First Snow's Effects

I spent the week helping James drive from Utah to Quantico, home being the penultimate stop. It snowed yesterday, which has left a very nice couple of inches that look good on the lawns and trees, leaving the roads and driveways clear.

I was anxious to wake up this morning and see how my new cold frames had done. This was not a big snow, so the maximum stress on the engineering wasn't going to be tested. Still, I was anxious to see.

Two of five cold frames looked very good. There was a little contraction on the oldest cover because the weight of the snow pulled the ends up. This left a small gap at either end where the plastic separated from the wood of the raised bed. I'm not sure what damage, if any, this might have done by letting colder air inside the bed. I certainly like the cut of the latest cover best. It seemed to keep things sealed nicely all around.

The other three beds did not do so well. Evidently, while we were traveling, there were strong winds and a tornado watch. I had strapped each of these three covers down on the ends, but didn't bother to secure the sides, even though I did have bungie cords there. I guess I assumed too much.


I believe the onions and garlic will do just fine. The photo below is of the onions (yellow of Parma in this case). In fact, the snow may have killed off some weeds, although I don't know that just yet.



The garlic will also probably do just fine. I will re-attach the cover shortly and assume that the snow will just melt and keep the garlic and onions watered.

I am most concerned with the cauliflower and Brussel sprouts. My experience in the past is that brassicas don't like to freeze. The broccoli were covered, so I am hopeful about them. But these others took it on the chin. I will re-attach this cover, too and will check them. If they are dead, I will know shortly. Perhaps, now that the damage is done, I will actually strap down the sides. But, this may be a catastrophe from which they won't recover and it will just be a loss.

New Cold Frame

Now that the spinach is planted and colder weather is on the way, I needed a new cold frame. I bought the conduit today with extra straps. Jenna helped me. She bent the conduit into hoops. (My job was holding the completed sections so that they would be more or less straight when she finished.) We did as good a job and Doug Shaw and I did the other day.

Installation when fairly quick. Jenna wanted to drill the straps in, but she didn't want to sit down because the ground was wet and she had already seen what it did to my seat, so she was a little challenged not being able to deliver all the pressure the drill needed. But she did a lot of the work and I just had to finish a few things off.


I spent a couple of hours this afternoon creating the plastic sheet. The sheets I made before are actually just a bit too short. We measured the length needed. Fortunately, I had just enough 6 mil. plastic left. I used to put in 3 grommets on each end and 2 on each side. I have figured out that the side grommets were not very useful. So I skipped them this time. I used to also hem up the sides of the sheets. I abandoned that this time. The sheet now hangs down past the bottom of the raised bed (past where the raised bed meets the ground).

It is supposed to get down to the high 20s F tonight. I'm hoping the ground will stay warm enough for the spinach to sprout. Time will tell.

Growth

This morning was dedicated to starting to compost leaves. The trees shed a lot in the last few days. I don't quite have the energy to do a lot at a time. So my strategy is to pile up a tarp, take it to the compost piles and shred it. That way I get one tarp done at a time, but I get it all done. It means starting up the shredder/chipper multiple times, but I'm fine with that now that I have the secret of the starting fluid down.

It is supposed to rain tomorrow. Indeed, it rained a little today. So I uncovered the cold frames. I was also curious about how things were growing and how many weeds had sprouted. The garlic and onions are doing well, but there are a lot of weeds in those beds. The cauliflower and brussel sprouts are doing reasonably well, but there are no heads yet.


The brocolli has some very small heads starting to form. The turnips are starting to show small roots. The beets are growing, but are not large.

Spinach

I planted my spinach seeds today. I had soaked them for three days in the house, laid in a paper towel. None had sprouted yet.

My immediate concern is that the potting soil in the new beds was very dry. I'm not sure how well it will hold water until it decomposes a bit. The water barrels are still nearly empty so I used the hose.

My next task is to get them covered with cold frames. It has been chilly but hasn't been below freezing the past few days.

Empty Water Barrels

I went out this morning, thinking that I would start the process of getting the new beds ready to plant spinach seeds. I've counted 192 seeds (4 x 4 x 12) and got them soaking. I've tested the new soil for pH (6.5 in all beds). So I thought I would water them down.

I went to get the hose and heard a slight sucking sound as I picked it up. The cock that closes off the hose was just slightly turned to one side. I opened it up all the way and got absolutely no water. So I took off the screen on the barrel I typically use to test the depth in the barrels. I couldn't see any water or reach it when I stuck my arm through the hole. I went inside a retrieved my measuring stick. I think there is maybe 3 inches in the bottom, below the faucet inset in each barrel.

So, I either the valve on the hose was just open enough to allow the water to slowly drain, or I have a broken hose. We have had cold weather, but I am hoping it wasn't the latter. I've closed the valve completely, but I have to wait for rain to figure this out.

