Springtime garden update

I love April in the garden. Everything is warming up and drying out from our typical March sogginess (especially bad this year, with our record rainfall). Everyone's been enjoying the sun breaks as of late, including Mini-kitty (who is now 14 years young... she's become a pro at lounging). 

The peas, seeded on President's Day weekend, are a good 6" tall and climbing. The brassicas, which were seeded just last weekend, have already popped as well.

The garlic is doing great and is well on its way to our finest ever harvest (fingers crossed).  I planted four varieties this year, all purchased from Uprising Seeds in Bellingham. All of this garlic is bred in the beautiful Methow Valley.

Get better, miss Lexi!

Miss Lexi Lou has been at the vet's since Monday with a bad case of vomiting.  We were initially thinking she might have eaten something that was blocking her intestines, but it turns out that the problem is with her liver.  For now she is stable, and might even get to come home today, but we're waiting to find out whether this is a short term problem that will resolve itself, or something more chronic.  We're crossing our fingers for short term/ easy resolution, and hoping and hoping she gets to come home for the weekend. 

Lex has been my number one garden buddy since the first day she came home with me on a "trial foster period." We were living in Ballard at the time, and I was just starting to get to know this little dog.  I was digging up some turf in the planting strip to make room for a vegetable bed.  Lexi watched me intently as I fought with a particularly stubborn clump of grass.  After a few minutes, she walked over to the clump of grass, grabbed it in her mouth, planted both feet, and pulled as hard as she could.  It popped out of the soil, and Lexi was so excited she shook it all over the place, dirt clods flying everywhere.  I laughed and laughed, and knew right then that the foster period was over, and that I had found myself a great garden helper. Indeed, she's been a constant garden companion to me ever since that day. She is always by my side, whether I'm planting, weeding, or harvesting (particularly when I'm picking, ahem, peas.)  Because she's on my mind today, I rounded up some of my favorite garden shots of her. Get better, Lexi-Lou, our dear bubeleh!  Chad and I are thinking of you today and sending you all of our healing, loving thoughts.  

Oregano Buzz

The oregano is blooming. A tidier gardener might have been tempted to trim it back, but I'm not tidy, plus I'm fascinated by this herb's frequent visitors of late.

The oregano patch starts each morning quietly, in the shade. When the sun comes out, the entire patch lights up with buzzing.  Bumblebees can't resist this delicate white bloom. 

Honeybees are equally drawn to these frilly cups, and it's fascinating to watch them forage.

I'm hoping some of that oregano flavor makes its way into the honey this year. 

Happy Friday from Chase!

Garlic harvest

You may remember that I was really excited about purchasing garlic last fall and determined to actually have a respectable garlic yield.  Over the course of the last 8 months, I watched my garlic go from  tiny sprouts...

Garlic sprouts, early 2013

4 legged Pea Eater

Our peas started out quite slowly this year, and for awhile it didn't look like they were going to do much.  In late April they finally started to climb the trellis, but looked quite skinny.  

The heat and moisture combo of June this year, though, really inspired them to grow, so by late June we were in full-on pea-harvest bliss.  

Sugar-snap peas are a cherished treat in our home- we love to make stir fries, risottos, or just eat them straight out of the garden.  My loyal garden buddy has picked up this habit too, it seems.  

For a little while I thought about busting her for this, but it completely charms me, maybe because she finds so much joy in eating them.

Dogproofing the garden

Let me introduce you to two of my biggest garden nemeses:  Lexi and Chase.  

While I adore these monsters, they can be horribly destructive in the garden.  Here's some evidence: 

Sprouts and Seeds

I took advantage of a sun break between wind and rain squalls to spend some time in the garden today.  I seeded brassicas - cabbage, broccoli, kale, raddicchio and broccoli raab, and prepped another bed for carrots, turnips, spinach, lettuce and arugula, which I'll seed tomorrow morning.  

I did a little weeding along bed edges, but mostly just spent some time watching the garden wake from her winter nap. 

The red kale has overwintered nicely. Actually, it overwintered looking pretty wimpy, but just this week has burst out with large, tender, juicy leaves.  I'm always impressed by this plant's ability to thrive in our climate.

Sprouts in nooks and crannies

Last year, one particular kale plant in our garden grew into a tree.  We enjoyed its leaves all winter long and into the next spring.  Through March and April, it started to bolt, but I let it blossom for the bees.  When we pulled it out in May, it was nearly 8 feet tall.

Garlic in the Ground

The garlic is in the ground.

