closure

the asparagus in my back yard is still green in the majority...

and still producing "berries...

so i was mildly surprised to find the asparagus on campus as far gone as it was...

there was still significant green there...

and a couple of late season spears giving it a go...but there is a bureaucratic deadline in place here...so...

i cleared the bed...

covered the asparagus with compost...

and covered the bed with fabric rather than mulch which, in my estimation, would only complicate things in spring...

the hopi turquoise in my "official" bed has been done for some time...

although i did find a small ear ( which i gave to my daughter because she thought it was "cute" ) as i cleared the bed...

unlike the asparagus, the alfalfa is still verdant...

and still blooming...we will leave that be even if it extends past the dead line...i will cut it back when it decides to die back...there will be "event time" in this bed...

i did clear and cover the remainder of the bed...we will go back after the time change to see what al is up to.

an october ride

my daughter and son-in-law's neighbor Larry farms upwards of seventeen hundred acres hereabouts...crops, if my understanding and memory are intact, including tomatoes, seed corn for companies like bayer, and dense yellow # 2 field corn which is what he graciously invited me to ride along with him as he mopped up the harvest season...so...

i found a seat on the case axial-flow combine and was given a bit more education...

the rows are spaced thirty inches apart and the plants are about six inches apart in the rows...

the combine can cover eight rows at a time and can cover eight or nine acres in an hour...and we were near that since the ride was an hour or so...

since the fields are not exact rectangles the number of passes needed to fill the hopper on the combine vary...

however four hopperfuls will fill the grain truck...Larry said this field wasn't seed corn, but rather would become ethanol...

most of what the combine left in the field was stubble and stripped cobs...as evidenced by the cobs in the road and scattered in the field...

like everything anthropogenic, the combine isn't 100% efficient...there is still some grain in the field...and with rain forecast tomorrow...

there may be some germination going on as there was in the field by the supermarket in 2017 ( although that was a bean field in july that had been a corn field the previous season...rain may come...the germination may wait )...we had some illuminating conversatiions about robotic farming, self-driving tractors, and the ( put politely ) debate over whether sustainable fuel for the air transport industry would be manufactured from corn or soy beans...knowledge gained...thanks for the ride Larry.

it's been a while

there's usually movement in the yard, however, of late, it has been remarkably slow...things may be picking up though...i was out harvesting teosinte seeds out back...

when i came across a seed in an ear with a green shoot...trying to germinate...

i have encountered this sort of behavior out in the fields of industial corn...this is the first experience with teosinte...

so i prepared a peat pot with compost and worm castings...

and planted him green side up under a grow light...we will keep him watered and lit up and see where we get to...it seems another indoor season may have begun...in the mean time out back...

i have a fair bed of winter wheat going...early days yet...i am less than convinced it will prosper...we are at the mercy of a changing climate here...a lot depends on the timing of snow...

a second generation of leaf cutters hatched out...and declined to re-use the bee house...one hopes the old nurse log a few feet away has some cocoons...

the jerusalem artichokes are done...

they produced some fair sized tubers ( and an earthworm came up with one of them...always pleased to see those )...lunch from the yard...tomorrow may have some interesting events and there will be community garden clean up and continued skewering of garden bureaucrats over the term "event time"...it cannot be helped.

gardening with bureaucrats

the bureaucrats have spoken and we've had this conversation before...still, the sclerosis takes me aback ( no i am not surprised...one expects this sort of thing in an institutional setting ) at times...

the asparagus is still vertical...it is also cold hardy and firmly rooted in event time and could care less about bureaucratic edicts concerning its behavior...

it is nowhere near done...it is still throwing up spears...and it won't be by the end of october either...or , possibly, even november ( we will keep tabs on the aspragus in my yard which will be allowed to run out its season in event time because i am not a bureaucrat...so we will have a control population to determine the extent of bureaucratic fallacy...yes the gardener is a bit techty today and there is more to come )...

the carolina horse nettle might be done by the end of next month...it will be back in spring...in the absence of toxic chemicals it isn't going anywhere...

the alfalfa is a perennial so i had better label it as such...it may not be done next month either...will label anyway...

all the hopi turquoise is done...and out of a dozen plants, many with multiple ears, i harvested five...someone or something has been at the maize...this is a hazard of public gardening ( recall the teosinte incident from last year and notice there was none in this garden in 2022...i may simply grow some grumpy plants next season...say cowpeas or stinging nettles ) and is accepted if not expected...the plants never got much more than three feet tall and since i have never grown this variety i am uncertain if this is the extent of its height or if there was a fertility issue ( another reason to grow the nitrogen setting cowpeas ) i was punted out pf the bed i had worked since the garden moved in, i believe, 2014 a few years ago because my maize was so tall it was "throwing shade" on some collards...no danger of that with this season's crop...so...between bureaucratic intransigence and a somewhat limited harvest i am calling it a failed season...although i did see bees on the alflafa...there is a reason it is there to be labeled.

a table full of maize

some maize...some wheat

drove over to campus this morning...

where the asparagus is continuing its now ninety-nine day upright streak...

and has put up a couple of late summer spears...

late summer also finds the carolina horse nettle still blooming...

and, while the hopi turquoise maize still has a number of green ears...

more ears are telling me they are as done as they are going to get...

and these have a somewhat larger pallet of shades of blue than the first ones i brought in...the soil was beyond damp due to recent rain and cool days so there was no need to water...and beyond that the campus garden, in terms of my involvement, is quiet...

in the back yard the teosinte has more energent ears...however the seed is nowhere near mature...a few more weeks before and serious amount can be harvested...and...

over in the winter wheat bed...

in a matter of four days we find ourselves rich with green shoots...i, for one, am pleased.