vestigial?

i have been dead heading the jerusalem artichoke blooms in the community garden that have shed their petals because they can look a bit scraggly when they die back and we want to keep up appearances...my back yard is not the university ( phew! ) so i have kept the dead heads around to have a look at what jerusalem artichoke seeds look like...the flowers in my stands are in various stages of the cycle ( top two photos ) and some are more mature than others...i pulled the heads off a couple that seemed ready to shatter ( third photo ) and took them inside to separate the seed from the chaff...sunchokes are members of the sunflower family but their seeds are nowhere near as big ( bottom photo )...when i plant jerusalem artichokes this coming autumn i will be planting tubers not seeds...i wonder if the seeds are vestigial of if you can propagate plants from them...are they true seed or vestiges of a predomesticate? you can grow wild potatoes from seeds but i have never ( yet ) encountered seeds form a potato bloom ( there are still potatoes blooming in a few gardens...perhaps it is time for a closer look )...i see yet another winter project coming into focus as i try to germinate and grow jerusalem artichokes from seed...i'm sitting out a semester ( i have been called classless before and will, no doubt , be called that again ) so i have some time to do some research along with pursuing my reading list ( i said i wasn't in school, not that i wasn't learning )...i have ordered broader spectrum bulbs for my basement light fixtures...i have new pots and the floor has been swept..i hear tell this coming winter is to be pretty much a replay of last year's cold and snow...i need something to keep me busy.

grapes

the ample summer rains do not seem to have had a negative impact on the grapes ( although it looks as if it may be a somewhat lighter harvest this year...but that is only judging by eyeballing the tree...we will have to wait until harvest for an official weight ) and the hard little green grapes have begun to soften and turn purple out here in the cascade...i am thinking in about a month i will be snaking a ten foot ladder into the brush under the tree and climbing to harvest as much as i can reach..harvest is gratifying...no matter what the subject.

pounding

recent rains have been fairly heavy ( with a total of 11.22 inches of rain in august...well above normal ) and some plants have fared better than others...the maize in the community garden laid down in a storm earlier this season without serious impact...i simply hilled it back upright and away it went...it is genetically akin to teosinte which lays down all the time without sustaining any real damage..the pod corn in the top photo is also part of the zea family , and while it has been knocked down by the rains it is still fully functional and flowering with the intent of producing ears ( second photo )...there is water standing everywhere, including in the pots with extra drainage holes drilled in them ( bottom photo )...the ground is saturated and more rain is forecast...is this anomalous or a new norm?

a bit of zea morphology

the top photo is of a maize plant's emerging flower that i took on july tenth...the next two are northern tepehuan teosinte plants beginning to flower in my back yard ( and which have me geeked at the prospect of producing seed ears again this year...the second photo is of a flower on a teosinte plant grown from seed my plants produced last year...the only one to survive and prosper out of a batch of about a dozen that germinated...i'm geeked even if it doesn't produce...more so if it does )...the bottom photo is of an emergent pod corn flower on the south side of my house...the appearance of these will all change and the ones that closely resemble one another now may not end up so well matched...there will be more posts as the pod corn and teosinte mature...i already have multiple photos of maize flowers to act as a comparison with the other two zea varieties...they are all cousins...with all the similarities and differences cousins can evince...i'm up for a look.

autumn creeps into the garden...

there are still cucumbers coming along ( top photo 0 but they are developing among leaves that have died back...and the leaves on the cucumber plants themselves are looking rather tired ( second photo )...while the bean wall is dong okay ( see the next post )some individual vines have gone by the wayside...whether this is due to natural life cycle or squirrel damage is open to discussion...the lover leaves on the maize plants have been turning yellow and dying back for a few weeks now( in fact that is what the cucumber in the top photo is lying in )...not sure if we are going to leave them as a fall decoration or remove them to make way for fall planting...time for a palaver...

...but the season isn't over

there are peas up and running...and while the cucumbers are scaling back, the beans, which have dominated the wall from the start, are still producing like mad...cherry tomatoes continue to ripen in a few spots in the garden and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future...and there is still maize in the garden trying valiantly to produce whole ears...dna is tenacious stuff even when the reproductive function of a plant has been thoroughly hijacked by humans..there are still fall green manures to plant and there is fall planting to do ( garlic and jerusalem artichokes to name two )...lots going on yet...rally the season is year round...it just slows a lot in winter.

bent...

the flowers in the corner box have not...and probably will not, regained their upright stature....the pounding they got form this week's rain pushed them over...they're bent but not broken and they continue to bloom and will for some time to come yet...asparagus is not the only resilient plant in the garden...the arborvitae, conversely, seems to have soaked all that rain right up and probably wants a bit more...later this week if forecasts hold true.