Dirt at Last

It seems that it has been a long time coming. Finally, I was able to get soil for the three 4' x 12' raised beds that I started adding to the garden last spring. I actually got the dirt for my birthday; a very good present that I am happy with. Maybe the best present in a long while!

Jason helped me wheelbarrow the dirt in yesterday. He has become strong and was able to make the job go quickly.

The dirt wasn't the same as it has been in the past. Two and a half years ago, when I put the last top soil in the beds, the soil had been manufactured by a retired police officer who had access to cotton dust from the local cotton mills. (This according to the woman at Oak Ridge Shrubbery.) Since then, however, the mills have gone overseas and the cotton dust with it. I never knew that that was what the soil was composed of until I went to order the new soil. The new stuff is more of a traditional planting mix composed of a lot of compost and cow manure. I'm not opposed to it, I had just hoped for more of the same. Herodotus was right again. Things will always change.


One interesting fact that I had to deal with this time around was the volume that was delivered to the yard. The bed are roughly 4' x 12' x 1', or 48 cubic feet each or a total of 144 cubic feet, more or less. I ordered four yards of soil. In past orders, I certainly needed to supplement the soil delivered with compost to get the volume in the beds sufficient. Four yards should be roughly 108 cubic feet. So, what I don't quite understand is how I had more soil delivered than would fit in the three beds. I've never filled the beds completely to the top before. This time we filled the beds to the top and still had a little left over. The soil is much lighter than the cotton dust soil, so maybe it just expanded a bit and will eventually settle. I'm not sure.


I'm mostly just glad to get this done.

Various Preparations

I've completed several tasks over the past several days. Lumping into a preparation category makes sense to me.

After cleaning up the garden, I had a faily large pile of cleared material -- grass from between the beds that was fully dead and tomato vines. There was also a small accumulation of kitchen compost. My experience is that it all just does better if I shred it first before trying to start it off truly composting. I bought a used chipper shredder, a Murray (the company has since been sold to someone who ended the line). For the past several seasons (I don't remember when I bought it), I would struggle to get the engine started. If a small engine isn't used regularly, it is just plain hard to start. But I've learned and verified that a little spot of some starting fluid makes it so much easier. I take off the air filter and spray it right into the carburetor it starts right up. I'm happy to do that. I was able to end up with a little less than half a yard of compost. It will grow smaller, but the raw materials are out of the way. My goal this year is to process leaves right away. Having the first batch of composting materials processed and having a method for starting the machine is a good start.

My second task has been to weed the onions and garlic. The weeds are small, but I realized that if I let them grow unchallenged, they would take over. It is a bit laborious to pull them; they are small and my fingers get very dirty. I tried the disturb them with a chop stick method. It didn't work. The roots of the weeds seemed to adapt and reattach to the soil. Pulling and casting them out of the bed is the only thing that works. (Sort of like getting rid of other problems in life if you want to use the analogy.)

It has finally become cold. Last night was the first frost we had. It was 27F when I woke up and had been down to 26F. I want to get the brassicas covered. I also covered the onions and garlic after I took this photo. I've left the strawberries uncovered for now. I want grasses to die so I can clean out the beds.



The last task was to finish the last new raised bed box. I was frustrated with the last spike in the last corner. Things weren't together like I wanted them. I finally figured out how to bend one of the side boards so that I could align it. I had to drill a new hole through the bottom board. I am now ready for top soil that I hope will come in a couple of weeks.

Feral Bees

The fellow who mows our lawn, Red, tald us he knew of several places in Rockingham County where there were feral bees. I finally got around to going and seeing what he was talking about.



The first place he guided me two was an old log cabin on land he leases for hunting. The cabin is pretty much intact, but the mud has come out from between the timbers, which is where the bees leave and enter. The challenge with getting bees out of this cabin is that they have nested in the ceiling. The cabin is old and can't be occupied, but the owners reportedly would want things restored to its current state. That would mean taking down all the tongue and groove slats that make up the ceiling to find the queen and take down comb. I imagine it will be quite a job. I'm debating if this one will be worth it.

The second old cabin is about to fall down. At least the area where the bees have housed themselves. This colony would be easier to extract. The boards are vertical and the entrance is pretty clearly marked. There would be no attempt to have to restore anything. There would be brush to take out of the way, but that wouldn't be all that bad to get rid of.

If you look closely at the photo, you can see where the bees have applied a long line of propelis up and down one crack. The entrance is in there somewhere.

Come spring, we will take a second look at both hives. In the meantime, I have to figure out where to put them if I get them. The shadows are already covering the spot east of the greenhouse. I want a spot that will get sun early in the season. I will have to watch the area and see how if fares in February and March.

Virgin Queen

I am not referring to Elizabeth.

