quiet planting

it has been raining here lately...

which should tell you that the temperatures have been mostly above freezing...at least in daylight...there have been evenings in the teens here already...

and since there has been cold with no sonow the wheat is, once again, looking less than happy out there...beyond that it is a quiet yard...

inside the teosinte seed from 2021 that i soaked is coming along...

to the point that this particular seed is ready to plant...

so perlite, compost, and worm castings into a peat pot...with distilled water making a rather muddy consistency...

and a seedling has a new home...

under the lights from last winter's berry colony ( they came in a year and a week ago...there are no berries out there trying to bloom at the moment )...for now...if this succeds there will be a bigger home and taller lights...

the michigan blue spud has more than topped the bucket it lives in and there are more leaves on the way...

the rest of the seed potatoes from last season's harvest are still resting quietly...we will see for how long...

and, in a final note to the bureaucrats, yes the asparagus is dying back...and yes there is still ample green as well.

success/failure/i'll go on

the michigan blue spud i planted in the basement eighteen days ago has cleared the top of the five gallon bucket that is its winter home...

and is coming into leaf nicely...we will see what we get by way of production somewhere along february...

the teosinte seeds i soaked twenty-three days ago failed entirely...perhaps it is too soon after harvest...or, perhaps, i just picked out seed that was not viable...so i pulled some seed from 2021 and soked it just to be sure i wasn't losing my touch and they have responded...

sprouts and one with a developing root...so there should be teosinte in the basement as well this winter...it has done well down there in the past...just don't hold out hope for ears ( i won't )...

outside things are fairly quiet...there is still some green in the teosinte ears...

however, when green ears freeze the seeds die and become skeletal in appearance...and they are not viable...

i looked around anyway nand did find some ears with what i believe are viable seeds...

probably the last gleanings of the season which gives me near a thousand seeds...

the winter wheat is not looking all that happy...again there has been winter cold before any snow cover to speak of and this is not ideal...one wearies of driving in snow...one wishes for snow for the wheat...a winter dilemma...

note to the bureaucrats: there is still green asparagus in my yard....

the serendipitous peanut ( left by one of the jays i am thinking...it was not knowingly planted ) died back with the hard freeze and i finally remembered to have a look...

i found and cleaned nine legumes in the roots...

they are now thoroughly dry and will be stowed away fro future planting...knowingly this time ( although there may be more volunteers next season if someone here continues to leave raw peanuts out for the jays )...next up...planting teosinte...probably within the next week.

event time

there wa still green in the campus asparagus thirty-two days ago...

when the bureaucrats insisted i hack it back...

just to be clear, thirty-two days later there is sitll green asparagus in my back yard...bureaucrats will never understand event time...they are by the clock...by the book.

unseasonably cold

today's high temperature is forecast to be thirty-five degrees ( fahrenheit ) which is a might chilly for mid-november here...and lows are forecast to be in the single digits over the weekend...that has not deterred this michigan blue from screaming it is time to be planted...so...

i found a five gallon bucket with the requisite drainage holes...

tossed in some perlite...

and mixed it in with the compost i added to keep the soil loose for young roots...

and gave the spud a home in what resembles an alien landscape with alien included...then i went outside...

to have a look at the teosinte and search for some seed...

i found a few that may be viable to add to the harvest, however i am afraid anything out there that is still green will not be maturing...that harvest is, i believe, ended...we will look some more when the weather moderates next week...i am not especially sanguine though.

soak

it has been inordinately warm of late...since yesterday that has changed...the temperature is in the mid thirties ( fahrenheit ) right now and forcast to go well below freezing tonight...it is autumn and tesointe ears have been opening and shattering out in the back yard...

unfortunately there are a considrable number of green ears out there as well and with temperatures falling i am uncertain about their chances of maturing...we will keep an eye on that but we are not overly sanguine...

fortunately i have been harvesting mature seed since late september...

and i have a shade over a thousand...which is around half of what i harvested last season...

the seed i found last month trying to germinate in the ear, and which i planted downstairs under the ights, seems to have completely misfired...no sign of it at all in the peat pot...

so as a viability test i picked out three seeds...

soaked them in hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes ot break dormancy...

wrapped them ion a brown paper towel dampened with distilled water, put the paper towel in a baggie...and put that in a dark place until next weekend or so...if they germinate they will spend the winter in the basement and we will see how they do...

most teosinte seed comes in a single spike inside the ear ( ancestor and domesticate in this photo )...

however i planted maize along with the teosinte out there and some of the teosinte plants have been exhibiting seed on cob-like structures ( unfortunately these seem to mostly be in green ears...cross-pollinization impacting season length? no real clue )...

some of the seed seems to have already shattered...

hopefully some of the remaining seed is viable and can be induced to grow in the spring...a future project...let's see how this one pans out first.