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.

solanum

the early blue ( a misnomer i'm thinking ) potatoes in the perennial garden are still blooming ( top photo )...and some of those blooms are morphing into seed pods/fruits ( second photo )which is something i have never seen on a potato plant before...potatoes and tomatoes are both members of the same family and so it makes sense that some of the plant structures would resemble one another...these two plants are relatives and neighbors in the garden so a comparison was simple...the third photo is of a very young tomato ( which may not develop much more given the weather ) and the fourth photo is of the potato pod...you can see the resemblance in the calyces even though the tomatoes is much larger...i am all curiosity to see if the pods on the early blue have enough time to mature...domesticated potato seeds may not be tremendously viable, but i'd like to have some anyway.

spuds and seeds

the top photo is of today's haul of spuds out of the pgp...after i got home i cleaned them up and found i had just a shade more than another pound-and-a-half of potatoes ( these are yukon golds )..lots of potatoes are finishing up..but not the seemingly misnamed early blue...they are still flowering ( both here and in the community garden )...they are easily pursuing as long a season as the did in the basement ( and will again in a few months i am assuming )...they will finish when they are ready...the bottom photo is some asparagus seed that is cooked completely and ready to plant...each "berry" has three to five seeds ( as i discovered when i germinated and grew them in the basement during the winter of 2012-2013...the all died when i tried to transplant them ) and should be directly seeded this autumn to overwinter and hatch out next spring...some of these ( if not all..there are many more cooking ) are going to find there way west to our community garden's friend ( and, by extension, a friend of the pgp )fern...she had a look in on the pgp while she was visiting friday and i offered to send her some...they will be going soon.

...and who is

what is being watered is mostly annuals but there is one exception to the deep-rooted perennials in there too...there are potatoes ( a plant/replant perennial that behaves like an annual but isn't )and mashua ( annual ) in the top photo who are receiving a ration ...the native edibles purslane ( second photo ) and lamb's quarters ( third photo ) are being watered as well as possible too...i have made the zea diploperennis a special case perennial since i am still geeked by it and will preserve it as long as possible this season...there's a tomato plant that i didn't photograph today that's being nurtured as well...so it and the potatoes are the only really productive domesticates receiving any irrigart

...two thousand and fourteen

the red pontiacs in the potato patch are thriving ( top photo ) and the mashua seems at home in their shade ( second photo )...it is sub-tropical but grows at altitude in the andes, so it likes it a bit cooler...the shade may be the ticket here...the asparagus seedlings ( third photo ) are doing fine and are doomed to be extincted in a few months...i may try to move the crowns but i am not holding a lot of hope...the zea diploperennis in the last photo is even more doomed because i am certain it will not move...i have more seed to naturalize next spring but i am looking for a permanent site for that...probably my back yard...i am work at not disparaging university administrators here...i also don't trust them not to be forgetful ( if not fickle ) about commitments.

more movement

things are coming along outside hawthorn hall in mid-may...the potato patch now has a dozen residents, including leona, red pontiac, and the scottish-born craigs' snowwhite...there will be a few more varieties added later this month...the intermediate wheat grass from th eland institute in kansas is greening up very nicely and will be producing seed heads in the next couple of months...the starlings ravaged them last year and i may be bagging the heads in an effort to harvest more seed...i am hoping to salvage a couple of them at least when dormancy sets in in autumn...but this will be their third season ( the first was in kansas ) and i have some question about how much disruption a three year old perennial root system can absorb and how much of it is enough to maintain the plant? i am no wheat grass expert so i will be improvising and doing all the research i can...perhaps t eland institute can advise...i see an email in the works...there are eleven shoots up in the old stand of perennial teosinte and it is unfortunate but i don't think these will do well in transplanting ( not that that will keep me from trying )..the bottom photo is of a greening pgp on may 15th...we aren't done yet.