early spring

i had the day off and nothing important or pressing to do...and no real desire to be be with any but a few people who were, for one reason or another, unavailable to hang out...so i decided to head down county line road into the agricultural heartland of eastern lake county to see what was up...as i suspected there wasn't much...too early for plowing and disking...no tanks of anhydrous amonia to be seen either...probably next month would be a better bet to see industrial agriculture gearing up for a new season of hot pockets and high fructose corn syrup...rather than waste the trip i just kept going down county line road until it met up with a still existing portion of old route 30 where it crosses deep river. i have lusted after a riparian exisitence for some time now...despite the threat of "the flood of the century" (which may be coming more frquently...or not at all...depending on what the climate does) wiping me out...i had the camera along and took some snapshots of the river on a cool but sunny day...not a very gardenish post, i know...but the garden is in limbo right now....the tomatoes are started, asparagus and potatoes haven't arrived yet ( the mail just came...not today either) and i won't unmulch it before next weekend...just hope you enjoy the river as much as i did.

second season

Achira (Canna edulis) heat and daylength sensitive.

Aphia (Pachyrhizus aphia) cold and daylength sensitive.

Arracacha (Arracacha xanthorrhiza) cold and daylength sensitive.

Maca (Lepidum meyenii) complex germinating and planting process.

Mashua (Tropaeolium tuberosum) heat and daylength sensitive.

Mauka (Mirabilis expansa) heat and daylength sensetive.

Oca (Oxalis tuberosa) extremely daylength sensitive.

Ulluco (Ullucus tuberosus) heat and datlength sensitive

Yacon (Polymnia sonchifolia) a posibillity.

i've been ruminating on the garden's second season...wherever that season occurs...and so i've spent some more money on books (tough decision) and i have been perusing them in search of plants to expand with...i am drawn to tubers ( partly because i like to eat them) and was thinking, since we are growing potatoes in the first season would there be another andean root crop we could plant..Lost Crops of the Incas has provided something of an answer...the daylength requirements of most of the plants run from 12 to 13.5 hours a day...beyond that the become unhappy and don't form tubers...that let's most out for indiana...heat is another issue for some...these plants grow from sea level to an elevation of 4000 meters so those grown at altitude don't like temperatures over 20 degrees celsius...more limitations...Maca has an interesting germinating and planting process..."Maca husbandry is difficult, and the cropping system used to grow it is complex. To obtain seed, the strongest plants are left in the ground at harvest time. About a month later, when hard freezes have killed the tops of the plants, they are transplanted (with all their secondary roots) to special plots in unused sheep corrals or manure piles. There they are covered with soil and heavily manured. Within a few weeks, new shoots appear. In a month or two numerous flowers rise, and 3-4 months later, seed is set. The seeds are allowed to mature and fall to the ground. The mixture of seeds, plant debris, and loose soil is use to replant the crop." (Lost Crops of the Incas pp.60-61) i don't think we'll be doing that...at least not until i'm retired and can herd sheep...that leaves Yacon...it's a distant relative of the sunflower and we already have a sunflower relative in the form of Jerusalem Artichokes that produce tubers growing in the garden ( the bulbs have been in the ground since last october) Yacon is daylength neutral and has been grown in the united states...the nutrirional value is low...grown more for flavor than anything else...but this is an experimental garden so i am inclined to look for germplast...just to see what happens.

it's 7:52 p.m. and i've been plowing through some of the 10038 accessions for traditional cultivars in the international potato center's http://www.cipotato.org/
germplast ordering system and haven't found any yacon yet...achira, ahipa, ulluco...but no yacon...if these folks don't have any i am at a loss to know where to go next...usda? they came through on teosinte...stay tuned.

consequences?

i was on campus last night for an environmental action committee meeting and i took a stroll past the garden before i left and it startled me. we had some significant snow last week and i expected the garden to be covered just like it was last time, but it wasn't. the black landscaping fabric i used to secure the straw mulch was visible as could be , even in the dark. i was concerned that on sunny days it might generate enough warmth underneath that mulch to fool the yams into coming out of dormancy. they are the only plants with any portion above ground in there right now. so when i got home i fired off an email to joe hollis at http://www.mountaingardensherbs.com/information.html
to get some difinitive information from someone who knows more than i do about chinese yams. i haven't heard from him yet, but will i am sure. anyway...i went back this morning to have a daylight look and i'm not sure but that i overeacted a touch. the last snow we had came out of the north and was followed by a period of strong north winds. the garden is on the south side of hawthorn hall and you can see in the picture a wide swath of bare ground that lies west of the garden. snow might have blown off the fabric, not melted. either way i will follow any advice joe delivers just to be on the safe side. stay tuned.

