bee happy

as new members of the nashville beekeepers association, we are encouraged to attend as many official functions as possible.  last week, we had the opportunity to attend a field exercise and a package installation.

in this photo, member walt is removing frames from his brood box to check for mites and signs of superceding (when the bees replace the queen, can have many reasons for happening)

walt and jim are trying to locate the queen, by the time we were finished, they had not located her but had located several queen cells.  this indicated  the possibility of a swarm or that they were replacing the queen.  this hive is in the ellington apiary and is walt's personal colony.

in this photo, jim has opened up one of naba's two colonies in the ellington apiary.  he is very confidant around the bees and doesn't always wear protective gear.  he went through all of the boxes in the colony in the hope of locating the queen and for general purposes of checking on the hive.  he was able to find a queen but it was not the one from last year, she was marked with a red dot.  this indicates that she was superceded (replaced).  there was some speculation that the hive may have swarmed-the old queen could have left with some of the bees but that was all subject to opinion and when you have two experienced bee keepers give you an opinion, expect at least three!

here jim is preparing to install a package into a new hive.  when you order bees by mail, yes that is a very common practice, they come in a box like this.  you must first pop out the lid on top so the bees will come out.

jim isn't the only one who was without gear, there were several people just as brave-not me or darry!
jim demonstrates the method of dumping them out of the box and into the brood chamber by banging on the bottom of the box.

here he installed a hood small hive beetle trap.  it will catch those pesky small hive beetles and prevent them from making a mess in the hive.

now it is time to add the queen.  first you must remove the cork from the candy end of the little box.

this little box gets placed on top of the frames and by the time the bees eat the candy to release the queen, they will be accustomed to her scent and they will recognize her as their queen.  if we are lucky, that is.  sometimes they don't and they can kill her.

 
next, jim placed an inner cover that has a hole in the center on top of the brood chamber.  this will allow him to feed the bees without bees from other colonies taking advantage of the sugar water-called robbing.

he then placed an empty super over the inner cover.
and then a second empty super so it would be tall enough to house the bottle of syrup-1:1 sugar and water.  the lid has very small holes in it and it will allow the bees to slowly drink it since they do not have any honey stored to feed from.  this was then covered with a lid and a weight.

if all goes well, the girls (as jim likes to call them-the workers are all females!) will begin to build out the comb and the queen (who is already mated) will begin to lay eggs.  before we know it, the hive will be storing nectar and pollen and producing honey.  if all goes well, they will make enough honey to overwinter successfully.  only time will tell!

back in the swing of things

so here it is, a month into spring and i haven't done much to update the garden blog.  please forgive me, it has been a busy month and we have been sorely lagging behind in our gardening duties at home.  the demo garden looks wonderful though.  luckily, for us, the weather has been cooperating.  it hasn't warmed up as quickly as it does some springs and this is working to our favor since we were late in starting seeds.  one thing we have done is start our lasagna beds along the front walkway of the house.  they had completely compacted over the winter and we added new layers and plants.  

the view of the walkway with the lasagna bed at the corner in the foreground and all the way at the end of the walk in the top left corner of the photo.  the spaces inbetween have been filled in with iris, hostas, ajuga, trifolium (fancy clover) and other shade tolerant plants.  the beds along the house on this side of the steps also have seen new additions of hostas, heucheras, convullaria (lily of the valley) and more.  the beds on the other side of the steps, which are not shown in the picture have many new plants including, native phlox, dicentra (bleeding hearts), hostas, heuchera, may apples, convullaria, autumn ferns and more.  the lasagna bed is pictured with it's first new layer-fresh cut grass.

a close-up of the grass layer

the second layer is pine needles.  this is the small bed at the end of the walkway.  it recieves more sun than the large bed so it will feature slightly different plants.

after adding a layer of leaves to both beds, i topped it off with a layer of peat moss.

a variety of shade loving coleus and begonias were planted in the bed and the surface was sprinkled with lime to help lower the acid level in the bed.  

this bed has some verbena along with the begonias and coleus and it also was limed.

out in the front of the yard is a raised bed that forms a circle around our little silver maple tree.  the bed is planted with tulips and daffodils as well as some creeping phlox, hyacinths and a bunch of snapdragons that self sow each year.

the lilac bush was beautiful this year, we had many blooms to cut and enjoy in vases in the house. 