Doug Shaw and I gave a beekeeping workshop to anyone at church who wanted to come. One family (another Doug) came. We had stacked examples of everything, equipment and tools, in the outdoor place we call "the grove." We did our brief explanations, Doug doing most of the explaining. Then, because we had so few there, we went to the apiary at Clarence's house, which is right next to the church. The picture is of Doug (left) and Doug (right) opening up Doug's hive. Doug's only goal was to get his feeders out, which was successful. The other Doug also got to wear a bee suit and take a good look and experience the art of smoking the hive. All was well as far as we could tell.

However, all was not well in my hive -- again. My hive, which had been strong earlier, was now week. Honey had disappeared; bees had disappeared. Most distressing, there was absolutely no brood. The new queen had clearly been released; her cage was empty. However, there was just no brood whatsoever. Not a single capped cell, not a single pupa or larva or egg. I think when we requeened, we got a virgin. I didn't see her, but the bees didn't act as if they were queenless. So, I presume she is there.

Just in case, I talked Doug into swapping a frame from his hive. We picked out a frame that had very young brood on it. If mine need a queen, they should be able to create an emergency queen. If not, I just hope they can survive until spring with what they have. I fed them with sugar water I had stored at Clarence's place earlier.

Weeding

I spent 10 minutes in the evening yesterday using a chop stick to clean out weeds that had sprouted between the Long Red Florence onions and garlic (all 32 of which have now sprouted!). I had to be judicious because there are seeds that have not yet sprouted. But where it was clear to do so, I would wiggle the chop stick between the plants and uproot the weed seedlings. I find the chop stick is actually a decent tool for doing this.

I spent the morning cleaning out the garden area. The walkways had become choked with dead grasses and marigold vines. My goals are to finally finish the last of the three raised beds and to clean out the strawberry beds that have become overrun with things other than strawberries.

I used my bow rake to pretty good advantage and got a bit of a workout to boot. The paths are at least now walkable. Every year, in fact, practically every month, I make a deeply considered commitment to fight grass and weeds. Then, they sneak up on me. Despite the fact that Monsanto is known to just about everyone as the evil empire, I understand why Round-up is popular.

Even though marigold vines are pernicious, when you pull them out, they come. At least today they came without also pulling out the strawberries. The other benefit is that other weeds did not seem to get a start there. Still, I should be more diligent in the future and just keep them down from the start.

Garlic and Onions 2

This is just a progress update. I had thought I had a 90% germination rate for the onion seed I planted. I have been going through both beds this week, replanting seeds in spots where I saw no evidence of the original seed sprouting. I think my original germination rate was less than that; probably 75% to 80%. On the other hand, the weed germination rate must be much higher than that. I am trying to eliminate the weeds as I go along, but they are very small. I can't grab them with my fingers because they are so small, so I have been using the chop stick to disturb the soil. I think I will have a lot of weeding to do in the next weeks.

In addition to the 2 garlic plants from the fridge, 27 of the Seed Savers Exchange garlic have now sprouted. That is of 30 that were planted. They are coming up slowly. I am hoping to get 100% germination. I will add a clove or two from the fridge if I don't get the remainder to sprout in a week.

Hoops

After the disaster that befell my cold frames last winter when it snowed, I vowed to find a solution.

I found it in a conduit bender that I ordered during the summer. Today was the day to install the new frames; hoops of aluminum that will eventually be covered with the 6 mil plastic I created for the cold frames last winter. It was a beautiful day to be outside; an added bonus.

The conduit bender was designed to be easy to use and, with just a bit of practice, Doug Shaw and I developed a system for getting the conduit nicely shaped. It turned out that it really was a two-person job. When we tried it alone, all the frames had a skew to them.

From the time we left to buy the conduit and attaching hardware to the time we were finished with four beds (20 pipes, 5 per bed), it took less than three hours. That is considerably quicker than it took when I made the frames out of plywood. And, based on my experience grabbing onto the frame to help me get up off my knees, these frames will be sturdy and will be able to withstand wind and snow.

In our first attempt at installation we had the frames arc 34 inches above the top board of the bed. When we put the plastic on, the bed wasn't covered completely. So we lowered the arc of the frame over the next bed to 29 inches. This time the plastic basically fit, with not much extra on either end or on the sides. Thinking about it, given the diameter of the hoop at 4' 3.5", that still makes the frame slightly liptokurtic (a bit elongated on the top). If it were perfectly round, the hoop should be only 25.75" above the bed. But that's OK because I want as much room for the plants to grow as possible.


We covered four frames. The two with onions and garlic and the two with brassicas. The plastic will go on when the temperature drops and we get a frost or freeze warning.