okay...it's 10:05 in the morning and i just opened an email from joe hollis who tells me not to worry. chinese yams emerge from dormancy late and are cold hardy. he tells me he doesn't even remember any of his being damaged by a late frost. so wind or melt-off the uncovered fabric is a non-issue.

agribusiness

here's a graphic (admittedly a bit blurry) that illustrates the consolidation of control over seeds by corporations like monsanto and the lesser entities in the agriculture business. the use of patented, trans-genetic seeds in a monoculture of crop production both weakens genetic diversity in the plants and constrains the farmer's choice of crops to plant [brush 2004]. chemical inputs further weaken genetic diversity. when seed "designers" see a genetic defense in a plant that can be replaced by a chemical input they can remove that defense making both the plant and the farmer more dependent on agribusiness ( a nifty deal for some corporation like bayer that produces liberty herbicide and liberty-link corn that can withsatand its application) and leaving entire strains of crops vulnerable if the chemical inputs become over-costly or unavaialble [jackson 1980]. this is the reason all the plants (except the elephant garlic which came from burpee seeds because they were the only ones who could get it here in time for fall planting) and seeds in this garden were procured from heirloom seed companies, organic growers, or public access seed banks like j.l. hudson, an underlying philosophy of organic diversity we will maintain throughout the garden's existence.

it's definitely winter

winter has arrived and so much so in "his sternest shape" that even de quincey must approve...i was on campus today to pick up my books for the spring (ha!) semester...inopportune the bureaucracy to change a 200 level course to a 400 level ( the people at the registrar's office were kind and helpful...so much so that i hesitate to tar them with the epithet "bureaucrats"...so i'll just call them workers instead since that has so much more currency where i come from...whatever they are, they were helpful and cheerful, so thanks!)...and pay a visit to steve mcshane in the calumet regional archives ( third floor of the library...tucked away in the back...you should stop by sometime...neat place and steve is cool) so i stopped by the garden to see what was what and take a few pictures....clearly nothing much is shaking...except maybe the cold working to break the dormancy of the gamagrass seeds...i'm just reading and writing and mulling over my teosinte problem...i did order the potatoes which will be here sometime in late march or early april and the asparagus crowns are next ...then all i have to do is procure earthworms, lady bugs and bird tape...then the real fun starts

albert howard

"...this development is based on the transfer of food from the regions that produce it to the manufacturing centers which consume it and which make no attempt to return their wastes to the land. this amounts to a perpetual subsidy paid by agriculture to industry and has resulted in the impoverishment of large areas of the earth's surface. a form of unconscious banditry has been in operation: the prosperity of generations to come, in the shape of soil fertility, has been used, not to bebefit the human race as a whole, but to enricha dishonest present,"
Soil and Health: A Study of Organic Agriculture. by albert howard p.193

published in 1947...precient...the proponents of sustainable anything owe a large debt ( which is widely recognized by most) to albert howard and his interpretation of soil as an organic whole made up of multiple components, and the delineation of the processes which were destroying it. he saw agriculture as a crucial component of the industrial revolution, but i don't think he could forsee the extent to which agriculture would be colonized by industry. chemical fertilizers were destroying the life in the soil even in his day and still are ( anhydrous amonia, the major nitrate fertilizer used in growning industrial corn , for instance kills 15% of the earthworm population in a given field with each application by drying the soil and changing its chemical balance) but he didn't have to contend with trangentic seed produced by agribusiness limiting the diversity of crops or monsanto and archer daniels midland patenting seeds in an effort to aggressively control diversity's re-introduction into the monoculture of corn and soy beans....fast food and industrially processed food were probably unknown to him as well, though it most likely would not have suprised him...it's taken most of the 63 years since the publication of Soil and Health for any sort of widespread realization of the impact of agricultural industrialization to come about..in that time the system has become second nature and has spread around the world limiting or destroying traditional agriculture wherever it has gone...resource depletion will make us change our ways...the sooner the better...there's a lot to figure out.

this is what mentors are for

these are pictures of a Zea mexicana seed that i popped this evening. yesterday i soaked it in hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes, drained it, and added boiling water to the container. i let them soak for twenty-four hours and then dropped them into two-and-one-half tablespoons of HOT vegetable oil. thirty seeds in all. one popped completely and two seeds tried. their cases split, but they didn't have enough mositure in them yet or the case was leaky, or they just didn't get hot enough. so ten percent of the seeds made an effort. but not half the effort dr. kathleen forgey has made in all this. she's adopted me intellectually in an effort to get me somewhere coherent, and i could not be more fortunate. we have been brainstorming, networking, reading, talking, and making failed attempts at this for a few months now. i succeeded this evening, but only because i stumbled into her physical anthropology course at indiana university northwest in the spring of 2008. thanks dr. forgey.