Spring Update

The weather is still being a bit unpredictable, so the mason bees will be on hold until next week, but the honey bees have been taking advantage of the rain-free days and the fruit tree blossoms, and are building comb and raising brood. A quick check yesterday showed more brood and a lot of capped cells that should be increasing the colony soon. Hopefully the rain that is on the way won't knock too many blossoms off of the trees, so there will still be time for more pollination to occur.

This is one of our two dwarf Ranier cherry trees, which didn't provide any cherries last year....in fact we picked ONE cherry off our Bing tree *sigh.*

We've been busy ourselves, whittling away at the piles of mulch and topsoil we had delivered and dumped on our driveway. The beds are shaping up and being planted, and I have been weeding, transplanting, mulching and seeding to limit the invasion of quack grass and other garden annoyances in the perimeter beds. The tomato seedlings need to be thinned, and the cucumbers, squash and a few other seeds needing indoor attention are sitting ready to go into newly-prepared flats. I will be using some of the outside space to start cole and herb crops, which will be moved to more permanent positions once we need the current space for beans, corn, and other, slightly later
crops.

 

Mulch in front, soil in back with a cover for possible rain.....who am I kidding? We live in the Pacific Northwest!

 



Some of that soil, topping off newly prepared beds.

The garlic, shallots and Jerusalem artichoke are looking lovely, and we've enjoyed a few spears of asparagus - though we never get 'enough.' (Above you see the early start of Jerusalem artichoke in the far bed, and two beds of garlic - 180 cloves this year, planted last October and mulched with rabbit manure and soiled straw from the chickens.)

Seeding today: turnip, beet, radish, kohlrabi, fennel, kale, swiss chard, spinach, collards, and some herbs and flowers to fill in the empty spots: bread seed poppy, thyme, dill, bronze fennel, marigold, nasturtium and calendula. Hopefully the next few days of patchy rain will get those seeds settled and I'll be growing something we *want* to see, rather than pulling weeds.

The bunnies are growing, and have now learned how to get in and out of their nesting boxes so they can annoy their mothers even more. We're letting them have some greens, but only in limited quantities - they're just about the right size to reach the alfalfa pellets in the feeder, and are nibbling on smaller pieces of hay and dry orchard grass for now. Too many greens can lead to digestion 'issues,' but we've found that the greens are welcome, and it's just adorable to watch blades of rye grass disappear into a munching bunny mouth. Their mothers eat the majority of what's offered, as quickly as they can.

The chickens are enjoying the warmer weather - they used to huddle under the picnic table in the cold rain, despite having a hay-filled, dry hoop house they could have enjoyed. Celine has gone broody, and I've been taking her outside every morning to the grass, and providing some scratch, before she returns to her spot in the nesting box. I wish I had some fertile eggs to give her!

Celine, Nugget, and Pilgrim, eating breakfast amongst the cherry blossom petals.

Mason Bee Countdown

If I can believe the weather forecast, we should have a series of 'warm enough' days starting next Monday. I've been holding my mason bee cocoons in the deli drawer of my fridge for several months now, in an unmarked Ziploc container with a bit of moist paper towelling - we always got weird looks from houseguests when they discovered the brown bag marked 'Bees' while looking for someplace to stow their potluck food. I believe this is our fifth year of providing a habitat for these solitary pollinators, who help us in return by visiting our fruit trees and berry bushes, which are some of the earliest crops in our garden needing pollination.

Our mason bees are specifically orchard mason bees (osmia lignaria), which have a green/blue metallic colour, rather than the typical black and yellow that comes to mind when people think of bees. They're very docile, with habits very different from the colony-dwelling honey bee. Mason bee females all mate and lay eggs, while producing neither wax nor honey. All they require is a narrow hole or tube in which to lay their eggs, providing their young with pollen and nectar. A female can visit 75 flowers per trip, and it takes 25 trips to create a complete pollen/nectar provision for each egg (Wikipedia). They wall off each individual cell with mud, and leave the larva to develop, and cocoon for hibernation. Similar to other bees, the orchard bee life span ranges from four to eight weeks, at which point she may have visited 60,000 flowers and laid perhaps 20 eggs. This is where I interrupt the cycle, removing the cocoons (ideally in October through February) and rinse them of possible parasites and pests. I store them until I believe the weather will allow enough time for the males to emerge, and mate with the later-emerging females, but need to keep in mind that the cocooned bees are burning through their energy reserves while time passes.

