wild potatoes and quinoa killing time in a feeble sun

brutal weather dictated a monday at home since the state basically shut down...all but one of the wild potato plants have been transplanted to larger pots...they are growing..but at a snail's pace...which indeed may be natural in the dead of winter with an outside temperature around seven below zero fahrenheit and a limited amount of sunshine...they are producing true leaves these days and that is a plus...between five and seven on all but the smallest...the bottom photo is of a couple of them in the basement getting a bit longer photo period because they seemed to need it...the hardier looking ones are subsisting on natural light only and the basement plants will be too as soon as the perk up a bit...the quinoa in the fourth photo still looks like the alien plant it is...still no movement in the chenopodia morphology project that is sharing the spot by the window...we'll see what transpires as it happens ( if it happens )...it is truly winter and spring seems a lot further away than a mere seventy-three days...teosinte time before you know it.

blanketed

a bit more snow has come our way...to the extent that the birds were not perturbed while i was photographing the hawthorn tree...they were busy eating...snow is everywhere and there is no more cooking in my yard than there is in the gardens...the half barrels are covered...the trees and compost bin are covered...the teosinte looks completely out of its element ( to me anyway )...there are still unopened ears out there in the cold and snow...waiting for better times perhaps...the grandfatherly grape rootstock is covered as well...it's all asleep and the cold is supposed to be bitter over the next few days...a blanket may come in handy.

chenopodia

while i was out traipsing around the yard i ran across a lonely lambs quarters plant poking up out of a half barrel...kinua and lambs quarters are both from the chenopodia family and my reading tells me that the seedlings look eerily alike...we will be growing quinoa in the community garden ( and my back yard )and lambs quarters are both native and prolific seed producers...we have had them in the garden ( and since they are native and edible i have done nothing personally to discourage them ) so i thought it might be instructive to see what discernible differences there may be...the seeds from outside have definitely had a cycle of cold and the quinoa germinates at the drop of a hat...the light colored seeds on the sheet of paper are quinoa and the ark ones lambs quarters...i planted some of each in a peat pot about a quarter of an inch deep...the green toothpick delineates the quinoa side and the red the lambs quarters...i would expect quinoa in the next day or so...lambs quarters may take a bit longer...more morphology coming up...as long as everything sprouts.

i u northwest community garden 1-4-2014

at least my presence on campus couldn't technically be construed as trespassing since the campus "opened" thursday...there wasn't much going on ;last saturday and there is even less to see today...there is a fair blanket of insulating snow over the mulches and the green manures are covered...there is more snow in the forecast along with brutal cold which should keep a lid on things...for now...but i see the forecast has temperatures well above freezing by the end of next week...last winter was a cycle of snowfall and melt...snow cover usually means extended cold but i have to wonder what march will bring.

pgp in winter

the season has changed in four months at the pgp and things have quieted down...the gamagrass that was lush in august is dormant and snow covered today...there is s till some photo synthesis going on in the intermediate wheat grass...but that is the only limited activity i saw...the mulches are in order...the snow is an insulator...and the tesointe goes in in march...rest while you can.

transplanting II

aside from working with teosinte, watching it snow, shoveling snow, watching werner herzog documentaries ( encounters at the end of the earth and happy people...both cold weather films...fitting ), and shoveling more snow i have been looking at the wild potatoes...the two i transplanted five days ago are doing just fine but one in the germinating tray was looking a bit spindly so i took it down to the plant room...put a layer of compost in a peat pot...peeled the fabric off the peat pellet...applied the plant to its new home...filled in with potting soil and put it under the grow light for some sustained photosynthesis in hopes that this one too recovers and begins to sprout new leaves...learning about wild potatoes as i go implies that , beyond a general idea of how plants work and what scant information i have found on the interweb, i don't know exactly how these plants behave when healthy...so growth and new leaves imply success...withering failure...i do believe i made the correct move..i am not sure if i did it in time...more as it develops.

homegrown teosinte

it's new year's day and gunfire woke me up early...it's seventeen degrees fahrenheit outside and it snowed some last night ( though not as much as was forecast )...it's a holiday, i am not a sports fan, and i had time on my hands...the kinua and wild potatoes are doing okay and the yema de huevos replanting is on hold until the tubers produce a few more sprouts...time to start another winter project...so i went down in the basement and picked a few likely looking seed ears from the indoor teosinte...clearly they were ready since one of the ears shattered in my hand as i picked it...took them back upstairs and opened them and selected six of the darker seeds from the sixteen seeds the ears produced...normally northern tepehuan teosinte needs a cycle or two of cold to break dormancy and i usually sow them directly into the ground in mid-march ( which i will be doing in every garden i have a hand in this spring ) to accommodate this need...it's cold outside but i am trying to see if the seed the teosinte i grew last season will be viable for the next so i don't want to wait...so i soaked the seeds in a 3% solution of hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes instead...i have no idea who figured this one out but i got the idea from dr. mary eubanks, who was a duke last time i contacted her and who has been exceptionally kind and helpful in answering questions from the laity...it has worked for me before when testing tesointe so the odds are that if this seed is viable it will germinate in the peat pellets i put the seeds in...if so some home made seeds will be going into gardens ( beyond the ones that i left on plants outdoors to shatter and reseed naturally ) along with the shiny store-bought ones...if these fail to germinate i will be going out back and getting seeds off the outdoor pants ( which should not need to be soaked...again, it's cold outside ) to see what they do...if anything...so more business in the basement...if these plants do take off i will be potting them and hardening them off to put out in the spring to give them that much more of a jump on the tesointe's one hundred and fifty-five day germination to flowering season...more as things come ( or don't ) up.