Archive for year: 2010

I’m going to be getting a couple thousand bees in two weeks.  Until today, I’ve never actually opened a hive; I wanted some first-hand experience. My husband Chris was kind and brave enough to take pictures.

Alan from the Trinity Valley Beekeeper’s Association was kind enough to let me come over and “help” (i.e., get in the way) with his bees, and learn how to handle the hive, how to light the smoker, where the veil ties, all that good stuff.  He told me it’s called a smoke test.  I had read, and watched videos, and seen pictures – but like with so many things, bees you just have to be there.

With a few deft movements, Alan got the smoker lit and the cardboard burning merrily.

The desired effect.

I got mine lit, with considerably more mess and less efficiency… but lit, nonetheless.

Alan with a frame of bees.

Today’s errand in the apiary was replacing the solid bottom boards used for winter, with the screened boards used for summer.  Alan broke down the first hive piece by piece, showing me how it goes; I broke down the second hive.

So many bees!  There are cells of pollen here, and cells of open and capped brood.  The little white thing about an inch up from the right corner and half an inch in, is a larva – they look like grubs.

We found the queen in the second hive; she’s the extra-long bee close to the center of the shot.

After the smoke test, I felt SO much more comfortable with the whole process.  Now, if I can just get past the part where I take a box full of bees and SHAKE THEM INTO THE HIVE, I’ll be fine!  Thanks again to Alan; this was exactly what I needed.

Some video:

Well, with all the snow this past weekend, I was expecting at least a LITTLE garden damage… I had been holding off on planting the tender plants, but the baby spinach, the tiny little beet seedlings – it just didn’t seem like they would make it through unscathed under an inch-thick blanket of the white stuff.

Much to my delight, they’re all doing FINE. I managed to get out in the garden on Monday and do some thinning, so now it is beginning to look like a proper garden patch instead of a random wad of greenery.  You can also see some cardboard next to the bed on the right side, and mulch on the left side; we’re doing a “sheet mulch” or “kill mulch” technique to get rid of weeds in the garden area and prepare it for planting.  We’re doing it right (at least, to my mind) – directly reusing broken-down cardboard boxes for the base layer and free brush mulch from a local tree company.  The stuff the City grinds up is a lot rougher, and smells a little like City Dump; the stuff from Preservation Tree Service is lovely and smells like clean wood.

These Giant Red Mustard plants are one-per-hole all along one side of the cinder block border of the bed.  I’m just hoping they get a chance to grow big enough to use, before things get too hot!  You will notice this purple/red foliage coming up a lot in the garden; we’re doing one whole garden area in “dark” plants.  Just be careful what you eat – I know what’s tasty and what’s toxic.

The spinach is getting its true leaves, and looking more like a bed of spinach and less like tall grass.

I thinned the Shanghai Bok Choi (Pai-Tsai) pretty hard, because they’ll be big-ish plants – these have become one of our most favorite greens.  They’ve got a milder flavor than any other bok choi I’ve found.

The lettuces are starting to get their real leaves, showing their charming shapes!  I love the little Oak Leaf.

I’ve lived in Dallas now for seventeen years.  It will typically snow once every other year, sometimes as much as once a year.  This year, we’ve had, I believe, five or six days with snow.  I’ve never seen it this late – it’s just bizarre!

It didn’t start until well after dark, so I could only catch it with the flash.

These are the garden beds I’ve been showing over the past couple of weeks…. covered in snow. It’s too warm for it to stick to the ground or the street, but it’s sticking just fine on the vegetable beds and the mulch.

Fortunately, we hadn’t planted any of the non-hardy vegetables yet… these are all “plant six weeks before last frost” type things, spinach and lettuce and radishes and such.  Hopefully they’ll get through the snow OK!

Five days, actually…

Everything’s coming up!  I plant on the philosophy of “one for the rook, one for the crow, one to rot, and one to grow” – but EVERY seed is growing.

Shanghai Bok Choi is starting to get its true leaves.

These are Osaka Purple Mustard.  We’ve got a lot of interesting-colored things… from purple mustard to rainbow chard and four different colors of tomato –  it should be a colorful garden!  These are in the cells of the cinderblocks; one side is all Giant Red Mustard, the short ends of the rectangle are all Osaka Purple Mustard, and the other long side is Bright Lights chard.

Close to, the spinach looks almost like a bed of lilies.

I planted way, way too many radishes.

The beets are still the coolest colors!  They’ve lost some of their brilliant magenta, but they’ve got a nearly iridescent purple-green leaf.

It’s that time.  Everything is starting to bust out, here.  The one garden bed that has been turned and seeded is coming to life with hundreds of tiny leaves.

The lesson from these baby Shanghai Bok Choi plants, is that I need to learn to plant things on a grid. I’m a random sprinkler by nature, but I really want the more orderly layout and space-economy of a gridded planting.

YUM, spinach.  We eat a LOT of spinach; it’s one of my favorite green vegetables.  I buy it at the Asian Grocery in a bag the size of a standard bed pillow.

The moonflower seedlings amaze me with their huge cotyledons.  I mean, when you see a seed the size of the end of your finger, you know the resulting seedling is going to be massive – but these just keep unfolding.  I really look forward to their flowers in the summer.

I have to say that my current favorite, though, are the beets – we planted “gourmet mix” beets, and they’re coming up in colors ranging from yellow-green to hot magenta.