Brassican Geometry

I got the other tomato bed cleaned out so I could plant Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I got the Brussels sprouts at the Kernersville Feed & Seed. I would have purchased cauliflower there, but they don't sell them. I couldn't find them at Lowes or the farmers market either. But a couple of friends had told me that there was a place in Walkertown, Webster Brothers, that would carry them. I had never been to the Brothers' place and had only vague directions. However, it just happened last Friday that I had an eye appointment in Walkertown, so I kept my eyes peeled. Just as I turned into the optometrist's, I saw them a bit further down the road. Webster Brothers is a unique place. I hope they stay in business a long time. They did have cauliflower.

I planted this morning. My concern was that, like last year, I was going to somewhat crowd the bed. I had 9 Brussels sprouts and 8 cauliflower. Last year I planted 2 packs of 9 in a bed. It was a little crowded but things grew pretty well. I needed a geometric design for the planting to work. I actually used the Pythagorean theorem to figure out spacing. (All the plants was 18" between them.) I ended up with the 8 cauliflower on the outside ends and all the other places taken by Brussels sprouts.

This bed was the bed that had a lot of blossom rot among the tomatoes this year. I figured I would get a head start on increasing calcium and I put about 30-35 lbs. of dolomitic limestone in with the fertilizer as I prepared the bed. (I plan on planting tomatoes in this bed again in the spring.) I put bt on all the leaves of plants in this bed and in the broccoli bed.

Planting Broccoli

I transplanted broccoli seedlings I had bought at the Feed & Seed. I had gone to the Farmer's Market, but they had none. I guess it doesn't really matter. (I forgot that I had my own seed until it was too late to start them on my own.


Last year, I put 18 plants into my 4' x 12' bed. They produced but they were crowded. This year, I put in 9 plants, spacing them 2' apart down the rows with the rows 18" apart. I don't feel the need to crowd. That left three 2' x 2' squares. I planted beet, turnip, and carrot in these squares.

I added about 15 lbs. of dolomitic limestone and some 10-10-10 fertilizer to this bed. I used a different kind of cutworm protecting collar around the plants this time. I used some index tabs left over from a printing job gone bad at the office. They actually seem a little weak, and I'm rethinking them.

Signs of Lilly Life

The lilly family is showing signs of life. The two garlic cloves planted from the fridge are up and growing. I wish I could say the same for the cloves from the Seed Savers Exchange. However, to be fair, they note on the documentation they send that it may take four weeks before anything happens. I'm not going anywhere and nothing else is competing for their space right now. If worse comes to worse, I have more cloves in the fridge.


What is even better from my perspective is the evidence of life among the Long Red Florence onions. The seeds have sprouted. I haven't counted the rate of germination, but I estimate it above 90%. The critters have evidently had little impact, with some of the seed sprouting in the midst of the critters burrow.

I plan to follow through in the next few days and plant additional seed in the blank spaces. Perhaps I should actually do a count of seeds that didn't sprout; then I would know.

The challenge I will have now will be weeds. The bed with the garlic and Long Red Florence seems to have a lot of weeds sprouting. Weeding is easy when the plants are small, but does require diligence; the place where most of us fall down. I think a daily morning ritual is called for.

I have to comment about the weather. We had a two-day storm that must have dumped at least 6 inches of rain. I'm sure that will help with all sorts of things, including the sprouting of seeds. Before the storm, I watered daily, but it isn't the same. A good drenching rain soaks the bed all the way through.

Critters 2

I am now paying close attention to the bed in which I planted the garlic and Florence onion seed. Every morning, there is evidence of small critters burrowing just beneath the surface. I was careful to look for the animal's descending holes. There are more there than I originally thought. I'm not sure how many critters there might be, but I presume, given the distribution of evidence throughout the bed, that there must be several.

The photo below shows the size of the holes that go down into the bed. (That's a quarter next to the hole.) They are not large. I don't know what the animals might be living off of. I have had two garlic sprout. (The ones from the fridge.) That is all and those have been left alone.


If the onions will sprout and grow, I won't have a problem. My suspicion is that the critters are going to disrupt the bed enough, even if they don't consume the seeds, that sprouting will become a challenge. I planted a second bed with the Yellow of Parma seed. There has been no evidence of critters in that bed, so I may have something to compare productivity with.

I am getting myself prepared for a war. Right now I wish I had a pet black snake or something.

Critters

Every morning as I look at the bed in which I planted the garlic cloves and onion seeds last week, I see a strange pattern on the surface of the bed. I am guessing, but I think there are small animals that make foraging runs just under the surface of the bed, pushing the soil up slightly. As I water, I usually find a hole about half an inch in diameter on one end the goes back down underground.

I'm not sure my photography captures this well enough to see, but I think you can see one of the tracks I observed this morning. It goes from left to right from the top of the photo and then makes an abrupt turn that curves back to the left.

