eastern gamagrass

http://discovermagazine.com/1997/dec/thecornwar1286

the good news is that the eastern gamagrass has made it through the winter and chlorophyll is finding its way back up into the leaves...i planted thirty seeds in the fall of 2009, letting them winter over and i was rewarded with three plants in the spring of 2010...ten percent...not bad since it seems that eastern gamagrass is no easier to establish than it is to get rid of...another invasive species on campus...the price of research...it's in the garden because mary eubanks holds that it is an ancestor of maize, along with teosinte ( there is no movement on that front yet...on campus or at homes...i will whoop if there is)...hugh iltis and the intellectual descendants of g.w. beadle say she's crazy and that teosinte is the sole source of maize...this is an argument that may have resolved itself ( although nothing ever seems to be over in acadamia )...but my focus today is on the return of the plant, not the argunent that led to its inclusion in the plant list...it would be pleasing to have teosinte present as well...but the plant and i have a checkered history and i will hope while being rationally skeptical of positive results...winter wheat, intermediate wheatgrass, and now gamagrass chugging along in the garden...we're looking at potatoes going in here at home this weekend if the weather holds...another post on cutting and callousing later this week...things are looking up.

open

i spent a couple of hours on campus (6:55 to 9:04) this morning unmulching the yams and asparagus, removing some of the encroachment by the university lawn, and (maybe) finally adding enough organic matter to the east end of the garden so that it will cease being a sump when it rains...we'll see after it settles whether i actually have succeeded...the straw i used to mulch with was half rotten last fall and a winter under fabric didn't deter that process...along with the odd earwig i found numerous worms as i was picking the mulch up...that's encouraging...the colony of red wigglers i put in last spring has survived the winter and at least a few have stuck around...one less thing to do this year...the winter wheat has come out of dormancy and is growing...a bright green patch in the garden's early spring ( it is doing well here at home too)...there is exactly one spinach plant up, which means there will be more in the coming week...time to start regularly scheduled visits...which will be centerd around tuesdays, thursdays ( both class nights until the end of the semester) and weekends for bigger projects...after i opened up the asparagus beds i scooped the compost away until i got down to last year's surface level...asparagus isn't like elephant garlic ( or jerusalem artichokes ) which can push its way up through just about anything...probably including concrete...it needs a bit of help...so the garden looks like itinerant treasure hunters have been at work...just like last year, as the asparagus comes up i will backfill those holes with compost to feed the little devils...most of the garden is still dormant ( or the movement is still underground) but that will change by mid-month...somewhere around income tax day i will be putting in the beets and the spring wheat...on top of that fedx tells my my seed potatoes should be delivered today so there will be movement here as well before the month is over...now if only the teosinte takes hold...stay tuned.

11:19 am
fedx just dropped of my seed potatoes...it's still a bit chilly to contemplate cutting and callousing...i will stick them in a cool, dark place for another week and see how the weather is next week.

calling it a season

i cooked the last of the jerusalem artichokes this evening for a frugal meal to mark the official end of the first season of the perennial garden project(they held up well for twenty-four hours or so in a bowl of cold water after i peeled and cut them up...cold seems to be the key here) in the nineteen months since its inception in a series of emails and discusssions with kathy forgey it has had a good deal of success and one unrecoverable loss...that's life...and it is why i am not always at peace with it...but the garden goes on...we're growing annual root crops this year to compare with the productivity of last year's perennials...that will be intersting and i want to see if my surmises are proved true...i will be writing more about what's going on in my back yard as well...it will become an extention of the campus garden and will provide a bit more room for some different processes...i potted the last of the germinated apple seeds this evening...sixteen trees in all...if they all survive...i also have tomatoes and peppers up and running under the light...i had to add another table down there but i believe that will be the last expansion of the nursey...if the weather starts to co-operate a bit i will be unmulching the asparagus and yams on campus friday to get them going...stargazer perennials has emiled me that my seed potatoes are on the road from oregon to indiana...i will need to review the cutting, callousing, and planting procedures...the bed was prepared last friday so their home is ready...gamgrass, wheatgrass, teosinte, winter and spring wheat, fruit trees, tubers, tomatoes...the project has a fullsome population this coming season...a lot to do and to write about...stay tuned if you're interested

