Bee update

As I detailed in my last post, we installed our first package of bees on April 30th. After our installation, we weren’t sure whether the queen survived her accidental early release. We did our first nervous check in the late afternoon of May 4th. We just opened the hive long enough to get a peek and take out the empty queen box (the only reason we hung it in between the frames like you would if there was a queen in there was because it was covered with bees at the time). We didn’t remove frames but they were hanging out on the right side of the hive, which was getting the most direct sun, and looked like they were drawing out comb. It was chilly that day with a high of 60 and had been rainy the day before. They were very docile, and didn’t take much notice that we were even there. We closed up the hive quickly and let them do their thing.

The next mini-check was Wednesday, May 8th. I think most beekeepers wouldn’t advocate for frequent checks before two weeks but I was really nervous about checking for any obvious signs of an absent queen. I was not present at this check but my husband and our neighbor examined them and even got some photos for me! (I was on my way to Atlanta for a conference for work).

 

 

Chris excitedly texted me “they have honey in there and some dark yellow comb” and said they were “drawing out comb like crazy.” They had continued to move across the hive and were on the first three frames. So that was a good sign.

We did a “two week check” on Tuesday. They’ve drawn comb on about five full frames, and we pulled out the first frame to get a look. I think I saw some larvae and eggs, as did Chris, and there was some capped honey and lots of nectar and pollen! The key to this observation is that if there are larvae and eggs – we have a queen. The bees were rather cranky and defensive and Chris got stung – which I felt bad about, but his protective jacket and gloves that he, in a dubious show of bee-macho-manism, thought he “wouldn’t need” are on their way from the beekeeping supplier. I think we also need to get our smoker really going before we delve in. It had just started smoking and they weren’t really too bothered by it, so next time we are really going to get it going. I noticed the other day it seemed to be working much better when we had set it aside and were done with it. I didn’t get any photos of this because Chris was getting stung and he was wearing my gloves, so I didn’t feel like getting my hands in there unprotected at that moment.

In any case, this was not technically a correct full inspection as we wimped out and just checked the first frame. Most beekeepers would tell you that you need to check each and every frame and look for the queen and larvae, etc. on each frame as well as have a purpose in opening the hive. I don’t expect a ton of eggs or larvae on the recently drawn out comb but who knows, it could be there too. I am pleased that so far, they are using the Duragilt foundation that I wasn’t so sure about (after I’d bought it, of course) and working away. We are still feeding them a 1:1 syrup of sugar water and will keep right on feeding for the next month or so. Every time we’ve been out there at the garden to water or lay down mulch, we’ve seen the bees bringing in bucketfuls of pollen and foraging very busily. Truly amazing creatures.

I hope they like the home we picked out for them.

 

There is an amazing diversity of plant species in this community garden space.

Blueberries.

 

Peach trees!

 

Our garden, which is fully planted and thriving, is mulched and about 8 feet away from the hive. I didn’t take any photos of our garden . . . did I mention I am not good at remembering to take photos?

Growing season is well underway, and the bees arrival

It seems that the past few weekends have absolutely flown by, but have been jam packed with being out of doors and getting things planted. It makes this little gardener’s heart very happy!

In addition to my small raised bed plot at my community garden and the straw bale garden I started, I was also given a very large plot to work with by the garden managers. I would estimate it is roughly about 10 x 25 feet, maybe a little bigger. The community garden had a gentleman that came out to till some areas up and he tilled a little spot towards the tree line, right where we thought the bees could go. So it is just about perfect – close to the bee hive, but not too close.

Chris and I prepped the bed by carrying and wheelbarrowing in 400 pounds of compost that we mixed into the bed. We also carried in pine straw mulch, to create paths in between sections of the plot. AND we carried landscape fabric, patio stones, cinder blocks, and the hive itself. All that trotting back and forth between the truck and our plot took a majority of our day we spent out there on April 21st. The hard work felt amazing, though – the temperature was perfect, the sun was shining, there was a slight breeze. At the end of the day we had laid down landscape fabric around the perimeter, made our paths, planted seeds and pepper and eggplant seedlings. We planted tomato plants last weekend, as one of our kind neighbors gifted us with some transplants from his grandpa’s greenhouse. This is what the garden looked like at the end of the first big planting day, April 21st. The weeds are much taller surrounding the plot, but I’m going to do my best to beat and trample them down.

