potato news today

the gardener is relieved to announce that the yema de huevos that were planted in the bushel basket nineteen days ago have begun to break the surface ( first and second photos )...others have been sprouting in boxes and will be finding homes this coming weekend under the newest broad spectrum grow light i have acquired...in more spud related news, the early blue potatoes i planted six days ago have begun to show above ground as well ( third photo )...this is the first step ( i hope ) towards a crop of both tubers to plant in a variety of gardens across the county in april...the community garden, my daughter and son-in-law's yard, my yard, and the pgp...the bottom photo is of a bolivian wild potato that i started last week...the established ones are doing well but i am trying to expand the population...about two months to tesointe planting...three or so to potatoes...four at the outside...no time to waste...do seed potatoes grown in my basement qualify as local?

wintry prospect

admirable, but what i would have to term over-energetic plowing has piled the concrete stops from the parking places up with the snow at the west end of the garden and the back side of the pile has subsumed one end of a bed...it will do no harm...the garlic in that bed is thoroughly mulched and the jerusalem artichokes simply don't care...the ice and standing water that has inundated the green manures in the third photo may be another story...especially since this is all due to freeze again...that may do them in...the winter wheat in the fourth photo has emerged undormant despite a period of sub-zero temperatures..i am inclined to think it may remain active all winter..even in the face of a january thaw the garden is presenting a wintry face today...the snow was deep here and since the garden is sheltered by a couple of houses and university buildings it did not blow into drifts...alternate thaws and freezing will reduce it to more ice than snow which could have a negative impact on some of the plants overwintering...more on that as it comes up.

thaw

last last sunday's weather added to the snow i found at the pgp last saturday...but yesterday saw a significant thaw and the net result of the last week's climate is less snow and easier access to the garden...it's quiet...but not completely asleep...there is still chlorophyll in the eastern gamagrass and some in the intermediate wheat grass as well...even in sub zero temperatures dormancy seems elusive...there are still seventy-one or so days to spring and last year was a cycle of snowfall and melts that led into a rather cool spring...will this one be a more extreme edition of that pattern...good question...we'll know soon enough.

nexus

errands took me close to the impermanent borderland between suburban sprawl and industrial monoculture so i drove a bit farther along the nexus...among other things i was looking for possible erosion as the january thaw turns the snow of last weekend into slush and ice...i will need to go out again before spring plowing because i am inclined to think there could be a bumper crop of failed berms around fields..as i drove along 750 N i came across an icon for the nexus...a microwave transmission tower planted among the outbuildings on a farm not a mile south of a big box store...civilization has its needs

perhaps i was asking too much

clearly there is a reason why four months is the outside limit of the time-frame for traditional potato storage...as long as the tubers were solid i was rubbing the sprouts off these early blue potatoes...unfortunately when i checked on them this evening they were not only sprouting, but they were soft and beginning to shrivel...the limits of tradition would seem to have been reached and i felt i had no alternative besides planting them to produce another round of tubers for spring planting much like the strategy for the yema de huevos ( which are also sprouting but have a bit of time to go before they are planted )...so i commandeered one of the bushel baskets ( which means procuring more spud containers...off to the garden center tomorrow...need another broad spectrum grow lighty too ) and planted them...since no tuber will grow below the ones i planted i only filled the basket halfway and i will be hilling these plants to the top to stimulate more tuber production...there are still three more to plant so my hope are for a fair harvest in april...it would have been a stretch in storage twice as long as traditional methods allow and it may have been completely unrealistic to think i could pull it off...i do not have the andean micro-climates enabled by altitude that gives me enough leeway to make it work...so the basement will have to provide the climate...it is a steady temperature and humidity which is favorable..now i have to hope the timing is right...i imagine planting them in may rather than april won't cause too much of an issue...harvest in september rather than august...more as it comes up.

chenopodia II ( with a side of potatoes )

that white line in the upper center of the first photo is a quinoa sprout forty-eight hours or so after the seed was planted...the second photo is of a lambs quarters sprout of the same approximate age...there is movement and where there's movement there's morphology...which is what this plant identification project is all about...the wild potatoes are doing pretty well basking in the feeble winter sunlight by the front window...they are slow...they are teaching me patience...the bottom photo is of some better developed quinoa that spent the day reaching for said feeble sun...cold photosynthesis...winter chlorophyll...call it what you want...more as they develop.

wild potatoes and quinoa killing time in a feeble sun

brutal weather dictated a monday at home since the state basically shut down...all but one of the wild potato plants have been transplanted to larger pots...they are growing..but at a snail's pace...which indeed may be natural in the dead of winter with an outside temperature around seven below zero fahrenheit and a limited amount of sunshine...they are producing true leaves these days and that is a plus...between five and seven on all but the smallest...the bottom photo is of a couple of them in the basement getting a bit longer photo period because they seemed to need it...the hardier looking ones are subsisting on natural light only and the basement plants will be too as soon as the perk up a bit...the quinoa in the fourth photo still looks like the alien plant it is...still no movement in the chenopodia morphology project that is sharing the spot by the window...we'll see what transpires as it happens ( if it happens )...it is truly winter and spring seems a lot further away than a mere seventy-three days...teosinte time before you know it.