two sets of pioneers

saturday mornings are becoming ritualized and part the ritual is looking in on the former agricultural field behind the big box stores...a couple of sets of pioneers going on on opposite ends of the field...the entire field was bush hogged a few weeks ago which was doubtlessly something the people trying to unload this property thought would contribute to the aesthetic value of the plot...bare soil in never a really good idea...a view i share with nature...and in the few weeks since the big mow the pioneers have begun to stage a recovery...there was a lot of thistle that had gone to seed on the periphery of the field and thistle ( second photo ) is spread out all over the place and growing...even plants that got hacked off but not uprooted are on the move...in the third photo a new stem has sprouted from an auxiliary bud on a still rooted stem and there will always be annual grasses moving in like the one in the fourth photo...the plants in the fifth photo are at least three feet high...perhaps they were missed by the bush hog...if the agents don't keep mowing ( because i still presume spraying is a no no inside city limits ) the field will revert first to the pioneer community it was a few weeks ago and then it's on to niche diversification...one would guess shrubs...and...if left long enough...trees...on the other end of the field another pioneer of sorts is expanding as the first building to go up on the field continues to be built...more heavy equipment has arrived and the concrete drainage behemoths that remain above ground have migrated to the back of the site...with all the piles of soil that have been moved about on wonders how strictly frontier's "hand dig" caveat was adhered to...don't know since i wasn't around to watch...still no sign of what this will eventually be...no tease to manipulate future behavior...you'll know about that when the nexus reveals all.

could be dog days...

...or it could just be active harvesting that's making the season look like it is in summer hiatus...the cauliflower is doing just fine but if you have a look at the periphery of the top photo you may notice that something ( or someone ) has been browsing the "greens" on the brussels sprouts next door...one has been grazed almost to extinction...there are a multitude of peppers ( banana, bell and jalepeno respectively in photos two three and four )...but all nascent...not a mature peeper in sight..lots of green tomatoes around as well but even those are seeming to be headed fro frying pans around the neighborhood...my thoughts are if you want ripe produce be prepared to visit early and often...even the cucumber in the last photo was in the process of being harvested when i asked to take the photo first...good the garden is thriving and producing...unfortunate the garden community is having limited input...today is my buddy parker's! birthday and she spent part of it helping to weed in the garden...i did not complicate her natal day by asking to take portraiture, but if you look aroundd the blog you'll find her smiling visage...happy birthday parker! thanks for all your help.

meanwhile, back at the ranch...

things are still booming along...besides the teosinte there are beans and spuds and cukes and squash and jerusalem artichokes in production...the grapes in the trees ( top photo as if you couldn't tell ) are doing well and there are more tomatoes coming online than i would have thought possible from three half barrels...the nasturtiums are looking robust ans till flowering ( four and five) while their cousin mashua in the sixth photo is cascading out of the container...hoping for many peppery tubers shortly...

i photographed the ramp plant yesterday...the flowers have all but died back leaving the immature seeds exposed...they will turn black before the seed head shatters and the seeds go on to create new plants clustered around the parent plant...the source of the "bunching' in bunching onions...about three more months of work...unless the weather stays mild...i have harvested ( small ) brussels sprouts in early december before..you can mine the blog for that post if you like.

sunday morning garden run

it rained well yesterday evening so this was pretty much just a check up run out to the community garden this morning just to have a look around..and i found we still have a season going on...the asparagus spear in the top photo is beginning to branch out and, soon enough, will have new growth "ferns" like the ones in the second photo...the cucumber have not given up yet...slowing...but not done while the peppers are still blooming and producing a variety of produce...the cauliflower and brussels sprouts in the seventh photo are on schedule for late september/early october and are looking robust and they don't seem to have bolted in the heat...difficult as it may be to see there is a honey bee on the center potato flower in the eighth photo and as long as the early blue potatoes keep blooming like the one in the ninth photo ( and they will ) there will be potato fruits to ripen and porocess...still stuff going on...still time to visit the garden...always time to express an interest in joining in...it's a little late for that this year but a new season starts in march...time to start planning.

kenesis failure?

the path i beat through the biomass on the berm of the industrial field was still there...but it is becoming more difficult to discern corn there...the obvious lack of herbicide on this field has allowed the berm's population to explode and there are a lot of individuals there...including a profusion of poke weed 9 second photo )...you can make a durable vegetable dye from the berries and it's edible with some processing...so that , at least, qualifies as a valid crop in the berm...i found the two closely spaced plants easily and one has developed an ear over the last week ( fifth photo )...the sixth photo is that plant and its rationally spaced neighbor to the north...it give a comparison of stalk height and ear size with the closely spaced plant obviously the runt...looking south you can see its field-mate has not developed an ear...just a bulge that should be an ear ( eighth photo )...whether that is a proto-ear or a failure of kenesis i am not prepared to say just yet...i would presume ( and it would be a presumption until the end of the season...being empirical and inductive here ) that if there isn't one by next week there won't be one and that the plant will have failed..whether that is a failure of the mechanical planter or of the gene splicing is another troubling question that i probably won't be able to answer with any assurance of being correct...still looking for a grower to talk to...still no response form the indiana corn growers association...i wonder if their license to plant a single crop from the seed they purchase while not sharing seed or saving seed has a rejoinder not to talk about it...i have a pdf of the monsanto/grower agreement that growers must sign to purchase seed...time to give it a close reading...more on that as this season goes on.

hand dig?

the heavy machinery has moved into the building site on what was once a farm field...doubtlessly not the first heavy machine to grace the field but it makes me wonder just how seriously frontier communications' admonition is going to be taken...what sort, i wonder, of commercial property are we seeing being born here...hard to know when the only signs i see ( along with that painted line on the pavement ) tell me that access to the big box stores from sterling creek road will be limited sometime in the near future as those concrete behemoths go in the ground...if you gaze directly south from the building site you see an unbroken vista of farm fields, trees, and sky...as well as the occasional microwave tower that makes your cellphone go..that anthropogenic landscape is for sale too...the nexus is always in flux and its advance or retreat is tied to the economy...perhaps...maybe this is all speculation

rendered seeds

yesterday evening just before bed time ( this was an act of spontaneity...there is no such thing as too late in those ) i began rummaging around in the paper bags i have been storing unripe potato fruits in since last month waiting for them to soften so i could remove the seeds...as luck would have it if ound half a dozen in a state that could only be called ready ( top photo )...so i stayed up a bit longer and took each one...like the one in the second photo...and cut them open...when ripe on the vine they resemble knobby cherry tomatoes only they are green...and the inside of the fruits is also similar...tomatoes and potatoes are cousins so that isn't much of a surprise...neither is the fact that the seeds somewhat resemble tomato seeds...only much smaller...those six fruits rendered about five hundred seeds which i rinsed in water to remove the mucilage and then strained into paper towel to dry...some of these are off to a friend out west...the rest will dry for a few days and then go into the freezer for storage...i have fifty more fruits i have brought in to ripen and about twenty netted and ripening on vines...if this average holds i will have thousands of seeds in a few weeks...i will be beyond the local potato seed baron..i will be the vicount.