I really don’t care for the landscape fabric look, but it is completely utilitarian right now to try to keep the grass and weeds that are just begging to pop right back up at bay. I want to get some wood mulch or branches or something throughout the summer to make it more of a permaculture plot.

We planted: Lazy Housewife beans, Provider green beans, Russian pickling cucumbers, two types of eggplant plants, two types of bell pepper plants (I can’t remember the varieties as we picked them up at a gardening center on a whim), sunflower seeds and cosmo flower seeds for the bees.

We planted tomato plants and basil plants last weekend. The tomato varieties are Atkinson, Homestead, Mortgage Lifter, and another heirloom variety that I can’t recall but I snatched up in a frenzied trip to Whole Foods with my family that was visiting. Luckily we kept our labels so I am excited to go back and see what I have going. Sort of funny that I am less obsessive about the specific plants I put in this year when I have all this space to try to do whatever I want. I figure I might as well try varieties that are known to do well in Southern climates and see how it goes. I’ve never met a garden fresh tomato I didn’t like, anyways. The majority of the seeds are what I picked out in the winter of 2012 for my garden that didn’t get to happen last summer.

The seedlings I started in late March are still fairly small and rather spindly. I wonder if the garage is not an ideal place to grow these little plants, as the temperature probably varies too much. If I can get these tomato, eggplant, pepper, kale, and basil seedlings through, I will plant them in pots at home – my flower seeds did nothing. Whomp whomp.

I have radishes, chard, arugula, carrots, and lettuce growing beautifully in my containers at home, plus my strawberry plants in their tower are doing well. Time to harvest some arugula for sure.

Oh, back to the garden – the straw bales are composting nicely. The big weekend we planted things, I threw some watermelon, muskmelon, pumpkin, butternut squash, and acorn squash seeds into the bales. Everything has germinated except for the muskmelon and that is because fire ants invaded the bales. I’m going to replant them as I think they have mostly vacated the bale after we attempted to drown them out. Fire ants are basically the worst things ever.

 

I didn’t mean to turn the straw bales into a squash area. But we’ll see how it goes.

Ah, and this brings me to the bees. I had wanted to take tons of pictures of the “installation,” which is what beekeepers call dumping a new package of bees into a hive. However, it was getting a bit late, I was wearing my beekeeping suit and melting, forgot my camera, and we potentially lost the queen in the middle of everything. I’ll back up a little . . .

Here is a three pound package of bees, which is anywhere from about 10,000 to 15,000 individual bees, with one queen. Chris got to pick them up from the Birmingham Botanical Gardens where the drop off was. They were packaged yesterday morning in Montgomery, so I think our bees were a little friskier than most packages of bees typically are as they did not have to travel very far for very long. There is a can of syrup in the middle of the container that they can feed from during their trip, but our can was pretty full.

I gowned up, Chris of course didn’t wear anything, even his veil – that is the first and last time he will be getting into the hive without eye protection, but I digress. We headed over to the hive and gave the cricket box a light misting with the sugar water mixture I had made up a couple nights before. This makes their wings sticky and preoccupies them a bit as they lick the sugar off each other. The feeder was already full and ready for them at the hive opening. We carefully opened the box, held onto the queen box so she wouldn’t fall into the box, and pulled the syrup can out. The queen was well marked and alive and had two companion bees in her cage. Now here is the funny part – Chris accidentally pulled the cork on the wrong end out. Imagine a small box with a screen on one side and a cork on each end with a twisty tie on one end. You are supposed to pull out the cork on the end that has a sugar plug which keeps the queen inside the cage for a few days. She is then suspended in between some of the frames so that the colony can get used to her while the bees slowly release her by eating the candy plug. Well, we pulled the cork out, attempted to hang her between the frames, and Chris goes, “Oh, look, there’s the queen. She’s out.”