bee keepers or bee havers, that is the question

this past week, darry and i attended the 2009 nashville area beekeepers association beginning beekeepers workshop.  what was once a one day workshop is now a 4 day event with classes given for three weeknights and an all day workshop on saturday.  talk about information overload!  there are so many things to consider with bees that just thinking about it is intimidating.  we hope to add bees to our yard and have joined the association and the mentor program.  look for future posts on our adventures in beekeeping.  

urban bluebirds

yesterday afternoon i was looking out the dining room window into the garden when i spied these two going in and out of the old birdhouse that hangs near the vegetable garden.  for the last two years, a persistent little wren has staked out the house and spent hours calling out for a perspective spouse to join him.  guess he's out of luck this year and in more ways than one-no house, no spouse!

the male spent most of his time keeping guard while the female went about the business of setting up the house.  at least this is what i am assuming, we could not get close to the garden to watch and i had to carefully circle around the house and watch from the back steps.

mr. met, as darry has named him since he is wearing the right colors, does a fine job of watching over his mrs.

this is a branch of one of the many hackberry trees in our yard, they seem to favor the hackberries.  if you look carefully, you can see that mr. met is on the left and mrs. met is on the right.

we have been seeing bluebirds in the neighborhood for quite some time now.  this year we noticed that they were flying through our yard and stopping to hang out in some of the trees, specifically the hackberries close to the house and our persimmon tree in the back.  it is wonderful to see them up close in the garden, hopefully they will hang out with us and eat lots of bugs for us!!!

for more info on bluebirds, check out this very informative website from cornell university.  it even has a recording of their songs and chatter to help you identify them.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Eastern_Bluebird_dtl.html#coolfacts

shiitake in the garden

at last weekend's lawn and garden show, darry found himself to be the only person in the audience for a log innoculation demonstration.  a man from "the farm", a middle tennessee   mushroom business, was going to show people how to cultivate shiitake mushrooms using pre-innoculated pegs and hardwood limbs in order to grow the tasty little mushrooms in your own back yard.  since darry was the only one who actually showed up, he got the advanced course as well as one on one instruction.

for those of you who happen to know my husband, you know that this was the equivalent of a superbowl trip to didneyland.  but don't be fooled by his enthusiasm, if you take a few minutes to actually talk to him about his beloved fungi friends, you will find that he is actually quite knowledgeable on the subject, right down to the latin names for many of the species both poisonous and edible.  after all, he gave a short lecture on mushrooms at the same show on sunday and it is up on my demo garden blog.

after saturday's private lesson, darry began gathering wood from a neighbor who had cut down a tree with the intention of cultivating a shiitake garden in the back yard.  the wood was free but came with a promise to share some of the shrooms with our neighbor.  we're keeping our fingers crossed that this will be successful, it will take about 9 months for the first flush.

here is darry drilling holes in the logs for the innoculated pegs.

these are what the pegs look like

darry tapping the pegs in with a hammer

sealing the pegs in with wax

our new garden, shiitake logs out back in the shade near the leaf corral

spring break

can you believe  it?  spring is not only on the horizon, it is all around us!  so many plants are breaking out and they are growing rapidly.  it won't be long before we are whining about the heat of summer.  we are waiting for the ground to warm up and for the danger of frost to pass before we put anything out in the garden.  the only thing to look at right now are all of the flowers that are preparing to put on a show.

our little clematis is growing by leaps and bounds.  it nearly doubled in size in just a few days.

this peony plant is much taller than the others and it is also as tall as the frame support around it.

so many daffodils

in this little bed at the end of the driveway, there are many hyacinths preparing to bloom and even more black eye susans sprouts.

our little peach tree is covered in blooms.

a close up of one of the peach blossoms, they are so pretty.

patiently waiting for spring

this winter has been very cold for us.  before you laugh, we haven't had this many cold, below freezing days in a long time.  last year we overwintered lettuces and greens because it never got that cold for very long.  this year has been a different story.  now that spring is on the horizon, we have had a few warm days and we have taken advantage of them to do some much needed work in the yard.  

out back in the yard, we have a leaf corral and 3 compost piles.  we still haven't raked up all of the leaves in the yard, think back to what i said about it being too cold to work outside.  we never did have that wonderful indian summer that makes raking leaves tolerable.  darry uses the leaves as the "brown" material in our compost pile.  