I also provide them a nesting site which I can disassemble and clean for them each year to avoid a buildup of parasites. There's an 'attic' for this bee house, where I can place the cocoons out of the weather; with enough days of warm weather, they emerge through a small hole in the front of the hive, and go about their bee business

 



We've enjoyed keeping our mason bees over the years, though we've never been rewarded with an exceptional growth in our cocoon numbers. Most years we put out about 50-70 cocoons (one year we had to start over due to woodpecker predation), and this year we will be starting with the 80 I removed and cleaned from last year. In the future, I hope to provide more homes for these gentle pollinators.

Long Live The Queen

We opened the hive again yesterday, to replace the bottle of sugar syrup, and to check on the progress in the brood nest. We know they're eating the syrup, and have observed them bringing in pollen, but the big question was whether the queen was laying in the comb that the workers had built....

Perhaps not the visual that everyone wants, but we were thrilled to verify the presence of eggs and larvae in various stages of growth, as well as some cells already capped with new bees-to-be maturing inside. It has been just twelve days since this colony package went into a completely empty hive. Workers, which is likely what the queen is laying, take 21 days from the time their egg is laid to when they emerge to become part of the colony.

Otherwise, the comb has been expanded, and they have capped honey cells near the top of some of the comb as well as stored pollen. The girls have been very easy to handle, and accepted our intrusion into their home with little bother. So that we could observe the cells, I was able to get the workers to move off the comb by blowing gently. We have not yet needed to use the smoker, but may find there is need as the colony grows and there are more bees on guard duty. Our main problem is gently putting the top bars back in place, as there are always inquisitive bees moving up and down the wood top bars. It takes a series of gentle bumps to get the girls to move out of the way and avoid squashing anyone.

Today is cold and rainy, so I'm glad we were able to open the hive yesterday. Our Mason Bees are still on hold in our fridge, as there have not been enough warm days in a row to warrant risking the 80 cocoons we saved from last year. If there is an extreme drop in temperature, the males (who are first to emerge) might die off before the females emerge for their mating flights on the next warm day.

The bunnies are getting more adorable as their fur comes in, and they should be starting to open their eyes as early as tomorrow.

Bee Update

A close look at one of our bees, which are Carniolans, imported from New Zealand.

We opened the hive on Saturday to put in a new bottle of sugar syrup for the bees to eat, and inspected the brood chamber to see how the girls are doing in their new home. Though we were unable to identify the queen (who isn't marked as some producers do), they seem to be settling in, building comb and storing nectar and sugar syrup. I was unable to identify any eggs having been laid, but will look back again next weekend in hopes of finding signs that the queen has started to lay eggs and increase her colony. There were a lot of bees covering the small amount of comb, and I didn't want to disturb their work more than necessary.

They're using the top bars as intended, and building comb for the brood nest on several of them. Here you can see a daisy chain of bees to one side.

And a close-up of their comb:

 

 

Adrian said it best - 'wow.'

Tomato Promises And Heritage Grains

Over the years I have tried to grow a large variety of crops in our gardens. Sometimes I'm seduced by the pictures and descriptions in the seed catalogues and overreach (and overspend). Sometimes I don't listen to experience and think 'maybe this year' - but not every garden is ideal to grow eggplants, melons and peppers (until some future greenhouse dreams are realized!). Not everything does well in our climate or our soil (we have a wireworm 'problem' that makes growing carrots and parsnips a heartache).

A large portion of our crops are old favourites that have proven over several seasons that they will do well and provide for the table. These plants form the base of the garden, and I happily plant them each year. I still manage to plant too much of one thing, and not enough of another - nothing like that enthusiastic response to green beans for the fifth dinner in a row, or the sad expression when there are no more peas is there?  I try new varieties each year, and sometimes they will be added to our 'repeat' list. At the same time, I am trying to grow mostly open-pollinated, heritage varieties that I can save seed from for future use. I support small seed companies that do not sell GMO modified products.

Left up to Adrian, my experiments are fine - as long as there are tomatoes. Unless you've grown tomatoes and eaten them fresh-picked, you don't know what you're missing by eating grocery store offerings. Luckily for those without a garden, we do have the advantage of a fairly healthy network of Farmers' Markets in the Lower Mainland, and a hothouse industry that manages to provide some passable tomatoes in the dead of winter, when all I have left is dehydrated and canned offerings.

Yesterday I sat down and started my tomato seeds for this season. Two flats of seed-starting mix and tomato seeds are now sitting under my grow lights. Garden season has begun.