Since he didn’t do the beekeeping class, he didn’t realize how big of a problem this could really be! I started to panic and told him we had to quickly dump the rest of the bees in and cover it up to keep her in. He is convinced she is in there, but the main concern is that she has already been killed by the worker bees as she is not recognized as “their” queen. But we won’t know for sure unless we can spy her in the hive or wait for them to make comb and then watch for eggs.

I consulted the local experts and one said to go ahead and get a new queen ordered, another said to wait. I’m learning this is typical advice you will receive as a beekeeper – everyone has their own opinions and answer, even regarding seemingly straightforward issues. I am opting to wait though it makes me nervous.

Here are a couple post-installation shots.

 

The photos are quite crummy as they were taken with my iPhone and I was standing a short distance away. You can see the large number of bees still in the cricket box, right? Chris went to the garden this evening to water and was able to pick up the empty box as they are all out of the box and in the hive (we assume). He didn’t open the hive but said there were tons of bees coming in and out and crawling around the outside of the hive opening. They will need their syrup replenished tomorrow so I am going to head out there and just do that but not disturb them for another day or two. When I do check them, I am going to bring home the empty deep super sitting on top and also grab the empty medium super sitting off to the side – Chris brought it out there not knowing we wouldn’t need it for awhile.

I would like to intall a package of bees without accidentally releasing the queen and perhaps after they have been in their package for a day or two – makes for less lively bees. The upside is that I don’t think we had any dead bees in the box; apparently, it is typical for a 2-3 day old box of bees to have about a half inch of dead bees along the bottom of the box.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that I have a queen that is alive and has been accepted. Not exactly sure how long I will give them before panicking and ordering a new queen, assuming I can get one. A hive without a queen is not really a hive, and the bees will start to die off or take off without her before too long.

We’ve been eating kale off the plants that I planted way back in November. They are gorgeous and huge. I’ve been pinching off the flowers and they’ve been getting bigger and fuller. I also planted some more arugula, basil and zucchini in the small raised plot.

Isn’t this lovely?

SPRING!!!

Prepping and planning

A few weeks ago, I got a big shipment in the mail.

 

It was super fun to check out each and every beekeeping item I had carefully chosen.

 

This is a large plastic entrance feeder. New bees need to bed a sugar syrup mixture for the first few weeks or so as they are getting adjusted to their new home. I think I am going to feed them until they won’t take it any more – many beekeepers advocate for feeding aggressively to help the bees become as healthy and resistant to invaders as possible.

This is my beekeeping suit. I tried it on, it doesn’t fit super well and I look pretty creepy but I think it will prevent as many stings as possible and thus give me a confidence booster as I get used to being around bees. I promise a photo of me modeling it here eventually.

This hood zips onto my suit. Only downside is I can’t wear it separately. But I like that it is all one piece and I can hopefully just hop into and zip up and be ready to go.

Here is Chris’s veil, or a veil that anyone can toss on if they want to get up close and personal. I took this with me when I went to see the two packages of bees being installed at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens for my class the other week. I paired it with my new gloves with long sleeves and venting.

They don’t fit as well as I would like but will be good for starters, I think. My hands look like Mickey Mouse’s hands in them; a little bit unsettling.

 

A smoker, along with unpictured smoker fuel. I think working with the smoker has me more nervous than the bees themselves, for some reason. This may be an initial job for my husband, who has no fear.

 

This is a hive tool. It is used to pry the frames out of the boxes when the bees glue them together as well as pry the lid and cover off.

 

This is an IPM bottom board, or integrated pest management bottom board. There is a screen in the bottom with a foam grid that slides in an out. The screen serves to ventilate the hive and functions to prevent varroe mite, the scourge of beehives. I think the grid allows you to count the number of dead mites that drop through to count them in some way and give an indicator for when to treat with medication. I hope to never use medication, but we’ll see.

