first swarm of 2010

got my first swarm call and was able to hive it up and take it home. attached is a very fuzzy picture of the swarm ball i picked up in edh.

its was a text book swarm, nice height in the middle of a plant. i sprayed the swarm ball with sugar water. this makes the bees less likely to fly and the sugar gets their attention to cleaning up themselves and away from the guy who is trying to box them up in a new home.

i cut back some branches and knocked the swarm ball into the hive, topped it off and went home for the night. the next day, i picked up the hive and now it sits up in the orchard.

orchard 2010

the orchard is now sporting 52 trees and all spots, within the rows are full. all future trees will be espaliered along the fenceline. many nectarines have flowered and most of the newly planted bareroots have pushed some leaves - so things are looking up for the orchard in 2010.

tomato update

seems like these plants are growing inches per day. it was time to move the tomatoes from their small pots to larger pots. so i re-potted the plants into 1 gallon pots. the soil is an organic mix, purchased from the front yard nursery - to which i added a small dose of dr. earth vegetable fertilizer.

cutting off the low leaves and deep planting the starts, we begin to develop the hair roots along the main stem of the plant. the transplant to the 1 gallon pot will be the last one and the next move will be into the raised beds - most likely the first part of may - where the starts, will again have the lower leaves snipped off and planted into a deep hole.

a word of caution, make sure the soil you purchase is fully composted. i learned this the hard way a few years ago, when the 'top soil' was still actively composting and was way too warm to plant into. end result - had to buy new plants.

redneck hothouse

my seed guy keith needed to clear out some plants to make room for the next round. still being a bit cool in the garage, i felt it would be necessary to provide some added protection for the plants that would spend their nights in my cold garage.

so with the help of my eight year old, we geared up this redneck hothouse.

some scraps of cardboard, a couple towels and a nice warm halogen lamp, i was able to keep the temps in the hothouse in the 50's. this only lasted a few days before i had to transplant the tomatoes into 1 gallon pots.

the tomato growing season is looking better, every single day.

tomato/tomawto

a quick update - these pix are the latest and the girls will be coming home this week. so they will start to harden off in the garage and will be planted into the raised beds some time around mothers day weekend. except for 3 - these guys are going into the garden with the walls-o-water.

this will be my first foray into the walls-o-water and hope it works as planned. front yard nursery had already planted their tomato with the walls - and oops, it snowed last tuesday. from what i heard, the tomato is in the green house, hoping to make it as it had about 3 inches of snowed which filled up the inside of the walls.

hopefully no more snow and no more frost.

dont let the nice weather fool you

mother nature is a tease. thats right, she does pretty much what she wants, when she wants and those who think they can predict her actions - soon realize its at best, a 50-50 shot at getting it right.

it snowed yesterday. march 31, a week or two after the start of spring and we get almost 2 inches of snow at 1900 foot elevation. and boy am i lucky to live below the snowline (yeah, right)thank goodness i didnt fall for mother natures tease of the last 2 weeks and put anything in the garden. this type of weather is even risky for hardening off tomatoes in the garage.

the weather folks at channel 3, who i hold in pretty high regard even though its a crap shoot, missed this last one by - oh about 15 miles (and that would be pollock pines, where they thought the snowline would be.) they predicted snow down to around 3000 foot elevation, like i said, we got it at 1900 foot elevation.

farmer fred, who lives down in the flatlands doesnt put any tomatoes out until national tomato planting day (april 28) and with good reason. so heres to another 4 weeks or so of no planting.

happy april fools day. btw - the above is all true and not an april fools joke.

this one is for chris j.....

its been awhile since i have posted, primarily because not a whole lot has happened in the garden. at nearly 1900 foot elevation, even planting on farmer freds bday (april 28) is a chancy option - but my tomatoes are percolating along and i have some pictures for an update.

my seed guy - keith - has done a good job this year, although we lost our first batch of seedlings; keith bought seed warming mats and that solved our problem. in the off season, keith worked on soil mixes (he rolls like that) and believes he has a good soil that allows good growth - organically. looking at those seedlings, i would say he is right. i will get them in a couple weeks and start hardening them off and hopefully they will be in the ground the first part of may.

some garden activities that have occurred - i have been pulling out burr clover that has popped up in the beds and i did land a bunch of blue berries and some more fruit trees. i will check the digicam to see if i have pics of those tasks to put up here too.