From Baker Creek:
Bloody Butcher
Flamingo
Japanese Black Trifele

From West Coast Seeds:
Gold Nugget
Principe Borghese
Siletz
Sungold (our one hybrid tomato, which we fell in love with at Pike Place Market in Seattle. Five dollars for fifteen seeds!)

From saved seed (formerly WCS):
Black Cherry
Sasha's Pride
Sweetie Cherry

I started another flat - this time of parsley and cilantro, which I have also direct-seeded outside. I will continue to plant more of those seed outside, tucked amongst the herbs, vegetables and flowers, in weekly intervals for continued availability.

Once the rain let up, and the sun began to shine, I cleared two of our 4x8 raised beds, and planted wheat and barley into each. The seed for these grains is from Salt Spring Seeds, a small seed company that offers unique selections for our coastal region. I hope to save this year's harvest and use it to grow more of these heritage varieties in the future. Some of our grain harvest will be used for human consumption, and some for our livestock. The wheat varieties are Blue Tinge Ethiopian, Kamut, and Red Fife. Our barley varieties are Faust, Lompoc and Sheba. I look forward to seeing how they perform, and how easily they are harvested - that will be the real test.

The Spring Sting

This afternoon I was outside gathering up some Stinging Nettle to dehydrate. Every year I say I'm going to take better advantage of this nutritious plant, and harvest more than just a few meals of greens - I am, after all, the one silly enough to actually plant it in a low-lying, wet corner of my yard.  I'm lucky that my husband barely frowns at all anymore when I announce what's for dinner - after several years of the spring-time 'treat,' he admits it blends well with other greens and some garlic in a quick stir-fry/steam (cooked just long enough to wilt and remove the 'sting'). Many herbalists suggest adding citrus, tomato, or some other acid to improve mineral uptake (I always have lemon juice on hand), and I tend to use butter in my preparation as well - to increase the absorption of vitamins (a la 'Nourishing Traditions'). Nettle stands in for spinach in a lasagna, and makes a great pesto, long before you have any basil growing outside.

Stinging nettle puts on growth quite quickly if you don't keep up your harvest or hack it back to force new growth. Somehow, it always gets away from me and winds up a stand of 3-5 foot plants that try to set seed and invade my herb bed and my neighbour's soil (it spreads by seed as well as by runners). We only have a chain-link fence separating our yards - but it seems fair since he shares his creeping buttercup with me, along with a bit of quack grass - the other neighbours share vetch and bugleweed that doesn't die off in our mild winters (I only swear a little). It's the price I pay for having good air circulation and no shade cast by a wood fence, I suppose.

Today I vowed I would take a break, and gather enough greens to fill my dehydrator, and so I set out with scissors and a bowl (I sometimes wear gloves, but I find if I pinch a leaf with two fingers of one hand, and clip with the other, I can *almost* insure no stings). For best results, this plant needs to be dehydrated on the lowest setting, so oven drying and simple 'on or off' dehydrators aren't ideal.

It's the hairs on the leaves and stem that release formic acid when you brush up against them, and can cause a rash or hives.

There's lots of information on the Internet to help you identify edible plants, so please make sure you know what you're picking, that you're allowed to do so, and that the plants have not been sprayed with any herbicides or exposed to pollution. I planted my own nettle patch so that I can harvest for food (it freezes well after blanching), for drying (to use in teas and possibly a tincture or oil), and for use in a manure tea mix for my garden along with some comfrey and horsetail (another volunteer 'weed' that I make use of rather than trying to eradicate).  I'll give the plants a couple of days, and harvest again for the dinner table, the freezer or the dehydrator (today's gathering should be dry by then).

 

Nugget was disappointed - she thought I was gathering a treat for her.

New Additions

This is Sweetie:

She's been busy preparing her nest over the past few days. This morning, disturbing only the fur on top of the straw, 31 days after she was bred to Peter, we greeted some new arrivals:

We'll check back in the next few days, to make sure none of the kits is in trouble - we've lost several newborns in our rabbit-keeping experience due to mothers birthing on the cage floor (they cannot move their kits into the nest and they die of exposure), or unfortunately eating their young (a fear response). We also had a mother that killed older kits for no reason that we could fathom - but I did save a runt by grabbing the mother for one-on-one time over several days to make sure the little thing had a chance to eat without competition.

Ten days from now, they'll be furred out with eyes open.

