mostly maintenance

the last of my seed potatoes had reached just about their limit outside some soil so i had to do something...five gallon buckets from a home improvement store are a much cheaper alternative to formal planters...so i bought some, drilled holes for drainage ( first photo 0and filled them halfway with a mix of organic potting soil and compost ( second and third 0) and planted another thirty seed potatoes ( fourth ) and spread them around the yard ( you can take these to sunlight at least )...we will see what they produce...o a more positive note the leaf cutter bees have filled a hole in the nesting block...you can tell it's leaf cutters by the green leaf matter in the plug...earwigs just use clay/soil and the plug is all grey...finally the last two photos are of some trellises i bought for the mashua to get them off the ground...they had fallen over and were trailing like vines which is natural for them but research tells me they produce better if trellised...i am all for better production

second planting

four days ago i brought in the first spuds ( top photo )from my bed at the garden...the reds did very well so i decided to put in more spuds for a fall harvest...there was nothing in the back side of the asparagus bed but biomass( second ) so i cleared it ( third ) and dug a hole ( fourth ) threw in a handful of compost ( fifth ) planted a tuber ( sixth ) and filled the hole ( seventh )...repeated that five more times, alternating elmer's blues and butterballs, in a row out of the shade of the asparagus and the bed is in use...i filled in the space i had emptied in my bed with some single german butterballs (eighth ) and i dug two trenched for the rest of the blues ( ninth and tenth )...september sometime should see the butterballs done...the blues will go on until i pull them or the frosts come.

bi-polar monoculture?

my weed whacker died so i ran out to the big box store for another package of planned obsolescence and that took me by the suburban field behind the stores ( first ) so i stopped to have a look...the field is still for sale ( second ) however it has been planted in rows of no til soy beans ( third )...you can tell it s no til by the semi-organic corn detritus left from last season ( fourth )..there is also considerable anthropogenic detritus ( fifth and sixth ) that informs me this is a suburban field...the rows are about twelve inches apart ( seventh ...you can tell by my foot )and the bean plants seem well adjusted (eighth ) however they are not alone...there is plenty of thistle ( ninth ) and the odd dandelion ( tenth ) in the rows...what i di not find was any volunteer dense yellow #2 from last season...that informs me of something else however we will wait a bit to see if any crops up before we come to any conlusions,

a very few garden standards

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a hot banana pepper ( first ), a nascent boston pickling cucumber ( second ) and some maize ( third ) are offered as evidence i do grow some backyard garden standards ( there are tomatoes, bell peppers, and zucchini as well...all unpictured )..that's wher it ends though...the fourth and fifth photos are 0f the maize ancestor teosinte...sort of in the family...there are cereal grains out there, pacific blue stem wheat ( sixth ), winter rye ( seventh ), ancient emmer wheat ( eighth ). and hard red spring wheat ( ninth ) all moving towards maturity... the tenth photo is of a ramp flower.. a relative of the blooming onion in the community garden...somewhat different structures however i am wagering the seed will be remarkably similar...it is flowering because i have fooled the wild leek into thinking it s in the woods...it is happily reproducing and i am being self-congratulatory bout fooling it and the thought that goes into weird gardening...yet i have to wonder who is brighter...me or the plants that are reproducing in my yard...a toss up at best.

status quo on campus

there's a season at the community garden...but it is quiet at the moment...no real surprises to report...the onion is still blooming ( first photo ) and the three yukon gold potatoes ( second ) still have a way to go...even though it isn't recommended i believe more spuds will be going into the empty space vacated by the reds...there are two new potatoes coming up ( third and fourth ) i will add to the number...the teosinte ( fifth ) is looking much less water stressed after this morning's monsoon rain...no corn sweat today...the jerusalem artichokes( sixth ) have hit about three feet...normal stuff there too...the asparagus (seventh ) has settled in or a summer run..one new spear (eighth ) coming along...i am still hopeful that the flowers in the last photo will produce seed this year...i would like to spread some home-grown asparagus around.

what is this? the second day of summer?

and the wheat continues its ripening...the hard red spring ( first photo ) is moving along and i found a surprisingly ripe ear of emmer ( second ) while the pacific blue stem is turning amber ( third )...they syrian dwarf is still so green it is blending into the background and resisting clear photography...maybe later...the zea mays parvaglumis ( fourth ) continues to show its relation to its descendant maize ( fifth )...seven of the twelve imported wild strawberries have survived and are showing good growth (sixth )..the chines yams have all sorts of new growth ( seventh )...and remember those brussels sprouts ( eighth )i planted as a fall crop last season and which surprisingly ( to me ) overwintered and took off again this spring and have already produced seed pods? well now they have very small sprouts going on ( ninth )...i am pleased...finally a ramp flower has achieved enough photographic definition that i can show you one in the early stages of deployment ( tenth )...a member of the allium family it should be producing round, black seeds soon.