I thought initially that this might be evidence of a vole. We've seen voles in the yard before, mostly because of what the cats have dragged in. But voles are generally much larger. I can't imagine a cut worm that large. Whatever it is, I hope it is finding no food and decides to leave. I hope it isn't finding a meal on the garlic or clover.

Carts

Six or seven years ago, I bought an Ames Easy Roller cart to move mulch and dirt with. About 3 years ago, it developed a crack in the front face. The crack was caused by strain put on that side of the cart when I lifted the cart up over the front of the compost bins. Then, two winters ago, when the cart was left outside in the winter, water froze in the bottom of the cart after rain or snow and it cracked the bottom of the cart. Since then, the front of the cart has fractured even more. It still holds together to a degree, but it has become hard to use. I looked a while back at Lowes for a replacement, because it has been very serviceable otherwise, but when I looked last, I didn't see any Easy Rollers for sale.


I went to get some lime and fertilizer at Lowes this morning. I thought I would look in the wheelbarrow aisle to see what they had. Easy Rollers were there, but so was this little cart called an Easy Go.


It was a bit less expensive that the Easy Roller ($23 vs $34), but held nearly as much (2.5 versus 3.0 cubic feet). The handle is also a better height; I don't have to lean over to grab the handle, which wasn't the case with the Easy Roller. I thought about it and decided that, if I really need a new Easy Roller, I now know where to find one, but it would be just as good to try out the cheaper Easy Go.

Here's my one day review. The wheels are a bit small and so there is a balance problem. You have to pull squarely or the cart tends to tip. Something that can be mastered. Pulling it from the garden to the garage with a heavy load wasn't effortless. Filling it with compost was OK, but it tips over without a load in it, so it has to be set against something when you start. On the other hand, emptying it was very easy. So, I still may get another Easy Roller, but I am happy to work with the Easy Go for now.

Garlic and Onions

I started planting again. I started yesterday and it will extend for a couple of days yet. I bought some Chet's Italian Red garlic from Seed Savers Exchange. The variety is described as a "highly productive and adaptable strain. Heirloom variety from Chet Stevenson of Tonasket, Washington, found growing wild in an abandoned garden along the roadside. A good garlic for eating raw, because the flavor is not too strong." I guess I picked it to plant because it was not described as being overly spicy. I had my little pal Jacob over to watch the process, although I think his dad (Jonathan) got more out of it than he did. Jacob was into looking at the spider that has found an ideal spot in the doorway of the greenhouse and chancing the little dog.


From the two heads, I got 30 plantable cloves. I added to cloves of whatever it is we have in the fridge to make it to 32 (4 rows of 8). Seed Savers sent out explicit planting instructions to plant between September 15 and November.

I figure what must be good for garlic is good for onions.

I have started planting onion seed from my other order from Seed Savers. I ordered two varieties. I am working on the Long Red Florence seed now. Last year, I thought I would grow sets and then replant. So I planted closely. I was going to space the sets out in the spring. That didn't work for me. The Florence came up just fine, but I couldn't figure out how or when to transplant. So this year, I am just planting 9 seeds to the square foot. As you can see in the photo, I used my templates and a chop stick to make the holes for the seeds. I usually just use my finger, but I thought the chopstick would let me keep my finger clean, which would help me pick up the individual seeds. I turned out that the soil was so dry that I swirled the chop stick in the hole to make an indentation deep enough to plant the seed properly.

I have taken the rest of the bed that the 32 garlic are in (spaced 4 to the square foot) with the Florence. I calculate having planted 348 Florence if they all come up. If they don't, I have sufficient to plant again. The weather forecast for the next 10 days has no rain whatsoever. Fortunately, I have full water barrels to draw from. I have plans for the Yellow of Parma for a separate bed, but I need to clean it out first.

Tomato Harvest

The tomato harvest turned out to be a bit disappointing this year. Given all the plants, I expected that we would have between 30 and 40 quarts by the end of the season. It just didn't happen. We ended up with 15 quarts and a pint. (Kathy did all the hard work of actually doing the canning.)


Here's what I think I learned from this season. First, variety matters. The best producers, accounting for about half of what we stored, were Rutgers tomatoes. I only planted 6 of these plants, but they produced very well. The Marglobe split, were of a very uneven size (some more like cherry tomatoes). I only harvested a few Brandywines because the birds and worms got to them. Next season, I will try a mixture that will include Rutgers and maybe a hybrid just for the table.

Second, I've got to learn to control blossom rot. Dolomitic lime is cheap. I will double whatever I put into the beds this next year. The newest bed where the Rutgers were planted never experienced blossom rot at all.

Third, I've got to figure a better system for staking. The storm we had a while back had strong northerly winds that toppled all of the cages. I am still thinking about how to solve this.

