unwelcome

out roaming the yard this morning i came across a few more open onion blooms...which is fine...i will collect seed when it is ready and we will see what comes of that next season...

the asparagus i transplanted a few days ago seems not to have shocked and is coming along...this is good news as well... o

the black tipped wheat begins to live up to the name...

the pacific blue stem, unmistakable emmer, and the einkorn wheat are catching up to the dwarf syrian wheat in numbers, if not ripeness, of ears

some of the teosinte seed and ears have begun to mature..others are still green...no matter...it is june...we have time...with this we have, i think, exhausted the morning's positives...

when i had a look at the seedless grapes and found the first japanese beetles of the season, the mood lurched into full defensive mode...the beetles had already begun to skeletalize leaves so i headed for the basement...

to mix four tablespoons of neem oil in a gallon of water in the garden sprayer...

and i unloaded on them...coating the seedless grape leaves top and bottom to remove and deter the beetles...

i did not find any beetles on the concord grape...however i coated all the leaves i could reach...in the fir tree...the catalpa tree...and all the new growth coming off the root stock...

they seem to prefer fruit leaves so i had a look at the strawberry plants...no sign of an infestation yet...however we will remain alert to the possibility of beetles in the beds...we are tipped off to their presence...we have the means to protect ourselves...we will utilize those means to the fullest extent we can...these are not welcome guests.

blooms and stuff

it has been a busy day but i went out back this after noon to look around...and i found that one of the onions has begun to open its blooms...

the chinese yams are coming into bloom as well...soon enough these will be a multiplicity of the aerial bulbs that make these yams so invasive...

the winter rye continues to ripen...some of the stems have begun to turn brown...

and since the dwarf syrian wheat was the first to produce ears it only makes sense it would begin to ripen first as well...

found more signs of leaf cutters in the rose bush...

found another leaf cutter too.

various backyard denizens

while i was out in back wandering around among the onions...

grapes...

teosinte ears...

and the seven sisters roses...

i found neat little holes in the rose bush leaves...not skeletalized like a japanese beetle would do...neat cut...leaf cutters like fleshy, almost succulent leaves for their cocoons...where there are neat holes there are usually bees...so i went to look...

and i found a busy girl out in one of the alfalfa stands doing what needed to be done...perhaps at least the bees that hatched out before they arrived survived the bee apocalypse...or perhaps some of the remaining cocoons have hatched out in the bee fort...either way, leaf cutters are at work...

and while i was nosing around the roses i found this one flitting about...lots going on in the microcosm...have a look.

federally subverted beans?

the no-til soybean field next to the supermarket is looking well in terms of growth...the rest of its overall health may be questionable...especially the economic part with a possibility of a twenty -five percent tariff that could be imposed on bean imports by china the economic return on this field is an open question...there may be far more bushels than the domestic economy can possibly absorb and a crash in the bean futures market could mean a tough winter for farmer brown...

the plants themselves, if not the market, look healthy and seem to be preparing to produce pods...

geopolitics and global trade aside ( if you want an editorial on the current administration see my other blogs...or read the new york times...the gist is much the same even if i feel i have a better contextural grasp than they do ) my real interest here is in the volunteer corn...whether it is hybrid or some monsanto/bayer gmo i haven't a clue...either way i will be looking into how its season progresses and what , if anything, in the way of ears it produces..the last good look at volunteer corn i had was several years ago and it went through all the normal phases of a season and produced empty husks...i am curious to see if that is a repeat here...monsanto says there is no "suicide gene" in its corn ( i am skeptical of this ) and hybrid corn does not reproduce well down the generations...so this could be a non-result...and if it is monsanto corn these volunteers are illegal...they license one crop at a time and do not allow seed saving...one wonders...we will see...if they spray herbicide the observations are off.

asparagus!!

the three year old asparagus plant at the back corner of the east bed has put up another spear which, in asparagus terms, is encouraging...

happily, as i was weeding, i found that two of the half dozen or so seeds i had planted had germinated and i had three asparagus plants in the bed along with onions and more strawberry plants than you can probably easily count...

so i decided it was time to move the seedling in the container with the potted teosinte into the east bed as well...

so i dug a hole three feet from any existing asparagus...

so i troweled carefully around the outside of the peat pot and lifted the entire thing out from the bottom as deep as i could get the trowel to go...

because ( pardon the blur...it was early...low light...and the gardener is not an expert photographer just yet ) the roots has easily exceeded the limits of the peat pot and i did not want to damage them if it could be avoided...

i tore back the top of the peat pot so capillary action would not draw moisture from the plant on dry days...

back-filled the hole and gave it a healthy drink of water...now we wait to see if it root shacks or if we transplanted gently enough to avoid it.