any volunteers?

i have been trolling this field since june, when it became evident that there would be no planting in this field this season, searching in vain for volunteer corn...this morning i entered the field from the big box store side instead of the side fronting sterling creek road...this "improved" property has sat idle so long that nature is subsuming the "improvements" and while i was walking past the retention pond full of cattails the sign in the second photo caught my eye...i will not be mowing anytime soon...you can tell corn was planted on this side of the field as well by the combine mutilated cornstalks and zea detritus...you can see that the fallow field has been thoroughly colonized and i notice the annual plants have perennials moving in on them ( note the queen anne's lace in the fourth photo )...shrubs will be moving in next and...if it is left to itself...trees as it moves towards a climax community and climax communities around here mean forest...mark the calendar for today i found a single volunteer corn plant...monsanto, bayer. pioneer...all say there is no "suicide" gene in their gmo corn...that may be...but if their genetic tinkering has rendered the kernels mostly sterile seed saving is a dead issue for their "licensed" product...either way...it will be interesting to see if this plant survives and if it produces an ear comparable to ones i have seen volunteers produce in the past...stay tuned.

post storm...

a heavy thunderstorm moved through here a bit past midnight and ...among other things...dumped 1.14" of rain in my back yard...it also knocked out the power at work so we were sprung free, and since i was in town anyway i thought i run over to the garden to see how we fared...some of the spuds were a bit beaten down...but they are viney and tend to lay down after they reach a certain size anyway...some of the asparagus ferns were a bit weighed down with water...but they tend to lay over as well...the jerusalem artichokes in the third photo sneer at weather as much as anything else that tries to get in their way...they are bloomin' fine...the cauliflower and brussels sprouts ( fourth and fifth photos respectively ) are doing well and resemble each other strongly...since they are both brassica oleracea that shouldn't be a surprise...close cousins often bear a striking resemblance...has that cucumber changed any in two days? you tell me...finally the garden is good this morning...hoping you are too.

a little grape morphology

the fence along the back of the parking lot at work fronts a sort of swamp and there is a wide variety of plant life out there...among other things wild grapes that are using the fence as a trellis ( top photo )...the second photo is of a wild grape leaf and the third is of a domesticated grape leaf in my back yard...the wild leaf is smaller and far more serrated than the domesticate...lots more points...the clusters of grapes are different too...not especially in the overall appearance ( i mean...a bunch is a bunch )...but the domesticated grapes are larger and so are the bunches in that there are more grapes in the domesticate ones...i actually saw single wild grapes growing on the vines...all of which is consistent with an ancestor/domesticate morphology...the domesticates will have been selected for larger and more abundant fruit production as well as the tendency to stay attached to the bunch...i would suppose the wild grape bunches would shatter far more readily...it will interesting to keep tabs on this over the next month or so until the domesticates ripen....as an addendum the taxonomy for the domesticated grapes is Vitius vinifera and the wild grape is Vitius vulpina...a native variety whose range extends from new england to nebraska...it is at home on that fence.

industry marches on...

...but seemingly with limits...the berm of the cornfield next to the supermarket has quite a bit of biomass ( you can insert the word "weeds" here mentally if you like...i will not since, as i have pointed out, my definition of "weed" is in serious flux right now ) growing in it and it is growing right up to the edge of the crop...my reference points made it easy to find the two closely placed corn plants again and, difficult as it may be to see in the fourth photo they are still significantly shorter than their neighbors...another thing i noticed while the mosquitoes worked on their reproductive cycle was that while the majority of the plants had begun to flower ( fifth and sixth photo...like the teosinte in my back yard...there's another post for teosinte news ) the ones in the row right next to the berm have not ( which might be difficult to pick out in the seventh photo but it is still the case ) and i have to wonder if it is because the biomass in the berm is offering a lot of competition for resources...planted far too closely together and strapped for nutrients those small corn plants may struggle to be productive...more as the season progresses and i run to the supermarket.

august teosinte news

the larger of the teosinte plants out back flowered some time ago ( top photo ) and has some well established branches these days ( second and third photos )...one of its smaller sisters ( fourth photo ) had joined in the reproductive cycle ( fifth photo ) and is flowering away as i type...it too has sat least one nascent branch ( sixth photo )...unfortunately in all this activity i have yet to see a single silk that tells me ears are on the way...that is an activity that is supposed to happen when the days shorten towards autumn...well autumn is a ways off but the days are shortening and the climate aint what it used to be...cycle disrupted? or accelerated? hang on and we will see...while i was out there daisy the feral garden cat...apparently on a break from killing something...wandered by...reeled off a shot just for the cat fanciers.

two more days

status quo is a fiction in a chaotic universe...positive feedback loops always break down and everything changes...tell me that cuc8umber in the first two photos hasn't gotten bigger since thursday...or that the one in the third and fourth one hasn't put on weight and bee joined by a nascent companion ( the difference in light between the two photos is the third was taken in the afternoon and the fourth this morning and that cuke is on the west side of the bed )...there are cucumbers all over the bed including the one cohabiting with the cilantro in the fifth photo ...more jerusalem artichoke blooms and the plants are nearing ten feet in height...they're happy...we have more peppers coming along ( seventh photo ) and the fall cauliflower in the bottom photo is taking root...that's good news for chaos...good news for autumn.

a chaotic appendix

cucumbers hanging out in the cucumber bed...peppers popping up ( or out )...more potato fruits than you can shake a stick at this season and the garden as a chaotic entity...always something going on...you can learn a lot in microcosm...