Fourth, I won't plant as close next year as I did this year. I had about 15" between plants. I think 2' will be better. Essentially, as I finally get more beds, I will spread the 36 plants from this year into 3 beds instead of 2.

Requeening a Strong Hive

Doug Shaw got two queens from the Wally-Wayne colony. This is a strain of queens that survived the onslaught of mite infestations a decade ago and has some very desirable qualities. He convinced me that the queen in the hive at Clarence's has probably seen her better days -- she's been there a year and a half. So we went requeening yesterday after work.

There were a couple of challenges. First, we couldn't find the old queen. We searched through every brood frame and couldn't see her. Then we dumped every brood frame's bees onto the ground and didn't see any clusters. The super above the brood frame was full of honey (good for the winter) and so we left those frames alone. We installed the queen in her cage anyway.

Here are my after the fact thoughts. First, either one queen will kill the other and the hive will have a new queen or an old queen. The new queen is marked; the old queen isn't. If the new queen survives, I'm not sure how she will get inseminated. It's a bit late in the year for drones to be floating around. We saw very few in the hives we visited. I just hope some mating ritual can take place.

Other than that, the hive looked strong. There were a lot of hive beetles. There is sufficient honey for them to make it through the winter. We will check in a week or so and find out.

Pears

The pear trees are only two years old (at least planted in my yard), but they produced a decent crop of pears. I don't know what the off color spots are caused by. I guess some research is needed.


I harvested the pears several weeks ago to try to avoid damage by birds and bugs. I probably picked 20-30 (I didn't count and I didn't weigh them). They half filled a paper grocery bag. I let them sit to ripen. We waited a bit too long. By the time we got to them, half had spoiled. Kathy canned the good ones, getting about two quarts. Still very tasty.

Speed Bump

I haven't posted for awhile. What's my excuse? A combination of things. I hesitate to write when all I have to write about is bad news.

Bad luck with the beehives in my yard is one frustration. Both hive were attacked by wax moths. I need to do a postmortem to be fair. Both colonies were weak. When they split earlier and when one didn't have a queen, I should have just recombined them. But, having not done that, they both limped along. At the least, I should have put an entrance reducer on to give them a fighting chance. But, in the end, they both died. Fortunately, the hive in Clarence's yard was strong. We harvested a gallon and a half of honey from it; enough for the family for the rest of the year, but not enough to give much away. (Clarence got a quart, of course.)

The failure of the tomatoes has been another issue. Lately, they have been doing much better. I think the weather has helped; enough rain and cooler temperatures. They are still ripening slowly. We have made some dried tomato but have not canned anything yet.

The zucchini and yellow squash were another disaster. The squash bugs just massacred the plants. We got 6 or 7 fruits and I think that will be it. Pretty disastrous!

The other part of the speed bump has been work (what I do for a living). I am grateful to be fully self-employed. We put out two new grant proposals last week and the prep time kept me exhausted into the evening hours. There were other tasks at work as well. We leased a new printer that requires some attention to learn how to use and to get our materials ready for production.

Finally, I spent a little time with the boy scouts and family sailing. Honestly, if you had to choose between sailing and writing about the disaster occurring in your garden, which would you pick?

I Hate July

I hate July for gardening.

I've lost one of the yellow squash plants already. I presume to squash bugs. When the squash plants go, they just die quickly. I have 4 zucchini and 3 yellow squash left to go. No harvest from any of them yet.

About 3/4 of the tomatoes (at least) have blossom end rot. Next year, I will plant from other seed. I will also plant further apart. (The plants seem healthy with plenty of stocks.) I may even try staking them like my elders do. Of course, this calls for a lot more lime, but I'm not so sure that water or lack of it doesn't also play a role. I haven't harvested from the newest plants yet, so there may yet be hope.

The bean are up but a goodly proportion have had their first real leaves nibbled away. The crop was just planted to keep the ground occupied, so it isn't a great loss. I expect to harvest all we can use eventually, even if it isn't much.

I harvested grapes. I really don't like the variety (Mars) I planted. I was late and didn't get everything I should have, but I'm not sure what we will do with them anyway.

I just feel that failure is all around me out there.

July Is Slow

We finally got rain yesterday. A lot of rain; about 2 inches. It knocked over some tomato plants, but other than that, everything just seemed to really thrive. It seemed that the zucchini and yellow squash added two or three leaves per plant over night. July is slow, but the zucchini and squash are taking off. I noticed today that I had squash bugs on every plant. They aren't very fast or clever, so they are easy to catch and destroy. But every time I looked, I saw 2 or 3 more, mostly in the mating position. I know the odds of outwitting them totally is low, and I don't plan any extravagant pest control applications, but I am dedicated to killing them whenever I can. There are also some little yellow and black striped beetles I haven't identified yet. They seem plentiful.


