Intoxification

The long wait for warmer weather sometimes makes gardeners do silly things.  Adrian and I had some cleanup to do over the weekend, and a rainy Saturday made for a longer than intended day of work on Sunday.  By the time we finished the majority of our chores list and the daylight was waning, we ate a very well-deserved take-out dinner (oh the irony), and then slept like the dead.  The aches and pains this morning reminded me how I can bite off  bit more than I should at this time of year.

Still, the rabbits have an upgraded manure collection system (we needed the buckets back!), and we bred two of our does in the rabbit run in full sunshine, giving them some personal time as well, to eat some fresh grass, dig, and lounge about.

The potatoes I had kept for seed from our harvest last year (red, white and purple) went into our potato buckets, along with some local, organic, fingerling potatoes which had sprouted even in our dark spare room.  I'm still waiting for my fingerling seed potato order, and have 4 larger buckets waiting for planting. As Adrian noted, Russet and Yukon Gold potatoes cost a dollar or two a pound, but the fingerlings are up to five dollars most of the year - focusing on growing specialty items saves us money at the market and makes us more appreciative of our 'treats,' since the fingerlings taste wonderful smashed and fried.

Barley and wheat went into the beds prepared last weekend, and are covered carefully in weighted-down row cover fabric, to deter all of the wildlife that is currently scrounging for food.  With all of the rain we were having, I was reluctant to sow my grain seed too early.

Our first round of Snap Peas is also in, assuming the aforementioned rodents and crows don't dig them up.

The mason bee trays are soaking, and the bee house is being aired, in anticipation of this year's crop of cocoons - which are temporarily being stored in the fridge.  With the bushes and trees breaking bud, our masons will hopefully help us to have another good harvest of fruit this year.

Lastly, we had one more trick up our sleeves in our efforts to protect our fruit trees.  They had sticky traps for the fall and winter, wound around their trunks and slathered in petroleum jelly, then we managed to spray them weeks ago, to try and knock any overwintering pests and fungi back.  Yesterday afternoon, we took some white interior latex paint, and covered the trunks up to the lower branches with sparkling bright paint, to act as a further deterrent to animals that might nibble on the bark, or bugs endeavoring to burrow into the wood.  That last chore is probably what made for the most aches this morning.  It's harder than you would think to paint a tree!

We intend to move our top bar hive back under the old apple tree, but we also need to finish pruning and top up the mulch under there, so for now it remains in its temporary location.  the bees have been quite busy, and the days are getting warmer, so I decided to take a quick look inside the hive to assess what's going on.

My concern was that the colony population might be swelling in response to the season.  I took the lid off this afternoon, in 12 degree weather, and had a brief peek in each side of the hive for the first time - not opening up the hive fully and risking cooling things down.  The hive was absolutely buzzing, the bees largely ignored me (which was perfect, since I wasn't wearing any gear), and were actively making daisy chains and building new comb.  I added two extra bars to assure them that they have plenty of space, and closed the lid, with the heavenly smell of fresh beeswax in my nostrils, and a smile on my face.  I've been watching them for weeks now, and I'm thrilled that the girls made it through their first winter.  Adrian and I will need to get geared up and do a full inspection (though we're looking at 6 days of rain starting tomorrow).  I need to know what the whole hive looks like soon - was there any mold or insect damage over winter, what do the stores of pollen and honey look like, are there are any drone cells... I especially need to know if the colony is starting any queen cells - we may need to speed up our hive-building plans.

Smells like spring!

I Woke Up To Frost This Morning

My body clock seems to think that 6 a.m. is a good time to wake me for the day - regardless that I had just spent several hours the previous day helping reinforce and extend fencing in full sun and was feeling the effects. I grumpily trundled to the bathroom to splash some water on my face, looked out the window, and noticed that the canopy on the gazebo in the yard was sparkling in the morning sunshine.

Crap.

Out to the kitchen to look at the thermometer, yep - Zero degrees, and yep, there was a thin crust of ice on the barbecue cover.

And I put the mason bee cocoons out yesterday morning because I had been watching the weather forecast which lied to me.

Checking in with the chickens and rabbits, I stopped by the bee house to lift the cover and see if anyone had been woken from hibernation yesterday, and at a glance all of the cocoons are still whole. Hopefully, the weather will pick up today, as it is supposed to, and we will have no more of these chilly nights. If I had woken up a half-hour later, the frost would have been burnt away, and I wouldn't be left wondering if there was any negative impact on my cherry trees....time will tell.

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.