first cull

i went out to campus early this morning to begin work on my bed in the community garden...a significant shift in what i am planning to do with the bed entailed the removal of the jerusalem artichokes that remained in what was about ten square feet of bed...

by the time i had finished i had removed four hundred and four tubers...

and found another multiplicity of earth worms...always a good find...

any of those four hundred odd tubers can generate a plant...from the largest...

to the smallest...

and even pieces that have broken off lager tubers can each produce a plant...relentless colonizers...i am certain there are tubers i missed and probably bits and pieces of them too...this is not over..it will be a season long event as they grow up through the corn and beans i am planning to put where these were..it will take some vigilance and continued effort to quell the mob...

the asparagus is robust, if not running wild..some of it is well beyond harvest and beginning to "fern"...i have harvested what is usable to begin to try to keep it under control...i will be in the garden more often however if anyone is interested it is available til next month except for the plant on the west end ( towards the apartment building ) which is immature and won't be ready to harvest until 2021...

the asparagus is so deeply rooted that surface "weeds" won't cause it any harm...however i weeded the bed and turned it under to disrupt them in case anyone wants to plant the back of the bed...again because of the massive and deep root system the asparagus maintains, company in the bed won't be an issue.

seeds and worms

there is asparagus up and running in my back yard as well as on campus...

however i would like to establish more..last autumn i collected some ripe asparagus "berries" from the plants on campus each of which hold three to five seeds...it has been raining the past few days so the soil is moist and the temperatures are in the sixties ( fahernheit ) which are very good conditions for germinating asparagus... so i opened two and took the seeds out to beds in the yard and put them in...an asparagus from seed project we will keep an eye on...

last sunday i soaked some teosinte seeds in hydrogen peroxide ot begin the germinating process...they are doing what they need to do...

i am particularly pleased with the results i am getting from the northern tepehuan teosinte seed i harvested from plants in my back yard last fall...every sed i soaked has turned out to be viable and i will have a second generation of plants this season...

while i was out planting asparagus i turned the teosinte bed over again...mostly to disrupt 9( you cannot get rid of it ) the creeping charlie that invades every year...

and it seemed i turned up an earth worm in every shovelful...that was a pleasant way to start the day.

campus 5 may 2018

i went out to campus today to visit the calumet regional archives ( saw jimbo and steve both ) and when i was done up there i moseyed over tot he garden to have a look at what was there...and what i found was work...

the asparagus is running strong...

in sizes ranging from just getting started...

to intermediate...

to too large to harvest...

and already started to "fern"...so this needs to be looked after and the spears that are ready to harvest need to come in...so i took a few and will be coming back more often as the other issues in life allow...

at the other end of the bed the juveniles are even further down the fern road...testament to the fact that they are immature and not nearly ready to have their spears harvested...

a few steps down the row of beds i found even more work...the relentless jerusalem artichokes are up and, since i had not intended to grow these on campus this year, i will be digging them up this weekend and looking fro places to re-wild them...i have a few ideas...we will see how they work out...

exposed or below the surface they will grow and colonize tot heir heart's content if you let them...a challenge...

storms

there were significant thunderstorms overnight and at least one round of hail..so i went out on damage control this morning to see what was what...the egyptian walking onions and winter vetch are intact

it seems most of the yard came though unscathed...although the rhubarb may have taken a direct hit...i can't say this troubles me much...

the containers of spuds i took out last weekend fared well...and are well watered...

the winter rye is topping out at sixteen inches or so and seems completely unharmed...

the ramps shrugged it all off...

and the wheat is fine too...

the one set of plants that might have sustained some real damage are the wild strawberries...i am not certain whether these blossoms have been pollinated and lost their petal or if the storm knocked them off..the only thing i can do is wait and watch what develops ( hopefully berries )...there are quite a few blooms that have not opened yet and they are all in one piece so i can't see this having some dreadful impact on the final production of the plants...we will keep an eye on things and post events in the berry blog...more rain and thunderstorms forecast for today and tomorrow...we'll see how we are doing this weekend.

mayday spuds

it was reasonably temperate this morning so i went out back...

picked out a bed...cleaned it...turned it under...and raked it as level as possible...

leaving the onions...

and rhubarb intact ( although i cannot explain why i left the rhubarb..or even why it was planted in the first place for that matter )

then i brought thirty-three chitting spuds up from the plant room and planted them ( not in neat little rows )...

around the yard other activity is on the rise...the wild strawberries are beginning to bloom...

the egyptian walking onions and winter vetch are successfully cohabiting...

there is alfalfa waiting for the leaf cutter bees to arrive...

the wheat...

and winter rye are coming along well...

the brusels sprouts are unafraid...

and there are a multiplicity of ramps...including the one that has grown from seed and is beginning to leaf...after late april snows, spring would, at least tentatively, seem to have arrived...there will be more spuds in containers later, including the government tubers...there will, i hope, be more of everything...we'll see.