400 posting! Cold Frames Finally Planted

Folks,
Back to gardening finally! We both have been so busy and our bodies are getting older, it takes much more energy than it used to to work in the yard.

I raked the front drive way of leaves yesterday and picked up a recycled gas lawn mower and mowed in the back yard leaves. The battery operated mower I posted about in August of 2009 has died. A new battery would cost about $150 to replace, none of the reviews on replacing batteries were good, so I got a beautiful little recycled gas mower on Craigslist for $65 and it starts on the first pull. Today I went up on the roof and swept of an enormous amount of leaves onto the main deck. So most of the leaves here are under control!

On to the cold frames. I tilled up three spots, two for cold frames the other for onions and garlic. We will be covering the onions and garlic with wire so when we let out our chickens they will not be able to get into that bed. This was my first time using garlic we grew, as we had a great year for garlic in 2012!

 Meg did all the raking of the hills and spread organic fertilizer. She planted 2 kinds of kale, 2 kinds of salad mixed greens, 2 kinds of spinach and carrots. Covered it all with wheat straw to help retain the moisture after planting. We did not make a big deal about fancy seeds this year, especially carrots.

 Here is the new chicken yard. The chickens and small chicken house will be here by the end of this new week. That wood box in there is sand. I read that sand makes a good floor in a chicken house, it is very handy. Meg points out that compost able bedding is great in the garden...

Manny really helped a lot. He just wanted to know why we closed up the cold frames so he could not get inside them?

Here the cold frames are just before dark. It reached the mid 50s here today and most of the wildlife was hunkering down. I did manage to rescue a Red Eft, Notophthalmus viridescens
while rototilling. You know I'm a handyman by trade,  but gas powered devises are not my speciality at all. The tiller would not start, I thought OK bad gas. Turned the tiller upside down over a bucket and no gas came out, then figured out it was out of gas. Just filled it with gas and started it right up...
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Finally filled up the suet feeders, Meg showed me an immature Yellow-bellied Sapsucker (first of the fall) waiting in a tree for them. Feels good to almost be ready for winter now... Now we need to plant the pansies I bought last weekend.

Garlic best crop ever!

On May 18th we harvested our garlic, usually one waits til June around here to harvest garlic. Our garlic was huge and falling over, time to harvester anyway. The last few times were grew garlic we ended up with little garlic that took a long time to clean when you cook with it, not my cup of tea. These garlic were purchased at the food co op (Weaver Street Market) last fall, the cloves were huge and Meg planted like 24 of them in two short rows.

Here is the garlic right after harvesting it. I'm a big guy and my hands are pretty large, this gives you an ideal how big they are.

Here is the garlic after the mud dried on them and Meg shook off the dirt. Those white bars are one inch apart. We have already cooked with some and it was pretty tasty! To think of all the gardeners who go to great lengths to find special garlic and we did this good from co op garlic! No this is not Elephant garlic.

These is the carrots we pulled up, maybe 4 pounds of them, we still have a patch of them in the ground. That is a 5 gallon bucket lid to give a sense of their size.. Steamed carrots have been on the menu and well as lots of carrots in salad. We have not pulled the salad greens, they are about finished as is spinach. We still have lots of Swiss Chard.

Newly planted in the garden are tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, dill, Thai basil, tomatillos and Armenian Yard-Long Cucumbers. First time planting Armenian Yard-Long Cucumbers they are tasty and huge as one might gather from the name, anyway I am excited about them.

Our flower gardens are lush right now! Best looking butterfly weed we have ever grown, the butterflies are enjoying it. Lots of spiderworts blooming the bees love them. Below is a Oriental Poppy (4-5 foot tall) from the farm where I have a bee hive down the street, These are the poppies I mentioned had 2-3 bees in each flower gathering pollen or nectar.

 

I spent an hour today in 85 degree heat checking the 5 bee hives here in the yard. The mother hive that swarmed weeks ago and had no brood in it, is full of eggs! The others except the top bar hive are doing well also. The top bar hive had no recent brood, just capped brood. I did see 3-4 swarm cells so they will make a new queen shortly, hopefully not swarm as  they have not grown very much in the 6 weeks I have had them. All the combs were covered in bees.

Yep this is yours truly with my top bar bees. That bar is not fully drawn out on one side. They got their first real inspection today.

Last bit of news, today we had a new male cat delivered. We'll either foster it or keep him. He is a year old and very people friendly, we'll see how he does with Valentine our girl cat. Not going to show you a photo yet, he is sort of like a Siamese cat crossed with an Orange Tabby. His ears are slightly orange and his tail is slightly orange and ringed. Thinking of calling him either Latte and Mel. Mel actually would be short for the scientific name for honey bees Apis mellifera or Mellow.

Planted Sugar Snap Peas Today!

The best crop of sugar snap peas we have ever had here were planted early, on January 21th. Here is central North Carolina it gets pretty hot by the end of April, peas do not like warm weather. So given my work schedule was open today I went out and got my hands dirty! It is supposed to rain the next two days so it was now or wait til the soil is dry enough.

I worked the two 8 foot strips were I was planting with a shovel then sifted the soil with my bare hands. I had to remove acorns, henbit and other weeds. I've told this before and will tell it again as we have a lot of new visitors here. First inoculate the peas with a little water and inoculant, I poured the 3/4 lbs of peas into a quart container and shook them up so the inculcate would stick to the peas well.

Here is the real trick plant your two rows about a foot apart under your trellis and drop the peas in very heavy like in the photo below.

Putting so many peas in the furrows is insurance against birds, squirrels, slugs and peas that do not sprout. This way you get a nice full trellis of peas. It just works, Meg taught me this. These two rows 8 foot long may produce 4-5 gallons of peas this way.

Then cover the rows with wheat straw to hold in the moisute and hide the peas from critters finding them. Then we let the peas grow. This trellis will need more strings before the peas grow very much. Make sure your peas do not fall over by making sure they stick to the trellis or the plants will bend in half and you'll loose your pea crop.

 Above is our garlic patch, that first one is about 3/4 inch in diameter. I added fertilizer today to the garlic. What type, grocery (coop) store garlic. That green clump behind the garlic is the sugar snap peas Meg planted last fall.

 These hellebores opened today in the garden. The white one I call Breezy 13 and the pinkish one I call Breezy 14. These were given to us by our friend Breezy, she gave us a lot of them.

 Above is Henbit a weed that grows in our lawn, it is very invasive, but the bees like it and I heard the pollen from it is red.

 Here are some of my girls with pollen sacs on their hind legs from today. The brown pollen below was being carried in like crazy. Three colors of pollen was seen.

 Anemone blanda I think from the garden.

 Firefly crocus is still hanging on. It is my favorite, for now.

Gypsy Girl crocus has just opened up, kind of sneaky about it, never saw it coming.