a close up of the piles.  the one in the foreground is a finished pile that is ready for use in the garden.  the one in the middle is ready to age, no new material will be added.  the farthest one in the back, which is obscured by the middle one, is the collection pile.  we are still adding to this one.  darry is checking out the leaf corral, making sure the fence is secure.

the view from the front, left is finished, center is aging and right is the new pile.

signs of spring are evident in our little round bed located in the front yard around our little maple tree.  the buddha is watching over the sprouting daffodils, tulips and hyacinths.

a close up of some of the daffodils

also sprouting are the peonies.  they are one of my favorite flowers and their season is just too short for me.  they are gone before i have a chance to get tired of them and then i spend the rest of the year waiting for them to bloom again.

here darry is prepping the vegetable garden for spring planting.  he is turning the beds and this year, he added some lime to the beds since we suspect that the soil is just too high in acid.

winter gardening

winter gardening is not for everyone.  it is cold and damp and the soil is often too hard to work

with.  that gives living in nashville a definite advantage.  we very rarely have long stretches of cold weather that allow the soil to freeze solid. never the less, we do experience enough cold weather hours to produce some fruits like cherries and apples and to promote the germination wild flower seeds outdoors.  this fall, i selected a number of wildflower seeds from a website and added those to seeds we collected and we began to plant a wildflower garden.  The main purpose of this garden is to attract butterflies, bees and birds to our yard but the best part, the plants will be tall and will hide the unruly yard next door (for more on this, read the previous entry on privet).  we also planted a california wild flower garden in the front yard in our little lasagna bed.  linda sent us a bag of seeds that were simply labeled, california wild flowers and we added new layers to the bed as well as some of the seeds.  everybody keep their fingers crossed and let's see if we get some pretty flowers to show off out front.

here is the first new layer going on, leaves.  we always collect the leaves in the yard and place them in a large pen out back.  during the year, darry uses them as the brown component in our compost.  as the year progresses, they begin to break down and form leaf mold.  

the next layer was finished compost from the pile out back.  we always have at least 3 piles. one that is complete, one that is aging and one that is in the beginning stages with new products being added to it regularly.  we do not have a lot of sunshine out on our piles so they take longer and aren't quite as hot as some but they are still good for the garden.

we sprinkled the seeds generously over the compost and finished it off with a layer of grass clippings.  in the bed is our cardoon plant.  we decided to move it from the side of the house to the front where it will be a centerpiece in the bed.  only time will tell if this was a good idea.

here we are in the back yard where we have begun to build the wild flower bed.

we began by staking out two large rectangular areas.  darry dug random holes through out the areas.

i followed behind him placing random selections of seeds that i mixed.  some we bought and some we collected.

we then covered the seeds lightly and added some compost.  now we wait for spring.

the string should help us keep track of the area and ensure that it doesn't get mowed until we can identify the plants.  if we are lucky, we will have big tall flowers that hide the mess next door and attracts many butterflies and bees.

killer view

we have a large yard-2/3 of an acre that is mostly sloped and has a nice population of old trees.  we also have three neighbors bordering our corner lot.  our neighbors uphill keep their yard closely clipped and neat.  our neighbor behind us likes to garden and has a nice deck and landscaping.  unfortunately, our neighbor downhill does not have any interest in aesthetics-he won't even mow his yard.  at this point, only a bush hog would cut through the shrubs that have taken over the yard. 

when we stand in our back yard, this is the view we have of our neighbors yard.

the property line between the yards is obvious; we mow regularly, he does not.

the entire yard looks like this, front and back.  this is the view down the line to the street.

in one section of the yard, there are hundreds if not thousands of chinese privet plants growing.

it might not be so bad if they weren't such an invasive non-native plant.  they quickly spread and can easily choke out the native plants.  we have them coming up in our lawn as well as in a flower bed in front of the house-all unwelcome volunteers!

a view of the privet forest.  behind the tree is the ever expanding bamboo/river cane forest, another unwelcome and invasive  species that will eventually work it's way into our yard. 

chinese privet usually have an abundant crop of small black berries.  these berries sprout easily and new plants come up everywhere.  unfortunately, birds love to eat them and they tend to spread the seeds in their droppings.  this allows the plants to spread even more.  we will never be able to get rid of the shrubs but we hope to at least control it's invasion.