season is coming along...there are hot banana peppers out there and there are jalepenos on the way...

in seventeen days the jerusalem artichokes have added height and foliage...there was lemon balm making a stab at moving in there last month...july first finds it utterly shaded out...the sunchokes have no pity...

the bush beans are blooming...

chinese yam leaves are being skelitalized by japenese beetles...still, there are a multitude of healthy leaves left ( although it may be time for some neem oil here )...

and the plants are preparing to bloom and produce aerial bulbs...

the egyptian walking onions ( my back yard is an international place ) are both blooming and producing aerial bulbs...

the spuds are blooming profusely as well but, unfortunately, not producing fruits...no seeds this season it seems...

the maize around the yard is easily knee high...

and the teosinte is tillering ( while i haven't yet seen any on the heirloom maize yet )...

the wheat...

and the rye are ripening...threshing, winnowing, and milling at month's end, if not a bit before...

the drupes on the mulberry tree are beginning to turn color...

the grapes are coming along too...

the girls have been busy too...they have already sealed up a few tubes in the bee house i retrieved from my daughter and son-in-law's garage and over in the new bee house i have found a sealed tube in the nesting block ( third from the left in the bottom row...not that easy to spot because of the critter net )...the news is fairly good back there...so far we have a season.

zea day

i put forty heirloom maize kernels in to soak yesterday...and the morado purple clearly made its presence known in the water...

this morning i planted them in four beds around the yard...

including this one they will be sharing with some strawberries making their escape from the south bed...

more of the teosinte i soaked last week had declared itself ready to plant so i put it in the established beds ( more on that directly ) and i planted some in the maize beds as well...traditional agriculturalists in mexico say they plant the "wild and weedy" maize ancestor at the edges of their fields because it makes their maize "stronger"...who am i to argue with that...we will run with their wisdom...

and these are tesointe seedlings that survived the 1.6" of rain that bucketed sown in a half an hour day before yesterday and are greening up and preparing to leaf...the gardener is pleased.