Thursday, April 5, 2012

freeze?

there's a freeze watch on for northwest indiana to night so after work i drove over to campus to be proactive about preserving the improbable teosinte...the top photo is the end product of my work...it's cooled off a bit since the record warmth in march but you can see by the photographic scale that at least some of the wild and weedy ancestor is topping out at over six inches and i want to keep them moving in the proper direction...so i mulched around the plants and over the area around them (including three plants up form seed off to the side )with approximately three inches of dry compost...i placed some dowel rods around the taller plants to tent up the frost cloth and then covered them, weighting the edges of the cloth down with stones, landscaping staples, and more compost to seal the edges...hopefully this is proactive enough to keep them upright...i camp home and repeated the process with the plants out back and i will be visiting campus again around mid-morning tomorrow to open them up...results tomorrow...the feds released my wild potato seeds from peru yesterday after holding them for nine months...seems they germinated forty-eight seeds and inspected them for signs of disease or genetic disorders...apparently they passed...at least that's what all the paperwork that came with them says...no wonder it took so long...so i am free to strew wild an weedy potato ancestor as far as my seeds will take me...the potato introduction station in sturgeon bay wisconsin has promised me some "primitive cultivars" to plant as well...another morphology study is in the offing if everything comes together.

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