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Been a while since I last posted here. There has been mostly eating, though the summer returns have been a bit sporadic. The early excessive heat and the inconsistent rain has had it’s effect on production. The summer squash finally ran it’s course and I was pretty much ready. I was a bit tired of it. I expect that I will not plant so much of it next spring. We are into Fall and Winter planting right now and I have added two new beds. Lowes had self-contained kits on sale made of cedar, so I thought I would give them a try. I have planted buckwheat in one for the bees to forage during the slow season.
They have been a bit slow in finding it, but have been more interested lately. Kitty pulled the feeders from the hives about a week ago. We are watching to see how they do now that Goldenrod is plentiful and they have Buckwheat just outside their front doors. This morning I planted more Buckwheat in the mulch between five of the Hazelnut bushes just to see if it will sprout there. If so, I will plant more. It grows quickly and lasts until the first frost and is supposed to be a great green compost.
Moving on to the new stuff. Last month I planted Butternut and Spaghetti squash in the other new bed. It is about to take over the yard. There is already fruit and many blossoms. I tend to prefer the winter squash varieties over the summer.
In the bed beside the Buckwheat, I have planted carrots, beets and turnips. In the bed beside the squash, I have planted cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli. In the other upper bed I have planted three varieties of kale. That bed still has thriving chard and a leftover okra plant that is still producing.
In the last lower bed I have planted lettuce, arugula and spinach. Yesterday I planted peas in the cinder block holes along one whole side of that bed. The rest of the okra plants doing fine and I expect them to keep producing for a few more weeks. I have also planted Parsnips in the half of the cinder block holes in that bed.
We had mixed results with tomatoes. The corner bed away from the raised beds produced wonderful German Johnsons and some very tasty Cherokee Purples, but the plants in the beds seemed to wilt in the early heat. We are still enjoying tomatoes and have been able to share with family and friends.
I planted Buckwheat in some of the other beds. The one below is where the cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli have been planted. You can see the greyish leaves of the returning brussel sprouts plants that I just cut back in the middle of the summer. I am a bit concerned that the Buckwheat will impair the sprouting of the new stuff.
Anyway, that’s pretty much it for now. -
Which one is right side up?
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Honey is bee food. Beekeepers take honey that bees don’t need in the Springtime when there is a good nectar flow on and the bees have successfully overwintered. Beekeepers who take too much honey at the wrong time can starve their bees. Or find themselves feeding the bees sugar syrup or fondant to make up for the lack of real bee food.
Chuck and I would rather take a little bit of honey, if they have enough to share, and leave the majority to the bees. We are mostly in it for the pollination, but also with the intention of helping to restore honeybee populations
And we hope that our hands-off way of tending the bees will help to restock the feral bee populations that have been hurt by Colony Collapse Disorder. It didn’t just affect commercial beekeepers and honey farmers. It has, also, decimate the wild bees.
Honeybees preceded settlers across the continent as soon as they landed. This was fortunate because so much of the crops that colonists were going to be planting needed those bees. And that hasn’t changed. In order to grown a huge amount of food we eat daily, we need honeybees.
Here are some (but not all) of the things they help pollinate:
Alfalfa, allspice, almonds, apples, apricots, avocados, beans (many varieties), beets, blackberries, blueberries, boysenberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, buckwheat, cabbage, cantaloupe, caraway, cardamom, carrots, cashews, cauliflower,celery, cherries (sweet and sour) chestnuts, clover, coconut, coffee, coriander, cotton, cranberries, cucumbers, currants, eggplants, elderberries, fennel, flax, grapes, guava, kiwi, lemon. lime, loquat, macadamias, mangoes, mustard, nectarine, okra, onions, papaya, peas (many, again) peach, pear, persimmon, plum, pomegranate, rapeseed (aka canola), raspberry, safflower, sesame, soybeans, squash (all sorts), strawberries, sunflowers, tangelos, tangerines, turnips, vetch and watermelon.
And notice that some of the crops listed aren’t people food. Alfalfa, clover and vetch are are food for other food.
The other important thing going on with honeybees is that because of how humans have handled them they have been exposed to parasites and diseases that they aren’t ready to deal with. Asian honeybees have developed habits and immunities to varroa mites and the diseases they carry that European honeybees haven’t had time to develop. But because they get moved around the country to pollinate huge monocrops (ie, Florida oranges groves, North Carolina blueberries and California almond orchards that cover an area the size of Rhode Island) they have been exposed to these pathogens fairly regularly.
That has been one of the pieces of the Colony Collapse puzzle.
Now, some beekeepers are raising queens that produce bees that have “hygienic behavior.” And there are treatments for the mites. Unfortunately, the treatments create weak bee colonies with resistant mites.
There is a subculture of beekeepers who are trying to support “survivor bees,” bees that have managed to thrive in spite of varroa without help from humans. These beekeepers let weak colonies die and then restock their hives with swarms caught from healthy hives or feral colonies. And they don’t whine a whole lot if one of their hives swarm away.
So, our hope is to pollinate our garden, get a little honey and to grow healthy bees that will help the Colony Collapse Disorder recovery.
I am the Audience 