Queen release and feeding sugar syrup in Spring

On the advice of an experienced beekeeper, we went into the hive on Monday and released the queen from her cage. It was Adrian's first look into the colony, and he admitted it was a bit daunting to see and hear all of those bees in one place . The few flying about the entrance holes were non-threatening and less of an issue - he's come a long way in dealing with his natural fear of stinging, flying insects. Though I have gardened side-by-side with bees for years, there is something to be said about having thousands of them flying around you in an agitated manner - even seeing a solid mass of them inside the hive and listening to their noise level is a real experience.

I had put a small piece of marshmallow in the exit hole of the queen cage (many such cages already have a candy plug to be eaten and removed by the workers, but ours had none).  The premise is to slow down the queen's release and give the colony a bit of time to adjust to being in a new hive, and to make sure the queen doesn't leave and take your bees with her. The girls seemed to be having some difficulty in removing the candy, and a small number of bees were clustering on top of the cage to care for and keep the queen warm.  Because the temperature can still be a bit chilly when the sun goes down, I didn't want to risk leaving them to handle the release on their own. I pried out most of the candy, and placed the cage back into the hive.

We've observed the bees bringing in some pollen over the last few days, but they have also taken advantage of the pollen patty and the sugar syrup I've placed in the hive to help them before the flowers in the area are in bloom. In future, I hope to leave the bees enough honey of their own to feed them through the winter and into the next Spring, but they have definitely needed the assistance with no stores or even comb of their own.

After reading multiple, often conflicting recipes on how to prepare sugar syrup, I went with the following Springtime recipe:

- 20 cups water, brought to a boil and removed from the heat
- 1 heaping Tbsp of dry Thyme and three bags of Chamomile Tea, steeped for several minutes and then strained out
- 20 cups of sugar (granulated, white, cane) stirred into the pot
- 2 Tbsp of Apple Cider Vinegar
- a pinch of sea salt

This recipe has given me multiple jars of syrup, which I am holding in the fridge to slow down spoilage. We replaced the 1 Litre jar this afternoon, which indicates the bees will go through about a jar each 2-3 days while they build their comb. We'll try to disturb the colony as little as possible while replacing the syrup in their internal feeder (a small chicken waterer with sponge to slow the flow and prevent drowning). There's a hole in the follower board so the bees can access the feeder from the main body of the hive, and so that we don't need to open everything up to replace the food supply. Hopefully when we peek in again in a few days, we'll see the beginning of some comb along the top bars.

 

One Step At A Time

We started small, buying a house in 2007 with a backyard of open grass and possibilities. We have added (and are still adding) raised beds for vegetables, a hoop house (diy-car-shelter-style), dwarf fruit trees, berry bushes, potted divisions and cuttings, permanent perennial vegetables, herbs and flowering plants. A second, larger hoop house went up, then collapsed in the weight of our first (and only real) snowstorm this past winter.

The first major addition came with our chickens - our first three girls were Isa Reds (de-beaked, hybrid, pullets from the feed store) called Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner (the husband has dibs on naming and does it so well). We built them a chicken tractor which stays on grass for most of the year, and replaces our tomato plants in the hoop house for additional warmth - and added fertility - in the cold months. We've bid adieu to some of the girls, and added new, heritage breeds to our flock, raising three from day-old balls of peeping fluff in our second bathroom.

Currently digging up the yard are Nugget, Pilgrim and Celine Dion. Once the chickens seemed to have become just one more familiar item on the chore list, we added Florida White meat rabbits to the mix. We've bred several litters of kits over the past year, sending them to freezer camp and learning to cook with home-grown meat fed on gleanings from the garden, dehydrated fruit slices, dry orchard grass, alfalfa pellets and the occasional winter-time treat of grains.

This year - specifically yesterday - the bees came. We built a top-bar hive after much research and thought, and so will be working a tad outside the norm for beekeepers in our area. I hived them yesterday, after a demonstration and an assist at another bee yard (in a Langstroth hive), and am waiting for them to settle in and release their queen. When I went out this morning and heard absolutely nothing from the hive, I (panicked) cheated and peeked - and they're still here, just adjusting to the new digs and needing to free their queen before they really get down to business.

Jen, in full beekeeper regalia demonstrating for the newbies:

Also this year, I'm getting some hands-on work with larger livestock - sheep, goats, and a friendly, well-trained horse who is likely to spoil me for horse-handling (but the husband is allergic, so that likely isn't in our future). My friend Jen over at Horse Drawn Farms is teaching me the ropes as I take yet another step - this time to one day having a few dairy goats of my own.