California Ladies

Our bees arrived today after their long trip from California.  This year we decided to try Carniolan bees from California instead of the Italian bees out of Georgia that we have had the past few years.

The type of bee to get is a personal choice.  Carniolan bees supposedly overwinter better because they will slow down on rearing brood when the honey flow slows down.  This means they don't have a large, hungry population to feed all winter.  But this means they don't make as much honey and I have heard they propolis like crazy.  There are plus and minuses for both types of honey bee.  For us our bees have died the past two winters and we figured we wanted to try something different.

 This lady rode along side me on the way home.

 The queen is almost black which was surprising since the Italian queens are very light colored.

 Shaking the bees out causes a lot of them to become airborne.

 The hive looks so little with just two supers.

This Year's Tomatoes

I'll be the first to admit I have a problem!  A tomato problem.  I love tomato plants and become blinded by the enticing possibilities every spring.  I have room for ten plants and the past two years I have found a way to squeeze in an eleventh.  Although what I really want to do is buy at least 15-20.  Our next home is not going to be picked out by square footage or kitchen upgrades but by tomato growing possibilities.

When browsing the tomatoes at the nursery and reading the tags I get excited about all the different types.  I want to buy all my favorites and then try a few, or a lot, of new types.  Who could blame me when there are an endless array of colors and sizes these days?  One that I had to pass up had almost jet black skin with rosy pink insides like a plum.  It looked gorgeous but it ended up not making the cut.  Here is a list of tomatoes I did pick and why.

Giant Belgium - I actually bought two of these because the plant is bred specifically for the Ohio region and it did splendidly in my garden last year.

Black Krim - Two years in a row this tomato has been a work horse in my garden and I love it's purple color.

Cherokee Purple - I grew this once a few years ago and it did poorly.  Everyone raves about it so I thought I would give it another try and grow it side by side to the Black Krim so that in future years I will go with the more successful plant.

Brandywine Red - This heirloom is the Porsche of tomatoes.  Although I will say while they're good I don't know if they are worth all the hype.  Depending on it's success this year it might not make the cut next year.

Orange Wellington - I wanted another option with color other than red and purple.  This tomato is more of a mid year variety, is supposed to be prolific and of good size.

Super Sauce - This is supposed to be the largest sauce tomato.  Since I want to have an excess of tomatoes to can I thought it would be a good one to try.

Arkansas Traveler - I had one year where this plant went gang busters for me and another where it did just ok.  I believe the third time will be the tie breaker.  This plant does well in the heat, resists cracking and is the perfect size for a canning jar.

Rutgers - Everyone out there raves about this plant's reliability and I thought I would give it a chance to compare next to the Arkansas Traveler.

Fourth of July - This is a very early tomato, only taking 49 days to reach maturity.  I want to test it and see if it produces tomatoes nice and early before the Fourth of July like it claims.

Husky Red Cherry - The cherry tomato plants I have gotten in the past grow like weeds and become unruly quickly.  This is a dwarf indeterminate so it does not get taller than 5 feet but continues to produce all season like a regular indeterminate.  Because of it's smaller size I was able to put all the others in my solanaceae bed and tuck this one into a different corner of the garden.

Planted

Last weekend I planted most of the garden.  Bush beans, zuchinni, summer squash and cucumber seeds were planted.  I filled in the zinnia and cosmo seeds that did not come in.  I decided to plant the pitiful asparagus bed with flowers while leaving the asparagus and we will just see what happens next year.  

I also planted all of the tomato and eggplant seedlings.  It finally feels like summer is on its way!

Mulch Day

Our weekends have been flying by.  Between catching up on chores and other obligations we just never seem to have enough time for the projects we want to tackle.  So I took a personal day on Tuesday and roped my Dad into coming down to visit me to help out with mulch day.  

We spent longer than I thought we would.  But that's because we removed some plants, planted a few new ones and the big project was changing the size of some of the mulch beds and cleaning up the edging lines.  Thankfully I had help and was able to accomplish all of it in a day!

I am always sore the day after but I always love the way fresh mulch brightens up the yard!