sunchokes

well folks...that photo represents the last of the jerusalem artichokes i found after going back and gleaning all the trenches i dug in the fall to use for storage...doubtlessly i missed a few and i expect volunteers next month...i will cull them, but if they are not in an awkward place i will let them stand and deliver more tubers for the next harvest...so...was this a success? from the standpoint of the tubers surviiving the winter in an edible condition it was...but that could hardly have failed since they winter over to grow the next generation of plants anyway...just used a natural process and that was pretty much a no-brainer...if that were the only issue involved here there would be no real reason to harvest the tubers from the parent plant root system on anything but an "as needed" basis...clearly my experience this winter has shown that access is the key...if jerusalem artichokes are going to become anything like a perennial staple ( and they could be) you need to get at them when things are frozen rock-hard...so my storage technology has to evolve beyond digging a hole and hoping for a thaw...a few ideas are percolating through my aged synapses and they still involve in-ground storage...nobody that i can find is writing much about sunchoke storage beyond "they can be frozen and stored indefinitly"...yeah..i know...but i don't have a freezer large enough to hold what i plan to grow...so this fall i will again harvest and centrally collect the tubers to freeze naturally in soil...that soil will simply have to be in some sort of container that has yet to be defined so they can be brought indoors in batches to thaw, utilize, and return the soil to the beds...what those cantainers may be constructed from and how many i have yet to decide...that's the way my thoughts are running right now...tweak the natural system to my advantage...the story of agriculture so far...who am i to run counter to ten thousand years of experience?

a friday afternoon at home

the last of my father's day 2010 2 X 12s have become the third raised bed intended to allow a three year rotation of potatoes...according to steven brush there are local andean agricultures that use a seven year rotation which includes a fallow period for the fields...i don't think i have that much space to work with and the reading i've done tells me that if i am careful about cleaning tools and which beds i step in in which order i have a fairly good chance of avoiding a build-up of insect parasites or diseases that potatoes are sensitive to....hope so..i will simply have to watch what i do...the seed potatoes arrived on april second last year so i wanted to have the bed ready, particularly since next friday is the day i plan to unmulch the garden on campus...didn't want that and the construction of a bed on my plate for the same weekend...things are moving along plant-wise as well...two of the three elephant garlic plants are up ( middle photo)...i will be unmulching the yams in that bed soon as well...although they come out of dormancy rather later in april...not a huge issue just yet...the elephant garlic doesn't care about the mulch...obviously...some of the tomato plants have four leaves so soon it will be off the heat mat and into peat pots for them to be hardened-off and planted after mother's day...finally i have a dozen apple trees in various stages of development from seedlings to about five inches tall under the light...the one in the photos is about two months old and seems to be a pretty hale little critter...if they all do well ( and i believe i have four more germinating but not ready to be potted yet) i will be looking for homes for some...i can support a couple of them and will pass some out to relatives ( mom's back yard is a prime candidate)...the others may go begging for a home...so far so good this year...some set-backs and the winter season is hanging on a bit...that will pass...looking forward to asparagus and jerusalem artichokes ( speaking of which i believe i will be digging some up tomorrow for lunch...need to conclude the storage experiment SOON)...still geeked about a new season.

elephant garlic...

...and maybe some gamagrass breaking out for the season....i can only upload five photos per post so i tossed these in just for the fun of it.

artichokes and garlic mean the seasons have met

well...things are moving along here at home...i have two elephant garlic plants coming through the mulch in the perennial bed on the south side of the house and i do believe there is some eastern gamagrass coming up as well...although it's a bit early to make a final call on that one...it's green and it's grass and it's where i planted seeds last fall...but i will hold off on a difinitive call until the season gets along a bit...i dug up sixty-six jerusalem artichokes for lunch and fried them with some onions and a few potatoes...a little garlic salt and pepper was enough to finish the dish...it is getting late...the jerusalem artichokes were up and running on campus by the middle of april last year so there is some time pressure about using them...i have noticed that as the weather has warmed some of the smaller tubers have spoiled...i had to discard half a dozen today...the other photos are of some of the larger ones ( which still seem to be holding up well)...it seems the larger the tubers get the more irregular their shape is...the smaller ones are shaped like large teardrops which makes the easier to peel but there's not alot to them...i am geeked...there's green out there...if that's gamagrass and the teosinte takes hold i will be a happy gardener...it's good to be started.