Straight from the Farm

I suspect bee keeping may just be my coolest hobby to date.  I’m not sure just yet if it tops the belly dancing I did in my early 20s, but it’s pretty darn close and a good bit more practical (in most settings at least).  After just one afternoon of working with the hives, I’m hooked.  All I can think about since is “BEES!”

Actually, my first act as bee keeper was to deconstruct a hive that had died over the winter.  I was fortunate enough to get the help of Matt, a current coworker who has some very applicable experience (he took care of the same hives just a few years back), otherwise I wouldn’t have had a clue what to do. We started by taking apart the “supers”, which are the stack of boxes that provide the exterior framework for the hives; in other words the outside walls.  Then we wiggled out the comb frames, some of which were filled with dead bees, some that were just plain empty, and, most importantly, some that still had lots of honey in them.  

Since this hive was dead, we didn’t have to worry about getting stung for this part of the process.  Later we did add a new “super” to the living hive and checked out its status.  Working with the live bees required the classic bee keeper’s gear (netted hat) and an old-fashioned smoker to control the buzz factor.  Watching the bees when the smoke hit them was pretty interesting…as Matt described it they dive for the combs of honey, jam their heads right in there and drink themselves silly, trying to take as much honey with them since they think the hive is on fire.  However, since they drink so much honey that their bellies are literally bulging, they can’t fly straight, and thus they become much less of a threat to the bee keeper. 

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Aw, they’re so cute!  Look at my little babies!  All the seeds I put in trays last Monday have germinated, much to my relief. 

I tacked on the “much to my relief” part there because I had a few casualties in the “directly sown department” out in the garden.  Both my radishes and my sugar snap peas seemed to have failed in that 80+ degree arid weather we’ve been having here in southeastern Pennsylvania.   I knew it was a long shot for the peas in particular, but I had thought the radishes would make a go of it.  Another culprit for them might have been the clay soil turning rock hard as it baked in the sun, keeping the little leaves from poking their heads out. 

But enough about the what-might-have-beens and more about these little cuties.  Now that they have germinated, I’ll be watching closely for their true leaves to appear (the ones that come after their initial set of leaves, sorta like baby teeth).  Once that happens, I’ll be thinning out any extras that are crowding the trays and then start hardening them off in about another two or three weeks, depending on each crop.

Of all the little thrills and victories in the garden, nothing quite beats seeing the seedlings come up!  I’m now dreaming of arrangements of chartreuse green “Envy” zinnias and the beautiful blue salvia I just bought from the nursery.  Sigh….  

That trip to the nursery was quite fun in-and-of-itself.  There were little wagons to pull around that I got to fill with all manner of perennials, annuals, and biennials.  My favorite find was a new herb (to me) called stevia that I am in love with now.  Can’t wait to get back in the kitchen and start making some sweet dishes with it.  By the way, I swear there’ll be a new recipe up on here sometime soon!  Thanks for being understanding about the little lull.

How are your gardens doing this spring?  Is everyone as dry as we are here?  There’s been only an inch of rain in the last six-seven weeks.  Now’s a great time to think about hunting out more native plants for your gardens since native varieties are often much more drought tolerant than those species that have been brought in from elsewhere. 

It rained!!  Finally!  April was a very dry and hot month up until the last weekend.  And while it may have been pouring kittens and puppies outside, a nicely organized and supplied potting shed was at hand.  As such I got several seeds started on April 28th, including two varieties (’Polar Bear’ and ‘Granny’s Bouquet’) of zinnias for my cutting garden, a mix of cherry tomatoes, a mix of heirloom tomatoes, lemon cucumbers, round zucchini, and some chamomile for my tea garden.  

I know it’s okay to direct sow the cucumbers and zucchini, but thought I’d try starting them in the greenhouse to get a headstart on these summer crops.  Frankly, I’m not wild about growing either of them in this particular garden since they take up so much space (I do like eating them though). But if I get them producing early enough, I’m hoping they’ll finish in plenty of time to pull out and make space for some of the fall crops I’m aiming to grow.  

It was nice to finally get some stuff on my bench in the greenhouse.  Since these few trays took up residence there, I’ve almost filled up the rest of the bench with plant material I scavenged from around the area, more trays of seeds (another post on those later), some herbs bought during a trip to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens last week, and transplants I got from the farm (it’s nice to have connections).  Now I’m just really antsy to see these seeds start germinating!  

And since it was rainy outside, I also took the opportunity to take a few artsy-fartsy photos of the stuff in the potting shed.  Not all were that great (awfully poor lighting in the rain in there), but I like these two.  Makes gardening look a little less messy, ya know?  

my garden as it looked at the end of my first day of digging in it

It took a week and several revisions, but I’ve finally come up with what I think is my final design for this year’s garden.  It consists of four long raised beds for the vegetable plot, each three feet wide.  Figuring out that part was easy.  The design of the herbaceous/ornamental plot was a whole different beast.  

I wasn’t exactly intimidated by it so much as I was uninspired.  I knew that I wanted to focus a good portion on growing flowers for cutting as that’s an area of interest for me moving forward in my horticulture career.   I also wanted enough room for a “tea garden”, a section that will allow me to experiment with new herbs in order to broaden my portfolio of homemade teas.   Here’s the starter list for that:  

Another general group of plants that interest me are seedums, something I know little about but am very intrigued by their shapes and textures.  I put them on the original design layout but really had no vision for their presentation.  Then the horticulture gods smiled upon me, and I was gifted with three baby Metasequoia trees.  They were just the jolt of inspiration I needed to get going with some ideas.  The major design element of my herbaceous area will be a constructed “bank” to showcase a sweep of succulents resting under the three trees that are now anchoring the bank at its highest point (more on how I engineered this bank to come).  Tucked in below the bank of succulents will be my tea garden, assuming all those herbs can play nice in such a small space.   

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