This bed used to end at the edge of the rock but we deepened it by a good 6 inches to give the bushes more room to grow out and to make it easier to mow around.  There was also a Golden Mop Cypress that I replaced with a Peach Flambe Coral Bells.  The Mop was too large for the spot and needed constant pruning so it would not block the hydrangea.  I like the Coral Bell much better, it provides nice color, stays low and once it grows in a bit will fill the space nicely.

 We pulled another Golden Mop Cypress out on this side and replaced it with the same type of Coral Bells.

 All of these beds were widened and evened up.

 I made room for a miniature rose plant that we were given this spring when Andy's Grandma passed.

And of course the veggie garden got a thin layer just to freshen everything up.

Garden Progress

Life has been busy.  I have made time for gardening in between responsibilities but there has not been time for blogging.  A lot has happened since the last post and here is a quick recap.

 The final beds in the garden were amended after I cleared all the weeds out.

 A second succession of peas were planted.  Swiss chard, parsnips, cosmos, zinnias, dill and cilantro seed were all planted.  I'm a little late on some of these things but better late than never.

 An unimpressive 4 of 16 asparagus plants came up.  They are about the height of a pencil but incredibly skinnier.  It's about time I realize I do not have a good site for asparagus.  I will try them again when we eventually move.

 It's been fun watching volunteer seedlings pop up from plants that went to seed last year, like this little dill.

This is why I need to get an indoor light system going.  My windowsill is bulging with seedlings started inside and they are growing leggy from trying to reach towards the sky.  Most of these are in the process of being hardened off outside right now.  The seedlings consist of basil, Fantasia and Music Box sunflowers, dianthus, and snapdragons.

This past weekend a bunch of work was done and I will post about it soon.  We also have a big week ahead.  I plan on changing some plants in our landscaping, mulching, finishing plantings for the summer garden and our new bees are coming.  We ordered Carniolan bees from California this year instead of the Italian bees from Georgia we have gotten the past two years.

Update

I've been taking pictures since my last post but never getting around to posting them.  So here are a few things that have happened since the last post.

The trees have blossomed and I covered the two beds underneath until the tree looses its blossoms.  We asked our neighbor if we could remove the tree since the tree grows over our property because of it's placement next to their house.  They gave us permission but want to make sure the roots will all be removed because they are going to then plant another tree to help shade the house.  We decided it wasn't worth the work if they are just going to replant a second problem for us.  Since we don't plan to stay here long term we will just deal with it until we move.

I have seen a few cabbage moths around since it has warmed up so I made sure to cover the kale right away.  The right side of the tunnel has lots of extra fabric so that once the peas are pulled if I want to extend the kale or other brassicas I can easily cover them too.

 If only the things I planted as quickly as this Canadian Thistle that sprouted in the last week.  I have to get on top of them otherwise I will be growing weeds and not veggies.

Seedlings

It's always exciting when the first few seedlings start to pop up.  I was starting to worry that all my seeds were duds but it was probably the weather because the recent warm up got things going.

 Radishes

 Lettuces

 Kale

Peas

Cleaning Out the Hive

Since our hive is empty it is time to work on cleaning it out.  I spent a few hours this past weekend cutting out the dark comb and scraping off propolis.  The dark comb like below needs to be changed out to keep the hive healthy.  

A few of the frames still look light enough to keep in the hive and will help give the new package a head start not having to building out comb in the entire hive.

Scraping the propolis off will help me get into the hive easier until the new bees propolis the hive again since the bees use propolis to glue the hive together.

Before scraping

 After scraping

I only got through 2 of the 3 boxes because it took over 2 hours and my hands were starting to hurt.  I will get to the third box hopefully next weekend.

Stove Top Popcorn

Lately my new thing has been making stove top popcorn.  I've never made stove top popcorn before and had no desire to.  That was until our nephew, a boy scout, was selling popcorn this fall.  Of course being a good aunt and uncle we had to buy some.  That was until I saw the order form and prices.  A box of microwave popcorn was $20 and the tins of the caramel covered stuff was around $30.  Being that we don't really ever eat popcorn, $20 for a box of 4-5 fake butter drowned microwave bags seemed outlandish.  So we bought the bag of popcorn kernels for $10.