The cucumbers really liked the rain. I picked a bunch today. There has been a bumper crop all season.

I decided to plant some green beans today as well. It may be a little late in the season, but I have an empty bed. I had a mixture of seeds, so I dumped them out on the table, counted 196 out (8 rows 12 deep) and put them in the open bed. We are expecting more rain later. It seems like a good time to get them in the ground.

Hot July

Temperatures in North Carolina have been very hot of late, into the high 90's. I've used a lot of water from the water barrels, at least 10 gallons per day. The plants in the raised beds are doing ok. Amazingly, the grapes have sustained themselves and are gradually ripening. They don't get any extra water. I planted them where I did because I thought there must be some underground water source, an underground spring of sorts.

My disappointment with the grapes is not that they have actually produced fruit, but that the vines have been slow to grow. I suspect now that I should have cut off the fruit and forced the vines to grow, but I didn't do that and I'm not actually convinced that it would have had that much effect.

The zucchini and yellow squash I planted is now up and growing. I have seen nothing of the cilantro or cucumber seeds I planted at the same time. It's entirely possible that I have no clue about what I am doing with seeds, especially seeds I have saved myself.

Pickles Etc.

It didn't take long for Kathy to turn cucumbers into dill pickles.

I spent the morning planting seeds for salad cucumber, cilantro (saved from last year's harvest, so we'll see how they do), zucchini, and yellow squash. I added two carloads (about an eighth of a yard) of composted manure to the bed. This is the bed from which the Russets were harvested. It needed a bit of compost, probably more than I gave it.

I also planted Basil with the new bed of tomatoes. I bought some tomato cages so that now all of the new tomatoes has a cage. They were $4 each and it reminded me that growing our own is not necessarily the least expensive. My older friends who are much better at this than I am use wooden stakes. I don't know if they use new stakes every year or how much time they spend tying the stalks up. I've just opted for the wire cages. And I reminded my self that the purpose of this gardening venture does have benefits, just not economic ones. We get fresh food. We are better prepared for hard times should they come to our family. We are learning skills that, being the product of an urban youth, we weren't blessed with naturally. And, the last thing of note is that the other things we spend our money on are more expensive and less sufficing.

Cucumbers

I planted three cucumbers from seed. I didn't know what variety they were, only that Doug Shaw provided some extra seeds. I planted them in the strawberry bed because I had a bit of space and didn't know how they would spread. I should have put them next to a trellis. They have started producing. I picked a bunch today, more than in prior days. I see plenty of small cucumbers on the vine, so this may be a regular harvest for a while. We've got to figure out what to do with them. They are pretty clearly right for pickling although we have also been eating them with a mixture of rice vinegar and a little sugar.

Onions Step 3

Step 3 of processing onions is cutting off the bad stuff, dicing, and freezing. The onions for the most part are either small, which means that it takes a lot of time to get a little bit done, or they have heat spots where they got too warm when I dried the roots and stalks and started to cook in the field. Kathy and I worked through about 20% so far. At least we will have onions to cook with. We are storing them either in Food Saver bags or Ziploc bags.

I ordered new onion seed from the Seed Savers Exchange. More of the long red Florence and Yellow Parma. Last year I thought I would start the seed closely spaced and then transplant. It didn't work. I never transplanted because the pattern was too random. This year I think I will just plant them like I want them to grow and make sure the seeds sprout.

Final Tomato Transplant

Now that the onions are out of the bed, I finally have room to plant the rest of the tomatoes. I organized them the same way the first bed were organized. There are 8 Rutgers, 8 Brandywines, and 2 Marglobe in this bed, bringing my total to 36. (The first bed is all Marglobe.)

The soil in the bed is much more friable than the soil in the first bed. I will need to add more compost at the end of the season to the first bed to loosen things up a little. I figured this out because I needed to replace one of the original Marglobes with a seedling after having planted the second bed and found the soil rather heavy.

Onions Step 2

Last year, I left the onions in the ground too long and then left them out too long in the sun. I may have committed the last error again this year, but not the same extent. The constraint was that I picked on Friday and couldn't get back to them until Monday and Sunday and Monday were very hot days. In the end, you get what you get and I think I will have plenty of onions to process.

My next step (just to keep it for the record) is to bring the onions into the house, chop off the stalks, clean them up a bit, and then stick them in the refrigerator until I can get back to them for Step 3.

One of my unofficial readers, Pat P., suggested that next year, I might want to either plant onion plants (not sets) or plant seeds. I think I am likely to try seeds this fall if I can find some and let them grow over winter. The onions I am holding in this picture were planted that way. I got seeds from Seed Savers Exchange for the long red Florence variety of onion. These were the largest onions in the garden. The problem I had last year with the onion seeds I planted was very spotty germination, but they were planted with poor cover. I think I can do better this year.

