industrial autumn

"rooted in the complex interactions between soil, water, plants, animals, and microbes, agroecology depends more on understanding local conditions and context than on using standardized products or techniques. it requires farming guided by locally adapted knowledge, farming with brains rather than habit or convenience...in labor intensive systems people tend ot adapt to the land. in technology-intensive systems people typically try to adapt the land to their techniques."david montgomery. "dirt: the erosion of civilizations."_______________________________________________you can see autumn deepening out in the fields...the poke weed berries are well past their prime to begin with...and there's not a lot of green left in the dense yellow #2 plants...a beigeness rules the color scheme as the corn ripens and, seemingly in some cases, weights down the rachis...lots of it is split open revealing the kernels too...field corn is supposed to be entirely dependent on humans to reproduce...and it may be if there's a sterility gene spliced in this corn to keep the farmer coming back to buy seed...but hybrid seed is pretty much a mule too...there's nothing new in keeping farmers in debt...the biomass is dying back too...this was a no til field...that helped cut down erosion ( probably mostly wind in this field )and the roots of the "weeds" will help hold the soil together after harvest...this field could not have been sprayed with herbicide...and if it was it was the most ineffective herbicide known to modern industrial agriculture...when this field is harvested it will probably be covered with a mulch of chopped husks and stems with a few kernels left for the deer to glean...so, as far as stewardship goes this farmer gets as close to an a as industrial farming will allow...go further south and the fields are prayed sterile and will be left bare to the elements after harvest until spring when runoff creates a fair amount of erosion here in a glacial moraine...many farmers here have begun to use no til methods...many others are still trying to chemically dominate the growth medium ( soil is alive...anhydrous ammonia, pesticides, and herbicides turn it in to a sort of laboratory substance )...another industrial season on the wane next to the supermarket...wonder how many more are left.

10-10

it's a third of the way through october and the garden season is slowing a bit...i suspect it won't actually stop...but the continuing work after early next month ( mulching time ) will be moving indoors...there's still activity in the garden though...it was something of a relief to find a couple more garlic plants working their way into the sunlight ( top two ) and the clover, alfalfa, and winter rye are becoming well established ( third )...the asparagus is still green and "ferny" and the radishes that have gone to seed are still blooming ( fifth )...the lone cauliflower is robust and there are signs of a second coming along, although it may have left it too late...still green in the garden...still work to do...and some of its denizens are far from finished...but that's the next post.

the "other" tuber

actually they are only one of the "other" tubers going on around since i have yacon and mashua going as well...but these are the "other" tuber in the community garden and the relentlessness seems to be fading in some of them ( not all though...these things are determined...as you may well see ) and so i popped a couple that had died back up to see what was what...what it was was fifty tubers from two plants in an area of about twelve by eighteen inches that weighed in at five pounds nine and an eighth ounces of inulin laden tubers...the rest of the plants are slowly dying back so i trimmed out the dead stems and leaves and left the rest to continue working on setting tuber which they will do until the first hard frost...the sunchokes may be slowing but they never loose the relentless drive to reproduce their dna...ask the ones growing ( and still blooming ) in the compost heap...clearly some piece of tuber were dumped in there during some clean-up operation...opportunists to the hilt.

all the seeds you can eat

two days in and the pots of green manures i started wednesday have ample evidence of vigorous alfalfa...sprouts all over..i can see some clover in there too...they rye, vetch, and peas may take a minute...but they'll be along soon enough...this experiment will see some expansion with peat pots sown a bit less heavily with alfalfa...the seeds are very small and it isn't very difficult to overdo...a pound will go quite a ways towards fixing nitrogen in your soil...the ramp seeds are fully developed and should be shattering soon enough...hoping for fifteen ( the fourteen seeds in the photo and the one that has slipped its rachis and found the soil ) more plants to augment the fifty i planted a while back...there will seemingly be a bumper crop of teosinte ears this season...more so than last season so i am a happy camper in this respect...the ears are emerging from the stems and there are a number of green seeds ( some of which are visibly maturing ) already coming out of the husks...garden run tomorrow.

inoculant

there are a number of beds out in the garden that still have producing plants in them and i am loathe to pull them while they ares till up and running...however the season is shortening daily and if i don't do something there will be no green manures in those beds...so this evening i took some clover, winter vetch, winter rye, yellow pea, and annual rye grass seed and put them in to soak in distilled water...then i took some rhizobia bacteria inoculant and placed it in a container...after the seeds were thoroughly wet ( doesn't take long ) i pulled some out of the distilled water ( i used distilled water because the chlorine in tap water kills rhizobia...saved rain water will work as well ) and rolled them in the inoculant...then i took the coated ( and hard to find ) seeds and planted them in some peat pots to germinate...i also diluted the remaining inoculant in distilled water and watered the pots with it...now when the beds are ready to be pulled i will have established green manures to put in...a rhizobia colony can live from two to five years without pulses to provide a symbiotic partner...since i inoculated a number of beds last year i will be using these in the newer beds constructed last spring to establish colonies in them as well...i will probably be doing a few more pots of these before the weekend to be ready when the time comes...can't have too many green manures.

late blooms

it's october but there are still blooms going on out in the garden...the pale yellow ones are broccoli with a bean blossom in the second frame...more yellow in the tomato flowers while the geraniums are as bright a shade of red as ever...the jalapenos and banana peppers are still blooming ( and producing ) and the new zealand white clover is trying to set seed while it's fixing nitrogen for next year's soil...still life out here

germinations

i found a yellow pea germinating on the soil surface in a bed...determined floaters..so i pushed it back down under the surface so it could root properly...there's some clover surface germinating in that photo as well...there some in the second one along with some winter rye...and pretty much more of the same in the third ( i don't see any winter vetch yet though )...there are small forests of well established green manures out there as well...the fourth photo is of some alfalfa and winter rye that have been up and running for a few weeks...the fifth photo is of the only garlic that has appeared so far...this was such a concern to me ( right now i have fifty-two garlic plants up on the south side of the house planted the same day as the community garden ) that i actually dug down in one of the beds to see what was up...they're working on it...bottom photo is of the garden tonight...we still have green in october.