it's been a while...

as of today, we have had over 8 inches of rain for the month.  that may not seem like much to some but for us, that is more than triple the monthly average.  if you know anything about gardening then you know that you simply cannot work the soil under such soggy conditions.  you also know that fungus excels in moisture and that plants tend to wither and rot away with the moisture and fungus that it produces.  needless to say, with all of the rainy soggy days and the up down up down of the temperature, our garden is lagging behind!

we have a few different lettuces, some peppers and peas out there as well as a few cucumbers and some artichokes but so far, nothing to brag about or to pick for that matter.

there was evidence of an old (very old, as in previous owners, many years ago) termite infestation in our house so we have decided to have the house treated, after all this is the south and termites are like opinions, everybody has at least one (colony) somewhere!

in the mean time, this lovely new bed will serve as my herb garden since nothing edible can be near the house for at least a year.

this years plants in the lasagna bed at the front walk.  it had to be planted a second time-sometimes, i really don't care for dogs...

we have rather shady conditions along the front of the house and i have decided to make that the theme for these beds.  we added ferns, columbines, huecheras, native phlox, caladium and more.

our sunny bed out front.  linda sent me seeds for california wild flowers and i spread them over the bed.  they are sprouting like wild fire and so are the weeds from all of the rain.  now the dilemma-is it a weed or a wild flower???

do you remember the previous post about shiitake?  here is darry out back checking the logs for moisture=they cannot be allowed to dry out or there will not be any shiitake!

more adventures with bees

since we are new members, we attend the monthly meetings for the nashville area bee keepers as often as possible.  after many of the meetings, there is a field exercise that demonstrates vital procedures and methods of maintaining a hive.  walt is explaining an ongoing experiment he tried to hopefully prevent swarming. the experiment failed but we were able to see the inside of the hive and listen to an experienced bee keeper impart valuable information.

the hive looks healthy but it is obvious to walt that a swarm took place.

a close up of one of the frames.

we also had the chance to listen to jim talk about a top bar hive.  they are common in places like africa and the two main types of top bar hives are the kenyan and the tanzanian.  these are easy to set up but are not very practical for honey production, just for pollination purposes.

the name top bar comes from the fact that the box contains a set of bars that rest on the top of the box-no frames are used.  here jim is holding a bar that the bees have not yet begun to build comb on.

a shot of some of the bees in the hive, hard at work

jim took out a bar to show us the natural comb formations that the bees make.

here is a closeup of the comb.  the yellow lumps-or bullet shaped cells in the middle are actually drone cells (male bees), the darker yellow parts at the top are honey  and at the bottom, they are probably brood cells for workers (female bees)

we were lucky to have three bee keepers speak to us!  here is trevor opening up the new hives-these were set up last month and in my last post about bees, jim was installing the packages of bees to these hives.  trevor was looking to see how the bees are doing.  he was able to find the queen easily and so far, it appears to be going well.

trevor holding up one of the frames to inspect it for varroa mites.  have you noticed that these guys are obviously fearless when handling the bees?  all three of them did so with out protective gear, just a little smoke.

here is a close up of a frame from one of the new hives.  there are drone cells in the center area-they look like yellow bullet shaped mounds.  the darker cells are worker cells and the light ones at the top are capped cells of honey.

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.