a diverse lot

the top four photos are of some pretty standard looking potato plants that have been in the container about a month and a half...easily recognizable as spuds to anyone familiar with the plant's physical traits...they are special to me because they are what came up from the tubers in the fifth photo...those tubers came from the viney looking plants in the sixth photo which were grown from the potato seeds in the seventh...we'll get to the last photo in a minute here...so the whole thing is a matter of morphology...they are all potato plants...all solanum tuberosum...but they have very different traits when grown from seed as opposed to being propagated from tubers...the seed generated plants are all very vine-like...trailing along the ground ( not that potato plants grown from tubers won't lay over when they get past a certain height...from too much shade for instance...but they don't start out trailing along the ground...they start out upright ) and the tuber propagated stand upright like the plants we know and love...the thought occurred to me that the vining might be from the artificial light they grew under in the basement over the winter...so i started some seeds again a few weeks ago and put them outside to see if natural light would make a difference...the last photo is of one of those plants trailing across the soil in the container..my conclusion is different starts = different traits...same plant or not.

high summer

you can tell we're smack in the middle of summer...the jerusalem artichokes are in full flower...we have more evidence than that however...the cucumber in the second photo is ripe ( and, incidentally, was harvested by library staff mere moments after that photo was taken )and the banana peppers in the next two photos are in agreement about the season...the early blue potato, like some of its solanum cousins is indeterminate...they will continue to flower all season and produce potato fruits ( sixth photo ) which i will gladly continue to collect and process for seed when they are ready...my freezer can become a bastion of potato diversity...the brussels sprouts ( seventh photo ) and the cauliflower we planted for fall harvest are doing well and have not bolted...let's hope that good fortune holds up...the last photo is of some clover that has established itself in a be that once held garlic...i am inclined to leave it and it reminds me that the time is near to begin planting fall green manures and cover crops to set new nitrogen in the soil and create organic matter to turn under in the spring to aid soil fertility...this seasons has done well on no imported compost in the original beds ( the new ones were filled with a 50/50 mix of topsoil and compost but will be restricted to a diet of legumes and rye to prepare for next season ) and that has pleased me no end...we will be intercropping the legumes as the month wears on and add the rye as the annuals die back...we will be mulching asparagus and planting garlic soon enough as well...still another four months of work out there.

the nexus advances a step

so much for tracking the development of volunteer corn...the field full of pioneer plants i was exploring last monday ( top photo ) has been rendered comparatively barren in the last four days or so...i was somewhat perplexed...it is certainly far too late for a standard monoculture crop and a touch early for winter wheat ( though not much ) which was the only possible planting i could think of...there are still corn cob around ( fourth photo as if i need to tell you that ) and there are still a few stubborn plants standing...but as i drove around the other end of the field stubborn plants weren't all i found standing...grades stakes with specific notations have cropped up along with little lags for buried cables and other underground infrastructure...add in the concrete drainage fittings and sumps and there is a fair indication that the suburban sprawl and subsumed yet another agricultural field and the nexus had moved a bit more south...i am a bit saddened by this...the corn filed across sterling creek road has a "for sale" sign up on it now too...i am becoming something of an afficionado of suburban agriculture and its constraints...this lessens my readily observable suburban agricultural space and sends me farther afield to find information and check conditions...the field behind the big box stores is no more..it was bound to happen...mindless "growth" won't have it any other way...here's to the eventual collapse and simplification...plant spuds as a subversive act.

8-7-2015

just another day out back...top to bottom...a tesointe flower...some leaf cutter bees..a ramp flower going to seed...yacon...tomatoes...the cousins mashua in the foreground and nasturtiums in the back...a nasturtium in hiding and last a peppery flower exposed.

cascading vitis vinifera

from the distance in the first photo it may be a bit difficult to see but when i cam home from work to water this evening i found rather a heavily laden vine of grapes extending down from the catalpa tree ( rather than the elm ) by the patio...it extends back up through the tree quite a ways and i am wondering how many bunches will be left for the birds when i run out of ladder height this fall...last year's harvest wasn't as the grapes failed...i am seriously hoping to equal 2013's twenty odd pounds of grapes in a month or so...i smell the jelly now...

shades of autumn

we are still a couple of days away from summer's mid-point ( forty-seven days in would be august seventh ) but as i crunched around the dry garden grass watering the beds after work this evening i noticed some creeping signs of autumn in the foliage...the cucumbers in the first photo gave me the first hint and a closer look at the relentless jerusalem artichokes ( still in full bloom second photo...changing into different, paler colors in the third ) reinforced it...the beans ( fourth photo )cinched it and the fact that the broccoli is done flowering and will now be producing seed pods is still another sign...no despair...it is a natural progression and we need the seasons to flow...besides...we aren't done yet there are still cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes popping out and they will be until the frost hits...there are cauliflower and brussels sprouts coming on as well...still time to utilize the garden.

potato harvest

i planted this german butterball in my bed at the community garde on the seventeenth of april which was one hundred and ten days ago...i notice it was dying back last monday morning but i wanted to let i go a couple of more days so i could convey a fair idea of what a finished potato looks like ( for anyone who hasn't grown them...the rest of you are excused )...yellow stems..some leaves yellow and wilted others brown and dead...this plant isn't going to add any more to any tubers it may have produced...so i popped up the root ball and...fifteen tubers of various sized...mostly round...none more than five inches in diameter...when i got them home and cleaned them up they weighed in at just over three pounds...comparable to yields in industrially grown potatoes without the herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides to have with your dinner..am i bragging...a bit...am i repentant? no...i am pleased to have been entirely organic in this and there will be green manures going into all the garden beds again this autumn to fix nitrogen and add organic matter without importing compost...we aim to be as sustianable and as local as we can.