3 Persimmons

Last year I harvested one persimmon. This year I have three. I picked one and ate it already. I think I will pick the other two today. Very tasty. It might be possible to have too many persimmons, I think. Eventually, if the harvest gets a bit bigger, I think I will be able to handle it. If it gets bigger than a dozen or two, I will have to think about how to store or process persimmons. So, three for this year is a good number.



Of course, this reminds me of my favorite Japanese tongue twister.

隣の客はよく柿食う客だ。
Tonari no kyaku wa yoku kaki kuu kyaku da.
The visitor next to me eats a lot of persimmons.

More on Garlic

During the week while I was away, we evidently got a fair amount of rain. Good for the garden and the seeds. Of the 48 garlic cloves I planted, 44 are now up and starting to grow. I think Kathy's response has been, "Just what we need! More garlic!"

Garlic Sprouts

I planted 48 garlic cloves and took a look yesterday to see how they were doing. I counted 24 sprouts. So half of them have sprouted. As I recall from last year, it seemed to take a lot longer for the cloves I got from seed savers to sprout than it did this year. I noticed that seed savers did not offer my variety, Chet's red, this year. I may plant some more when I get back from my trip so I can share the cloves with Seed Savers and others.

I still have a number of bulbs in the cold room at the office. i should think of a way to process them. I'm going to have to look to see what the options are.

Feeding Doug's Bees

Doug left me with four and a half gallons of honey to feed his bees. I surely wasn't going to do it the first week they were here. They had been nasty animals when we were getting them moved. Then there were storms, busy Saturdays, and other excuses. But, I knew the plan was to feed the bees so that they would be ready for winter and winter was not yet. It has been getting a bit chillier lately, however, and so it was time Saturday to feed them.

My first task was to take off the covers and just inspect. Two of the three hives looked as if they had capped honey in the top supers. The photo below is from the nastiest of his hives. It came with two supers and it looks as if there is honey all the way up. The middle hive was the weakest coming in and looked to be the weakest still. The first hive was in between.


After pulling the tops and taking a look, I put an empty super on each with a top feeder following on top of that. I poured honey into each from the gallon containers Doug had left me. The weak hives got about two gallons each and the healthy hive got about one. We still have a bunch of yellow jackets and other invaders around, so I took the practically empty containers into the house and drained them off into my own stocks. It didn't amount to much, but thanks Doug for the small donation.


So now each of the hives has an extra super and a supply of honey to store. I won't be able to check back on the progress of the bees at storing the honey for over a week because I am traveling. My guess is that they will store it very quickly and that by the time I get home, there will be nothing left in the top feeders.


Just as a side note, Doug's bees are still pretty defensive. I was buzzed by all three hives as soon as they were opened. However, they left it at that and when I had walked away 20 feet, they didn't follow. I like bees to be a little protective. I think it makes them healthier. Just looking at the entrance during the day, they are still actively foraging.

Onion Sprouts

Not much has been happening in the garden. The majority of the broccoli and cauliflower I planted died. I did plant seeds of the same that have started coming up. So I have 5 broccoli plants and 3 cauliflower plants from the nursery and about the same coming up from seeds. A bit of a failure. Tim suggested I planted too close to the fertilizer. I will try to remember that next year.

It will be interesting to see how harvests of broccoli and cauliflower and lima and green beans turn out. It is getting cold. The low this morning was 41F. It's forecast to be in the 40s all week.

On Saturday, I planted 48 garlic cloves. Because only about a third of the onions sprouted from my earlier planting (none of the purple of Parma made it), I also replanted more yellow of Parma seeds in the open spots. There are a lot of weeds sprouting. I will need to get them out, but I would like to give the onion seeds a chance to get established a bit first.

Broccoli Cauliflower

(br>It turned out to be a busy Saturday. After planting onion seeds, I went to Webster Brothers in Walkertown. It's the one place that I can guarantee finding cauliflower to plant. I haven't mastered the art of growing broccoli or cauliflower from seed. Maybe I will try it next spring.

On the way there, my son Jason asked me to help him install a ceiling light and fan. That took the bulk of the afternoon. The fixture was actually rescued from Jenna's room when I installed a new light there and Jason's baby room had a ceiling outlet for a light and fan, but nothing installed. It made for an interesting afternoon because, despite our thinking it through, we didn't understand until faced with the facts that there are two sizes of pipes that can be used to hang such fixtures from the ceiling. We learned this because we purchased the wrong one and had to go shopping again to find the right one. Then, we learned about how easy it is to trip a multibreaker and how challenging it is to reset one. But the fan and light were ultimately installed and worked.

It was evening before I got to plant the broccoli and cauliflower. I used my McDonald's straw trick to guard against cutworms. I installed the straws in the house before putting them in the beds. I put the plants in the beds with the poor soil. Things grew there; it just doesn't seem like the soil has much to it. I fertilized heavily and added a scoop of soil from one of the better beds right at the spot where the plants were placed. I think I will need to water regularly until the plants are established.

Garden Friends and Onions

My activity this past week has involved getting the garden ready for fall planting and planting some onion seeds. I had Sam and Taylor come over and finish cleaning out the beds. It was well worth the cost for their three hours of work.

I planted some onion seeds. This year, I am planting 4 to a square foot. That will give them a little more room. I also planted in a bed that is easier to water. I want to give them a little more water next spring than the yellow of Parma got last year. Hopefully, it will keep them from going to bloom prematurely. I planted 48 seeds from a purplish yellow of Parma onion that I had saved. It will be interesting to see if they turn out to be purplish, too. Then I planted seeds in 136 spots for true yellow of Parma. I had plenty of seeds left over from last year, so I used those rather than the seeds I had gathered from this year. I double planted so that there were at least two seeds in every hole. A couple of years ago, I didn't plant deeply enough and the seeds either didn't sprout or died shortly after. This year, the holes were maybe a half an inch deep, but not fully filled in when I was done. I hope they sprout and that they weren't planted too deep.

The rest of this entry is just pictures of garden friends that I've seen around.