 Last year, I planted some heads from the grocery store that were kicking around our garlic bin and crossed my fingers. I did not have great luck.  I'm not sure whether something ate the cloves, or whether they just weren't viable and shriveled up and died, but I don't remember harvesting any garlic.

I splurged this year and ordered $30 worth of seed garlic (1.5 lbs ) from Uprising Seeds, one of my favorite local seed providers.

A Tale of Two Swarms

Last week I took advantage of a nice sunny evening to wander over to the bees and check up on them post split.  I saw this in one of the trees:

Apologies for the image quality.  My camera is being repaired!

Hive Split Attempt, Part II (with more of Venessa's amazing pics!)

To recap, Venessa and attempted a hive split two weeks ago, but had very little information to evaluate whether we did it correctly. In order to devise a strategy to get both of our hives queenright (having healthy, laying queens), we needed some more information.  We needed to make sure that the queenless hive had either open brood or a queen cell, and that both hives had plenty of honey to eat.

We waited for the sun to come out, which fortunately it did on Saturday.  The first inspection was on hive 1, which we suspected would be queenless. The bees had been riled up in the first week after the split, and the hive had emitted a distinct hum. Also, in the previous two weeks I had seen bees hanging out on the front of the hive, looking aimless and lazy.  All of these are signs of queenlessness.

However, when we opened the hive, we were surprised to find a very full, calm, purposeful, hive of bees who had drawn a lot of comb in the last two weeks.

That is a full hive, especially after a recent split! Photo by  Venessa G.  

Hive Split Attempt, Part I

My last bee post recapped the sad ending to my sweet bee hive.  Fortunately, my co-keeper Venessa's hive had an amazingly healthy winter, and by early April, was showing signs of an impending swarming (the natural reproductive means for honey bee colonies).  Rather than attempting to catch a swarm (which can be done, if you happen to be around when the hive swarms), we wanted to split this healthy colony into two smaller ones.  The ideal situation would be to time this split right when the hive is starting their normal swarm activity.

When bees are about to swarm, the hive builds 2-4 queen cells, and feeds the larve in these cells plentiful amounts of Royal Jelly, a highly nutritious substance that transforms normal worker bee larvae into Queen larvae.  While the new queens are incubating, the existing queen gathers a portion of the workers to leave the hive and seek out new space, splitting the colony into two. The remaining workers stay behind to support the colony and tend to the emerging queens, who, immediately upon hatching, have a battle to the death to determine the new ruling queen.  That queen bee which kills her competitors while evading their stingers is the victor.  (Very Hunger Games-esque, but with only females- Queen Katniss will have no Peeta to help defend her in the Hive Hunger Games. Honey Games? I digress).

The Strawberry Wall

A few weeks ago, I saw an email on the Seattle farm co-op listserv about buying strawberry starts in bulk from Rain Tree Nursery, for great prices.  Before I stopped to think about space requirements, I had purchased 125 strawberry plants for $30.  A great deal, right?  But where to put all of these babies?  I love, love, love strawberries, and I can't think of many better uses of garden space than a gigantic strawberry patch.  However, 125 strawberry plans require a space of roughly 20' x 20', which is more space than want to devote just to strawberries.  Plus, the dogs have completely decimated last year's strawberry patch in their quest to rid our yard of moles and voles, and the idea of getting the plants off the ground was enticing to me.  I did a bit of research and found some cool vertical ideas for strawberries. 

First,  these amazing Plants on Walls containers, made out of some kind of beautiful magical fabric called "florafelt." While beautiful, these are quite expensive at $50/ panel (and I would need many of them). 

Beefuddled

The most recent check in my hive revealed a sad, small cluster of bees milling about the top of the hive.  Numbers were way down, and there was evidence of dyssentry (bee-diahhrea).  I gave them a Beepro pollen patty and a feeding of Pro-Health as a final desperate attempt to keep them alive, but to no avail- the hive did not make it.

A few sad bee carcasses (One of Venessa's lovely shots from her blog, Kernels and Seeds. ) 

Seed Uprising

As a reward for planning my garden out ahead of time this year, I splurged on some unique varieties of flowers, fruits and veggies from Uprising Seeds.  Based in Bellingham, Uprising is an amazing business. They offer only organic and open- pollinated varieties while supporting a strong network of seed growers in the state. They do meticulous research on varietial performance, and they know their seeds extremely well!  They don't carry the variety that some of the larger seed companies do, but each seed description is extremely thoughtful and helpful, and all of their seeds are chosen with our Northwest maritime gardening climate in mind.

