closing day

five years after its inception and four years since kathy's untimely death this garden is finished...i'm done...consider this the last official portrait.

gleaning

the zea diploperennis has done well for a sub tropical grass transplanted to northwest indiana...babied through three winters it has come to the end of the road ( top photo )...so i took it out...there will be some support root photos but its days on campus are done...i took a spading fork to the potato patch ( second photo ) and found a few stray tubers ( third photo )...what was a stand of eastern gamagrass in august ( fourth photo ) has become the mulch in the fifth photo...i saved some of the intermediate wheat grass i got from the land institute...it will be living in my yard.

eastern gamagrass removal

after forty-five minutes of hacking away with a shovel, lops, shears, and a saw i reduced the remnant of this clump of gamagrass to ground level ( remind me to put an edge on that shovel before i do this again )...the others will have to wait...while i was at it i removed the asparagus, separating the seed bearing plants form those that were not...i will be saving those and planting some about, but there are many and if anyone would like some seed from five year old organically grown asparagus let me know...i harvested some late season potatoes from the seemingly eternal early blues...there are still some potato fruits on the vine so i am not prepared to haul them all in just yet...progress on the shut-down...more to do.

teosinte

i went to check for ears on the northern tepehuan teosinte...however, in a first in my experience, something or someone got there first...it was down on the ground and either browsed or cut with no eats ( or much of anything else ) in sight...so i pulled it and that gave me an opportunity to take a clear photo of the support roots ( third photo 0...the fourth photo is of the support roots on the zea diploperennis plant in the bottom photo...just another bit of morphology linking annual and perennial teosinte to maize.

demolition begins

this eastern gamagrass wa sthe second thing planted in the perennial garden...in november of 2009 about a month after the jerusalem artichokes...it went in as thirty seeds and the notoriously low fertility of the seed mean that only ten percent germinated...those three thrived though and they produced many low fertility seeds over the next five years...the jerusalem artichokes came out after the 2012 season so it is somehow fitting that the next oldest plants be the next out...there will be more deconstruction in the coming weeks...rain is forecast for later this coming week...i believe i will wait for softer ground to go after these perennial roots.

early blue and teosinte

it is nearly the end of september but the early blue in the pgp continue to bloom ( top photo ) and my supposition is that they will do so until either i dig them up or frost kills the...the potato fruit ( second photo ) are still hard and not ready to harvest...waiting as patiently as i can for that...the removal of the gamagrass left me with a less restricted view of the perennial teosinte ( third photo )...it is doing well and producing both tillers and support roots ( fourth photo )...it still looks far more like maize than the annual variety does to me.

two days before the end of summer

the potato fruit ( top photo ) population has remained stable so i did not bring any more in...if they begin to disappear the remainder will be coming home...the northern tepehuan teosinte ( second photo )is progressing with its flowering and i will be bringing pollen from the plants in my yard to try to fertilize it...across the garden the zea diploperennis ( third photo ) that survived last winter is still looking robust...it has produced new tillers and the support roots ( fourth photo ) are preparing for the tiller to lay down...time is short for this garden...i have until spring i am told but the balance will be out by november.