alfalfa

i have bees coming in a few months...alfalfa leaf cutter bees to be exact...a couple of hundred in cocoons ( as well as some that wil hatch out on the trip )...

and while the alfalfa i have in the yard is greening up i came to the conclusion i needed another stand ( it will be the third )...

so yesterday when i cleaned out the alflafa bed at the campus garden i saved some of the seed heads and brought them home...

when i got home from work today i crushed some of the dead flowers and sifted them...

just to be certain that seeds were actually produced...

then i went out back and dug up a patch by the back fence, well away from the other two stands...

and stripped the flowers and seeds off the stems onto the soil...there is a rain/snow mix going on right now so they will be well watered...and since they have been out in the cmapus garden all winter they will have been cold shocked and so dormancy should be broken...we will see how it goes in a week or two and, if it goes well, the bees will have a larger supply of nesting materials in the summer

open season

it is the second week of march ( a month the meteorologist say will be colder and snowier than february...we will see ) and time to look in on the campus garden...

what, you might ( or not ) wonder , is going on here....

if my back yard is any index, alflafa is going on in there...

and, after i cleaned out the bed to some extent...

that is exactly what i found...both plants greening up for the season...

that accomplished, i meandered over to the asparagus bed...

pulled back the fabric cover and re-pinned it...

and raked back the compost i used to cover the bed last autumn...

to create a trench to ease the way for the asparagus to come...and with that the season is open at the campus garden...what to plant as the season moves along? at the moment spring garlic and spuds are the leading candidates as populations...it is early yet...that may change although i am fairly sure garlic is a certainty.

water

it is february twenty-seventh and my thermometer says it is very nearly fifty-four degrees ( fahrenheit )...which is fifteen degrees above the average ( yes, i know,averages lie...still it is an index ) high for this day of thirty-nine...however nowhere near the record of seventy-one, just to be clear...it is not an unheard of temperature for the day...just not the "usual"...

in the past tweleve hours we have received almost two inches of rainfall...and, looking at the radar from the national weather service a moment ago, there should be more...we will see...what has fallen has to go somewhere and there is considerable in the fields...

the water in this field has topped the berm and is filling the ditch...

in fact all the ditiches look like rivers at this point...

many ( this is not a scientific survey...it's me riding around with a camera ) of the fields have stubble, and so roots, left from last season's crop and will probably hold the soil together fairly well...a bonus of no till farming...

it seems there are just as many that have been turned under after harvest which has me wondering about soil loss from runoff erosion...not being immersed in farming i have no real idea why the disparity in post-harvest field treatment exists..."weed" control perhaps...one hopes it is a good enough reason to offset any possible loss to erosion

markers

it is the twenty-second of february...

and it is raining...

a year ago it was snowing but not today...

as of yesterday there are dandelions in my yard...okay they are a "spring" flower...except it isn't meteorological spring yet much less astronomical spring...

the sap buckets ( or sap carafes as an important contributor to this blog prefers ) are out on the sugar maples...sugar maple sap begins to run when daytime temperatutres are above freezing and nightime temperatures below, which is where we are at right now...except that is march weather...same time the frost laws come into effect on the roads...something seems a tad early...

the winter wheat in my back yard is looking dismayed at best...and, for the third year running, i will predict another dismal harvest despite having planted freshly purchased seed last autumn...there has been sub-zero cold ( fahrenheit ) however with nothing like the amount of snow the wheat needs for unsulation...last year's snow came too late...after the cold...

this year's snow, in wheat terms, has been a joke...so, the deniers can tell me things are just fine so shut up and drive...well..those who create the denial myth stand to lose wealth and power if we actually address the issue...and those who agree with them just aren't paying attention...they should, perhaps, spend a little more time looking at what is going on out in the back yard

some february green

the teosinte i test fired and planted downstairs on the tenth of december has outgrown what passes for a nursery down there...

so i mixed some peat moss and compost and perlite in some larger pots and began the transplant...

it was obviously time since they were becoming pot-bound...

i loosened the soil around their roots, dug out a space, and planted them...giving each a shot of water to settle them in and let them know they could spread out thier roots...we'll see how this goes..if they do well it will outside in a few months for the rest of the summer...

and while outside is the topic, the temperature has moderated and, unlike the past two februarys there has been no sign of snow...it is almost a quarter of the way through the month and the snow drought continues...

this is what my back yard looked like one year ago to the day...

this was a few minutes ago...

the temperature here has been below zero ( fahrenheit ) more than once...the wheat is not looking especially robust...we will see how that goes...conversely...

the berries have remained vibrantly green all though the weather...and there are obviously cohabiting onions with some of them...there are onions everywhere out there...they are not called walking onions for no reason...

clusters of daffodils are rumbling to life...

and the mooseberry bush is evincing buds...spring is forty-two days away...time to get cracking on a few projects like spring garlic and einkorn wheat...forty-two days is not a lot of time.