Bzzzzzzzzzzzz

We went to a workshop in Pittsboro, yesterday.  It was about Natural Beekeeping.

After we got home, it seemed we were inundated by articles about pesticides and how they are compromising the immune systems of bees.  Not killing them outright, just making it easier for other things to do the job.

First, this:  
Bee Aware from Greg Stanley on Vimeo.


Then, these:

Bee Off in The Economist

Pesticides blamed for bee decline in The Independent

Dying Honeybees: It was the insecticides all along from ReaderSupportedNews.org

More Damning Evidence Points to Pesticide as Cause of Mass Bee Deaths at CommonDreams.org

I don't think CCD is caused by one thing.  I think it is a sign of a systemic disease.

broccoli

Yes, broccoli in January. I meant to post this picture a week ago right after I took it. There are more plants maturing as well. As usual our garden does not follow any conventional schedule. We have not harvested it yet. Hope for a bigger head before we eat it.

We have started Bee School

We started bee school this past Tuesday and ordered 2 colonies on Wednesday. We have decided to go with Warré hives. We're taking a "natural beekeeping" workshop on Jan 28. We intend to do as little actual Keeping as possible. We just want to provide a good place for them to do their own thing, making sure that they are healthy, have water and enough food to get through the winter so that they are ready to be pollinating fools come Spring.

I've been wanting to keep bees for ages. It's an idea whose time has come :-) In my life, anyway.

I learned a thing at the beekeepers meeting on Thursday. Lavender is a deer deterrent. The speaker, the owner/operator of Sunshine Lavender Farm, put lavender around an orchard that had been decimated by deer the year before and they haven't been in it since.

She said that they don't like the strong taste and they don't like to get the smell on themselves because it gives them away to predators. 2 ways to discourage them. Yay!!

Lavender can get really large. They staggered them about 8 feet apart.

Cool things I have learned about bees:

The work they do in the hive depends on their age.  The adult bees forage, the young bees keep the hive clean and feed the babies.

The bees in the hive determine what the foragers bring back more of by what they unload the fastest.

Queens are stupider than their children.

Honey Plants of the Triangle Checklist

Trees:
Red Maple
Prunus family ( apples, pears, plums, peaches, cherry, etc.)
Crabapple
Redbud
Holly
Tulip poplar
Locust
Sourwood
Chaste tree

Shrubs:
Oregon grape
Flowering Quince
Trifoliate orange
Blueberry
Winter Honeysuckle
Abelia
Hydrangea
Butterfly bush
Caryopteris
Sumac

Perenniels:
Winter aconite
:amium family (henbit, red)
Dead nettle
Blackberry 
Raspberry
Joe Pye weed
Echinacea
Salvias
Asters
Goldenrod

Herbs:
Lavender
Rosemary
Chives, allium
Borage
Horehound
Oregano
Mints
Heal-All

Annuals:
Soybean
Cotton
Smartweed
Poppies
Cosmos
Cleome
Clovers
Buckwheat
Sunflowers

We have the purple ones.

Extended Season

The grand experiment with raised bed gardening continues. It's been a while since I posted. The summer veggies were a mixed bag. We had plentiful tomatoes, okra and cantaloupe, but the rest was slim. Put in Fall crop, arugula, three kinds of kale, spinach, red romaine, broccoli, cabbage and others. As usual for us they have been slow to mature, so I built cold frames for all the beds to see how long we can grow over the winter.

This is the lettuce and kale bed and it is doing well.

This is the broccoli bed and shows what it looks like when covered. It's hinged in the middle, which makes it easier to open and water and harvest. I had to brace the corners of the frames today. We had a bad windstorm Wednesday of last week and they had some damage. Still working on a system to anchor them better in higher winds.

Romaine and arugula in the salad tonight!

Also, we have an orchard.

In addition to the four raised beds and one in-the-ground bed that we have for vegetables, we have an orchard. Of course, ours isn't a collection of trees in straight rows, but it is an orchard nonetheless. All it takes to be an orchard is 5 fruit trees.

A couple of years ago, I was driving past Southern States and their sign said "Fruit trees in stock now.". It seemed like my car turned in of its own volition. Everything I got said it was self pollinating, but when I got home the plum had an additional tag that indicated that it needed a coconspirator. I was going to take it back to exchange it, but my son asked how 2 plum trees was a bad thing and since he was right, I just got another variety.

So, we have a Keiffer pear, A White Princess peach, a Santa Rosa plum, an Elephant Heart plum, an apricot, a sour cherry, a pomegranate bush and a Honeycrisp apple tree.

I got a crabapple to cross-pollinate the Honeycrisp, which I ordered in line, but they don't bloom at the same time, so I'm rethinking that. I'm going to give the bees a year or 2 before putting in another apple. Honeycrisp may not like our weather, but it's the only one we really care to eat. If I do add another apple, it'll be a pie apple tree.

We were given a money gift for a wedding present and we used it to buy a little pecan tree. I have no clue how long it will take before that produces.

We have tried planting a fig bush 3 times. The first 2 died. We have planted the most recent iteration in the flower bed by the house hoping that it will have adequate protection from the winter weather there to finally thrive.

This past weekend, I went to Southern States to get some hyacinth and daffodil bulbs and wandered past the fruit trees. Which were marked down 25%. And there was a damson plum, which happens to be Chuck's favorite jam.

If you were in the area and saw a red New Beetle going down the road with a tree sticking out of the sunroof, that was me.

Affectionate carrots

production is happening

We will have tomatoes if we have nothing else. The plant to the left, and yes it is a single plant, is the volunteer sweet 100 from last summer. It is one of our favorites. It has needed a cage and two stakes to hold it up. We have more of that variety in the bed below along with romas, which have been abundant, and some slicers that have been slow to mature, but are starting to produce in decent numbers now.

Thinking about starting a second crop. I have two different varieties of seeds that came in form the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange , along with some fall seeds for other crops. We discovered this seed source last summer at a festival in Charlottesville, Va.

We also have cantaloupe maturing, three melons so far.

Of all the lettuce and greens we planted, the red russian kale has been the best producer. It took it some time, but it is thriving even in this heat.

The purple okra has been spotty. This one has produced it's first pod which we picked last evening.

This is the bed where I planted cabbage, broccoli and brussel sprouts. They did nothing all spring so about three weeks ago I cut them all off. Some of them are coming back. Perhaps a late crop for early fall?

And finally some basil. The plants we put out in spring got caught in a late freeze and didn't make it. We planted seeds and now it is in it's full glory.

Strawberries

It's curious to me that strawberries are no longer "in season" in NC, but they are still going gangbusters in our beds.  There are buds, blossoms and ripening fruits all over the place.

rare sighting

I can't remember the last time I saw a praying mantis. This dude just showed up on my office window screen the other morning. Great natural pest control. Go forth and multiply!