unseasonably cold

today's high temperature is forecast to be thirty-five degrees ( fahrenheit ) which is a might chilly for mid-november here...and lows are forecast to be in the single digits over the weekend...that has not deterred this michigan blue from screaming it is time to be planted...so...

i found a five gallon bucket with the requisite drainage holes...

tossed in some perlite...

and mixed it in with the compost i added to keep the soil loose for young roots...

and gave the spud a home in what resembles an alien landscape with alien included...then i went outside...

to have a look at the teosinte and search for some seed...

i found a few that may be viable to add to the harvest, however i am afraid anything out there that is still green will not be maturing...that harvest is, i believe, ended...we will look some more when the weather moderates next week...i am not especially sanguine though.

soak

it has been inordinately warm of late...since yesterday that has changed...the temperature is in the mid thirties ( fahrenheit ) right now and forcast to go well below freezing tonight...it is autumn and tesointe ears have been opening and shattering out in the back yard...

unfortunately there are a considrable number of green ears out there as well and with temperatures falling i am uncertain about their chances of maturing...we will keep an eye on that but we are not overly sanguine...

fortunately i have been harvesting mature seed since late september...

and i have a shade over a thousand...which is around half of what i harvested last season...

the seed i found last month trying to germinate in the ear, and which i planted downstairs under the ights, seems to have completely misfired...no sign of it at all in the peat pot...

so as a viability test i picked out three seeds...

soaked them in hydrogen peroxide for twenty minutes ot break dormancy...

wrapped them ion a brown paper towel dampened with distilled water, put the paper towel in a baggie...and put that in a dark place until next weekend or so...if they germinate they will spend the winter in the basement and we will see how they do...

most teosinte seed comes in a single spike inside the ear ( ancestor and domesticate in this photo )...

however i planted maize along with the teosinte out there and some of the teosinte plants have been exhibiting seed on cob-like structures ( unfortunately these seem to mostly be in green ears...cross-pollinization impacting season length? no real clue )...

some of the seed seems to have already shattered...

hopefully some of the remaining seed is viable and can be induced to grow in the spring...a future project...let's see how this one pans out first.

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.