• Tag Archives composted manure

  • How Will The Garden Grow?

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                            Full Flower Moon

    A bit of rain last night and a bit now.  Some is better than none.  Kate and I spent the morning at Mickman’s Nursery  picking out additions to our 2010 garden.  I bought some mustard greens and ten more bags of composted manure while Kate bought a number of herbs, pansies, coleus and something called mountain white.  I also picked up packets of bush beans, nasturtium seeds, butternut squash and sugar peas.  These will go in the ground over the weekend.  I hope to have the vegetable garden largely planted by Sunday evening.  Of course, I’ve also got that bee colony division to do as well.

    We ate lunch at Tanners, then came home.  Kate works tonight but not over the weekend.  I’m looking forward to having her around full time after next January.  With our various limitations and our mutual strengths this place is just better with both of us here.  A good thing we’re married to each other.


    📂This entry was posted in Aging Bees Garden 📎and tagged

  • Queens, Vegetables and Latin

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                         Full Flower Moon

    Under the full flower moon I inspected my new colony of bees.  In this instance I checked the frames for larvae.  I couldn’t tell if they were there or not.  This is important because it indicates the presence or absence of a laying queen.  I’ll check again on Saturday.  The queen excluder went into the overwintered colony.  The queen excluder prevents her from moving either up or down in this instance.

    On the weekend when I try my first division, I’ll take the hive box with no new larvae (the queen is not there since it takes larvae four days to appear) and put it on a new hive stand and bottom board.  Then, I’ll slow release a new queen.  That is, I’ll put a mini-marshmallow in the end of her cage, suspend the cage between the two central frames and let the queen eat her way out or the worker bees eat their way into her.  This makes her acceptance more likely.

    One undignified note.  A bee crawled up my pants leg and stung me on my butt.  Boy did I howl.  Jumped around.  OUCH.

    After the bees I spent time in the garden planting dill, basil, marigolds, radicchio, foxglove, spinach, swiss chard, kale, golden and red beets.  A few more bags of composted manure went onto the raised beds, too.

    The garden worked preceded a session with my Latin tutor.  He’s good, supportive but demanding.  I like that.  This was not my best week.  I did this work a couple of weeks ago and had not gone over it again, so I sounded somewhat like the village idiot.  Being a good student is important to me, so I promised Greg I would do better next week.  He said, “Be a good boy, you mean?”  Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.  Geez.  Even at 63.


    📂This entry was posted in Bees Garden Humanities 📎and tagged