Visiting Bees

Doug Shaw and I made the rounds to our hives today. He has 5 active hives; I have 3. My best guess is that the hive at Clarence Brown's never swarmed, so I will be left with 3 for the year. As long as they have sufficient strength, I am happy.

At this time of year, the nectar flow is diminishing, so a primary task was to inspect hives to see how much honey was going to be available for extraction. Of my hives, I have two that may have a modest amount available. The one at Clarence's has less honey than I thought it might have. I have two supers dedicated to honey storage. One will be harvested. (The honey wasn't capped yet.)

The blue hive in my yard also has a super that is partly full. This hive has a brood box that is totally full of honey. I had placed it above the brood box where the queen was released, hoping that they would build out brood comb for her to lay eggs. My hopes were in vain. She just moved up to the honey-bound box. Doug and I switched this arrangement around. The empty, yet to be built out deep is now above the honey-bound deep.

The yellow hive is doing well for what it is. The queen is active laying eggs. This hive has one super that has only been minimally drawn out, but the bees have stored honey along the outer edges of the brood frames.

Both of the hives in my yard need more workers, but they were not as destitute as I had feared, so there is some relief there. If they continue on, they will not need to be combined.

Other Potatoes

I harvested the other potato bed this morning before it got too hot. There were half as many potatoes by weight (about 20 pounds total) from this bed and many of the potatoes were quite small. I thought I had planted Yukon Gold, but it turns out I think I planted Russets. This is the bed where the Yukon Gold I had bought failed to sprout once in the ground and I had grabbed potatoes that had sprouted from the garage.

This is a bit disappointing, but I suspect I should try to learn from it. Things to remember for next year include making sure I sprout the seed indoors instead of in the greenhouse. This bed also lacked the same friability that the other bed had. The soil was just a bit more compact and needs a fair amount of compost. This bed had more Colorado Potato Beetles and the plants didn't grow as vigorously, suggesting either deficiency in nutrients or poor seed to start with. So, there is a combination of factors.

So, all together, I harvested about 56 pounds of potatoes. That would translate to about a pound per week if Kathy and I tried to live off them. That is not sufficient. Next year, I will double the area devoted to potatoes (at least 4 beds). Assuming I get seed that will grow at the rate of the Pontiac Red's bed, I would expect 144 pounds, which is almost 2 pounds per week, much closer to what the two of us would actually consume. Ultimately, I probably need to double that, assuming I will have more than just the two of us to feed.

Pontiac Reds

Last year, nearly all my Pontiac Reds turned out like the potato pictured first. They had blight splotches all over them. I only saved a handful. My goal this year was to avoid this completely. I planted in a different bed and harvested earlier. There were 6 Pontiac Reds that had severe blight spots.

There were a number that had one or two small spots. I'm not quite sure what to do with these. I have yet to sort out the potatoes; I just washed them and am now letting them dry. I weighed the potatoes I intend to keep. There were about 36 pounds of Pontiac Reds harvested this year.

Most of the potatoes seem to be normsl. Pontiac Reds have very delicate skins. I often see the skin scraped when I pull them out of the dirt. Jenna helped me this evening. She figure out that gently pulling the whole plant out of the soil actually made it easier to keep the skins intact and those that remained behind in the soil were easier to get. Before that I had been digging around the plants trying to find the tubers and only taking the plant out at the end of my search.

One of the oddities this year was that one of the Pontiac Reds produced a few potatoes with pure white skin. I think I will try to save these and see if I can plant them later. Perhaps an interesting mutation that might be worthy cultivating. They are very small though.

Onion Harvest

Last year I harvested the onions a bit too late. Some of them were mushy when they came out of the ground. I have taken the rule that when half of the stalks have bent down, it is time to harvest. I've heard that summer solstice is a second marker where we live. We are less than a week away from the solsitce and half the stalks were pretty much down. It has rained a lot the past few afternoons and evenings, so today, while it was hot and sunny, I harvest. I might be a bit early, but if I had to choose, I would rather have more small onions that onions that were too mushy to use.


My goal this year was to get some big onions. I don't know that I succeeded any better than in previous years. I fertilized and watered better, but I don't think I did any better. I had a lot of onions though. The yellow onions were a bit larger than the red onions. There were more red that went to seed.



My strategy for processing onions is to lay them out on wire grids for a day or so to let the roots dry. I will go back on Saturday (today is Thursday) and twist the stalks on each onion. When the stalks have dried, I will cut the dried leaves off and size them. My plan is to weigh them. My guess is that I will, by weight, have more yellow than red. My hope is to have enough for the next year for Kathy and me. Jenna doesn't eat onions. Jeff has left for the summer but he will eat them (he likes to cook with them) if and when he comes back.