trellis

the boston picking cucumbers have begun to put out tendrils which means blooms soon enough...the sumter and spacemaster cukes are deploying more leaves and won't be far behind...so i drove in some tomato stakes and strung a line of jute twine just within reach of the top tendril...there will be a wall of cucumbers soon enough.

added population

an early run out to the garden to turn over some soil, weed, and water...the beds look good and the asparagus is thriving...while hoeing the asparagus/tomato, pepper bed i turned up a couple of spuds from last season...so i replanted them adding to the general population...w have cucumbers along with peppers preparing to bloom...a robust roma tomato plant and a bear paw maize seedling...the buttercrunch lettuce is looking healthy after is shocked a bit at planting...and there's garlic nearing the end of its season and rye that is heading towards ripening...we also have four-and-a-half beds ready to plant...six-and-a-half if anyone wants to clear out the biology club bed and the bed at the back on the washington street side...and there's the corner boxes too...we have a season...we have space as well...soon enough i will be utilizing them to plant crops like kohlrabi and brussels sprouts for harvest in the autumn...spring is almost done by the calendar..it's already meteorological summer...those spuds will be done in september.

wild

an impressive thistle, some wild grapes which look remarkably like their domesticated cousins but have a radically different flavor...a wild strawberry which looks very little like its domesticated cousins ( a hybrid of north american and chilean strawberries cross bred in france in the late 18th century ) and don't taste like them either...and a stunning "wild and weedy" maize ancestor.

viability

a jerusalem artichoke plant has taken hold in the bed of my truck..no surprise really...it is a hardy native and will grow almost anywhere...what was surprising was to find an asparagus plant growing there too..i have had asparagus growing there before...the asparagus in the community garden started out there from seed i hauled out of the perennial garden project in the autumn of 2014 when the university booted me out...so this plant has germinated from seed almost two years old...not a world's record...purslane seed can be viable for up to forty years and that probably isn't a record either...but it is still a surprise to me...so i gently dug it out...you can see in the third photo the root system is longer than the above ground plant...an indication of the massive root system this plant may ( hopefully ) grow...past transplants from the truck bed have shocked badly and this one may as well..i tuck it into a corner of the bed opposite the cucumbers and gave it a good shot of water...we'll see, won't we?

eleusinian mysteries

the wheat, despite being battered down in a corner by something ( critter? ) is coming out in ears of grain...soon enough it will be time to put out the bird tape to discourage the starlings and any other avian predator...there will be "bread from scratch" for Jean and i yet...the last three photos are zea morphology..the first of the three is the "wild and weedy" ancestor teosinte...the second is bear paw maize in the back yard and the last is some dense yellow #2 in the field behind the big box store...stay tuned to see the divergence in development.

blooms amd leaves

things are moving along in the garden today...the cucumbers are preparing to deploy more leaves and the lettuce is looking perkier than it was last time i was out...the bear paw maize in the third photo has put out a third leaf before the cukes and the asparagus in the fourth is in full flower...the lunchbox orange pepper has one bloom out and another budding while the beefsteak tomato has joined in as well...found an aphid eater on patrol while i was there as well...can't complain about that...overall the garden is looking good...a truncated season so far and time is short...more will be going in soon.

tree full of bees

the hawthorn tree at the bottom of the steps on the deck is a very busy place today..much more lively than even yesterday...i see pollinators and i am as happy a gardener as when i see earthworms...