an afternoon with some andean tubers

the largest of the basement mashua plants has died back and it has decided to leave me with three healthy sized tubers from a season in great indoors...i am inordinately pleased...

yesterday i acquired some half barrels so i took two of them out to the east side of the yard and drilled drainage holes in them...

one i filled almost to the top with a mixture of compost and soil...and a few earth worms i found along the way...

and i planted all three tubers as deep as they are long in it and now we will see if this has the desired effect...

the other barrel i filled less than a third of the way and planted a mix of german butterball, all blue, and elmer's blue potatoes...we will continuously back fill this and see just haw many spuds are in a barrel...

some of the government spuds had started to chit and so i placed a shallow layer of soil in two of the infamous blue buckets and planted the two bison potatoes each in their very own habitat...another back fill to the top experiment...if fact all the newly planted outdoor spuds ( there are many yet to do ) will be of this ilk...

for the DTO-2 ( i have no idea what that designation means...names like viking and barbara are given by the breeders who "develop" the variety from the potato's genetic diversity...grow some from seed sometime and you will be surprised by what comes up...i promise ) i did the same shallow layer in a ten gallon pot and planted both...so...andean tubers in the soil a long way from home...they have done well in the past ( even if last season's mashua was a disappointment...too much shade where they were planted i think...they will have more sun this year )...there is a zea day coming soon enough...japanese beetles too i'l wager..all in a season.

mid-may in the back yard

there is always movement...even if it is imperceptible...it is hard to miss right now as the season accelerates...the asparagus in the east bed has begun to "fern"...this is only its third season so there will be no harvesting, just growth...gardening is an exercise in patients...no asparagus until 2020...

a bit farther over in the same bed a stolon from one of the imported wild strawberry plants has touched gtound...the stolon hasn't stopped ther and is clearly moving on...

where the stolon touched ground roots have begun to set...feeding the leaves above...a daughter is being born...

one bed over the spuds i planted to keep the rhubarb company are popping up regularly...fifteen out of the thirty-three so far...

one more bed tot he west finds all five varieties of spring wheat green and flourishing...along with some friendly ( and, seemingly, ubiquitous ) lamb's quarters...it's okay..they are edible, not "weeds"...and the wheat won't mind the company...

a few feet further over, outside the wheat bed, the other grain crop is beginning to more clearly evince ears of rye...

the ramps on the north side are looking robust and i am hoping for some to flower and produce seed this season...i had a bumper crop of seed last year. some of which i spread around here and there and some of which i froze for the future...i will take all i can get from them as long as they cooperate...

the bed on the south side of the house is keeping up with the rest of the yard...i now have an even dozen volunteer spuds from tubers i clearly missed in ;last season's harvest...not usually a good idea to grow spuds in the same bed in consecutive years...beetles and viruses can become an issue so i try to keep up a three year rotation...however, once they appeared, i decided to let them go...if a virus issue arises i can always plant barley there next year...

the new york imports in the south bed would seem to have ceased blooming...which isn't a surprise...they are "wild" berries in keeping with my penchant for growing "wild and weedy" ancestors out there...they have not been taught to be everbearing by artificial selection...they are in their pristine, natural state...and so they will spend the rest of the season producing daughters to bloom next spring...i find four stolond from three plants...touching ground and moving on...i would expect more....

the relentless jerusalem artichokes are booming along in that bed as well...i would have weeded them...however they don't need the help...actually i think they resent it...

did i hear someone say "teosinte"? third leaves are appearing.

the game's afoot

it has been cool and a bit rainy here recently...however that hasn't really put the breaks on the yard...

the rhubarb seems about to flower...

the spud i planted in the rhubarb bed to keep them company continue to pop up...

there are many happy ramps on the north side of the house...

did someone say teosinte? well...there it is any way...you weren't going to not see it...

the gnarled, grandfatherly, twenty-five year old grape root stock has irrupted in leaves for another season...there are vines all through the fir treed and the catalpa tree as well..last season's crop was a disappointment...perhaps we will do better this year...

all the wheat is looking robust...however the biggest event ( so far ) today is...

the winter rye is nearing the two foot mark in height and, more importantly, had begun to display ears of grain..in a few more weeks the ears will flower and then the rye can move on to finishing its season and be harvested..it should be the first in the rotation of harvests...next week should see another round of containerized spuds going in ( including the government spuds ) and...if the weather warms...maize, tomatoes, and peppers.

corner bed

since i am indirectly responsible for this colony of jerusalem artichokes in a corner box at the garden ( i did not plant them directly, rather they hitched a ride from the old garden on adams street when we brought he soil over from there to fill new boxes...still i had them in the old garden ) i was rightly asked to clear it...

the colony in the corner bed has been left unmolested for a number of years and so it is much more densely populated than my bed which has been harvested and replanted ( along with the inevitable volunteers ) each season...

while there were some reasonably large tubers in the box...

the density of the plant population is such close quarters meant that the bulk of the tubers were very small...

and more than a few had expended all the energy stored in the tubers and were simply rooted plants...

i cleared two hundred and eleven tubers from the corner bed ( as opposed tot he four hundred odd i got out of my be last week...a clear indication of the impact of overcrowding the colony ) and i will make a serious effort to go through the bed a few more times before anything else is planted there...even then some stray volunteer are bound to crop up...vigilance and diligence will be necessary...this is just the start.

second cull

when i got to campus this morning i found what i had expected...more jerusalem artichokes up and running in my bed..and one that had either escaped or was the result of a tuber i left behind last week...i had planned to plant maize there this weekend however the weather has cooled so i put that off and simply did more work on clearing the bed...

one reason it is so difficult to clear jerusalem artichokes is that they don't just set tubers at the root ball...the radiate out rhizomes horizontally and vertically...this tuber i dug out was almost a foot deep..it would have taken some time for the plant to break surface but it would eventually have popped up...

i found an earth worm and sixty-five more tubers...

i turned the entire bed again as a disruptive measure and will, hopefully, be back next week to do a third cull and establish the maize hills so the "two of the three sisters" ( i seem to have no affinity for growing squash...maize and beans will be the duo ) project can get started