When we got the popcorn it went into the pantry and has sat there since I had no idea what to do with a bag of kernels.  Growing up we had an air popper and I loved putting the butter in the top cup and watching it melt from the heat of the popping.  Then came microwave popcorn and the air popper I am sure got tossed along the way.  I wasn't about to buy a piece of equipment for one bag of popcorn kernels.  So last night after months of the bag staring at me every time I opened our pantry I decided to break down and learn how  to make popcorn on the stove top.  It turns out it's actually not difficult and dare I say better than the microwave stuff.  In the past 24 hours I have made two batches and am tempted to make more.

Peonies

The peonies are finally beginning to come in which always makes me smile!

Garlic

Seeing something green growing in the garden while I am waiting for everything else to come in helps to make the spring garden feel alive.

Trouble with Wildlife

This was the lettuce bed early Friday evening after planting.  We have had bad luck with lettuce the last few years.  This year I sowed the seeds a bit more thinly than in the past.  I didn't spend too much time because we have had such bad luck when I have taken much care I figured this year if I didn't worry about it too much maybe we will get a good lettuce harvest again.  But at the same time I tried to space the rows appropriately, spread the seeds and covered carefully with a thin layer of compost and manure.

When we returned on Sunday afternoon this was the bed trampled by some sort of animal.  It seems that it might have been a deer but it's hard to tell, the tracks weren't clear.  Of course it could have been an overzealous squirrel too.

It seems that at least once a year after planting seeds one of my beds gets trampled by the local wildlife.  I attempted to gently move the soil back how it was, but we will have to see how badly the planted seeds were displaced once they start coming in.

Harvest

These were the final few carrots left from last year's fall plantings that I dug up when I cleaned out the garden on Friday.  They aren't pretty but they are super sweet and delicious, I will definitely be planting Napoli carrots again this year.

Mistaken

With my rush to get garden work done I also wanted to get into the hive to check on the ladies and give them some food if need be.  When I got inside I found a dead hive.  We were mistaken that the hive might be alive, it must have been other nearby bees robbing our dead hive of it's honey that we mistook for life from within our hive.

It was really disappointing to find this.  I had hoped that the activity we saw outside the hive was the signs of success, but it wasn't.  I tested a few frames by sticking a toothpick into the remnants of the honeycomb cells.  Thankfully I did not find goopy, rope like strands when I pulled the toothpicks out, a sure sign of American Foul Brood.  Instead it seems that everything left behind is old packed pollen.

Empty hive bodies on the lawn is not a welcome sight to a beekeeper.  The honey supers still looked good but all of the brood chambers looked dark and dirty.  So I am going to strip out all the comb and foundation, scrap and scrub them clean and then pop in new foundation.

Below you can see a dark spot that does not look like a bee (or the dead wasp you also see that got into our hive) is a small hive beetle.  I saw at least five on the screened bottom board.  The small hive beetle is one of the newer pests that plague honey bees.  They could have definitely contributed to the death of our hive.  It might be time to rethink some of our hive management procedures.

Garden Work Has Begun!

Today the weather was warm enough that I was able to get outside and do some work.  Work that was LONG over due!  It was a rush to get things done since we're going to be gone over the Easter weekend and when we return it should be raining.  Here are the garden beds at the beginning of the day after a long winter without any work.

This is what I accomplished today:

*clean the straw and leaves off the beds

*pull plants that finally gave out over the winter and harvest any left over roots.

*prune back perennial herbs.

*amend beds that were going to receive seeds.

*turn over/loosen soil in the in-ground bed.

*Finally created draft garden plans so I could figure out where to plant some of my seeds.

*planted the following seeds: peas, kale, lettuces, carrots, and radishes.

Here are what the beds look like now:

Not perfect, but immensely better.

I still need to:

*amend remaining beds.

*plant spinach and chard

*finalize garden plans for summer plant placement.

Seeing the garlic growing without the straw and the pea tepee supports in place make it really feel like the gardening season has begun.