Saturday, September 14, 2013

this year's hopi blue maize

i was out at campus this morning doing some maintenance and i discovered that critters were at work along hawthorn hall as well as in the community garden and that the maize season is seriously finished now...i brought in what was salvageable and now we are into the drying stage...four of the hopi blue plants in the community garden and two in the pgp were grown from seed i saved at the end of the 2012 season and they did well, each producing an ear ( most of which fed squirrels...the ears i saved were from the larger plants ) and i am hoping to repeat that success next season on a larger scale in as many locations as possible to try to buy harvest insurance with numbers...for being examples of the same plant they produced some variation in ears...the second photo is of a twelve row ear, the third of a ten row ear, and the fourth of an eight row ear...whether this difference in row numbers is genetic or environmental i do not know ( more research...that stuff never ends )...perhaps a combination...whatever the cause i will not come close to being able to plant all these seeds next may...so the offer to share i made yesterday still stands...i know mik wants some but even the two of us won't exhaust this supply...speak up if you'd like some...or asparagus seed for that matter...and i am hoping to gather some broccoli seed as well...multitudes of chinese yam bulbs and jerusalem artichoke tubers are lurking out there as well...you could start a garden with all this.

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