The bulk of our garden will grow from seeds on hand from last year- but, I still found an eclectic mix of beauties too add to our garden space. I chose exotic blooms (for the bees, and to feed my love of cutting flowers), some unique greens, and some heirloom veggies which I hope will become jewels of our harvest.

All photos from Uprising Organics online seed catalog.  

Garden Planning with GrowVeg

During these rainy, damp months, when the garden is looking pretty ragged, it's a bit too warm to ski, and I'm not feeling uber excited about being on my bike, I like to curl up under a quilt with my laptop and a cup of tea and plan the spring's garden layout.  This is our second year planting veggies in the raised beds, and we're planning on rotating crops this year.  Crop rotation has a number of benefits for backyard gardeners.  It is easier to stick with organic methods, because pests have a hard time following rotating crops from season to season, and it allows you to balance out the nutrient load from year to year, as different plants deplete and add nutrients to the soil.

There are many, many MANY methods for crop rotation out there, and though I've tried to map a handful of them on paper, I find it quite confusing and tedious to track what should be planted where in order to maximize a rotation scheme.  I spent a little time searching for a good crop rotation app on the internets, and I came across GrowVeg.Com.     I signed up for the free trial and was immediately hooked.  The interface looks like this:

Mid-winter Bee Check Up (with beecam)

With the exception of today's snow, its been a relatively mild winter in Seattle, much to the benefit of our bee ladies. Venessa's hive has been doing great, staying clustered up and working slowly through their honey stores. In a recent peek hrough the window, they were clustered close to the glass, slowly vibrating, a collective calm enveloping them.

By contrast, my hive appears to have worked through their honey stores much more rapidly and has nearly run out. Recent peeks into the viewing window reveal a much more chaotic scene. 

Breaking Ground at the Rainier Beach Urban Farm

Saturday, October 1 was the official ground breaking of the Rainier Beach Urban Farm. The other FACN board members and I have been really busy over the past 8 months getting this neighborhood farm project off the ground- writing grant applications, negotiating operating agreements with Seattle Parks, and also figuring out the details of our relationship with Seattle Tilth, our fiscal sponsor.  Although there have been work parties every Saturday for most of the summer and fall, this was really our first public event.  The concept was a mini-version of the Seattle Tilth Harvest Festival, but with more of a focus on this particular farm.  We envisioned farmers market style vendors, a plethora of community organizations, tours of the farm, live music, and plenty of kids activities. We had no idea how many people were going to show up, and whether the event would be a success, but we set attendance goals that we thought were reasonable, settled on a budget, then put our heads down and got to work.  

My job was to recruit organizations to table, bands to play music, and farmers to sell produce.  Other committee members handled a ton of other details, including speaker/ elected official recruitment, volunteer coordination, event promotion, poster/ graphic design, food/ flower procurement, event logistics and layout. A lot of these jobs were new to us, but we just kept plowing through to do lists and meetings, and pretty soon it was the week of the event.  Saturday morning greeted us with rain, which fueled my anxiety that no one would show up.  Like magic, however, over 40 volunteers materialized, and got to work setting up. By 10am people started trickling in, and for most of the day we had a good sized crowd there despite the weather.

Averting a bee-mergency (stopping a swarm)

The other morning I was doing a routine check on the bees and I noticed that bees in Venessa's hive were clumped around the entrance, not being as active as usual, just kind of hanging out, in large numbers....  basically, showing the first signs of swarm behavior, so far as I could tell.

Yup, we're just bees, hanging out, waiting to see where the party is... (scary for the beekeep!).

Getting ready for our honeybees

I decided this year to get bees for our garden.  I love the idea of keeping thousands of happy pollinators around, and I'm also excited about the possibility of having gallons of sweet, fresh, local honey at the end of the season.  

I spent months researching different beekeeping methods and finally decided on the Warre method.  The Warre Method is a natural approach to beekeeping, grounded in philosophy that the bees possess inherent wisdom when it comes to best bee survival practices.  The Warre hive imitates a tree trunk- so it is smaller than normal Langstroth boxes, and square in shape.  The hives start out with two boxes, with boxes being added to the bottom of the bee hive as the colony grows and needs more space.  (Langstroths typically "super" additional boxes over the top of the existing boxes).  The theory is that the bees will start building comb and laying brood in the top boxes, then will work their way down as the season progresses.  As the brood hatches, the empty cells will be cleaned and used to store honey.  Harvesting honey, then, is relatively easy- you just take the top few boxes, as most of the bees will have moved down the hive as the summer progresses.  

Anyhow, here's a photo essay on our bee preparations.....