I didn’t take any photos of the hive box pieces, foundation, or frame pieces – they aren’t too interesting looking unassembled, which is how I ordered them. I spent a few hours last Saturday in front of a retro “Real World” marathon on MTV building my hive boxes on the living room floor. They are pretty much the easiest thing ever to assemble. I haven’t put together any of the frames and foundation yet – it is a bit tedious, even though I got the Duragilt foundation which is easier to assemble. (I’m a bit nervous about the type of foundation I got – I didn’t do much internet research before settling on it, so let’s hope for the best –more on this later). I also got an inner cover and a shiny aluminum lid to go on top which also aren’t pictured.

I painted them bright white, too. I accidentally bought an extra hive body – I had meant to buy just two, with a medium super. To explain what this means – a hive body is the deepest size “box” that sits at the bottom of the hive. This is where the queen lives and her brood live. The worker bees make honey here too. A “super” are subsequent boxes that get added on top of the hive bodies. These are where the honey is taken from. Even though it is unlikely I will get much honey this year – due to my late start and needing to leave all honey in the hive bodies for the bees to get through winter – I thought since I was placing such a large order I would go ahead and get a super. You never know.

My plan was to just start with two hive bodies and possibly adding the super on top, depending on how things look later in the summer. More than likely as we move into winter, I will just end up using the two hive bodies. I am glad to have the extra hive body (a third one, can’t believe I somehow ordered three of these) because next spring, when my bees are going strong, I will need to take a few frames of brood and bees and pollen out – called hive splitting – and put them in a second hive. So I’ll be mostly ready to go, minus some assembling and painting and getting a second bottom board/inner cover/top/feeder.

I also put together my grow light system that we built in the spring of 2011. Pretty slick, hmm? PVC pipe, fittings, chain link, and shop lights. I think we put it together for well under $100 and it comes apart for easy storage. Somehow it made the trip to Alabama and I even found all the pieces, including the timer for the lights and my heat mat.

 

Since I am using this blog as a modern garden journal (just like Thomas Jefferson did), I want to note what I started from seed this year.

 

I planted a variety of seeds from my Seed Savers Exchange seed collection; four types of tomato, kale, eggplant, pepper, basil, lavender (almost pointless to try to propagate but oh well), Bells of Ireland flower, Bunny Tails flower, and pansies. I did a flat of veggies and a flat of flowers, just to mix it up a bit and see what I could grow.

I have my mini-greenhouse set up in the garage, and made the mistake of taking the lid off the veggie flat mid-week last week. I think it got too cold or dry for them, and noticed yesterday that some of my basil and tomato sprouts were wilting. Grrr. I replanted them today and put the lid back on. I was trying to avoid “damping off,” or fungus that occurs when wet conditions are left for too long, and instead either froze or dried them out. I’m already feeling like a month behind with my seed starting – but hey, I’m an Iowa girl and we aren’t even dreaming of tomato seedlings at the beginning of March! I am still not used to the seasons here – mostly because it never felt like a winter that I could understand or connect to. Also, this has been the “longest winter ever” here and planting in general has been delayed.

All in all, I was proud of what I accomplished last weekend.

This weekend, I picked up lemon thyme, stevia, and chocolate mint plants from my favorite gardening place I’ve found here. They were healthy and ready to be potted. I also planted swiss chard, lettuce, Tom Thumb peas, arugula, carrots, and radishes to three of my window box planters. I left these planters out all winter and planted some greens in the very late fall. They didn’t give me too much but kept the soil loose. I mixed in some fresh soil and dragged them out front so I can keep a better eye on them and water them on my way out the door each morning. Again, this is probably considered late to be planting these spring favorites but the weather hasn’t cooperated much, and I was out of town back home a few weekends ago. So, we’ll see what we get.

One final project this weekend that I spontaneously decided to follow through with: straw bale gardening. I got the latest copy of my Acres USA magazine and there was an article about this very topic. Basically, here’s the scoop: get some straw bales. fertilize and heavily water them for a couple weeks. plant things in them. things will grow.

There’s a bit more to it than that, but here is the gardener who created this concept’s website for more information. One thing that is appealing about this method is that it is cheap – we bought three straw bales at Lowe’s for $4 a piece. It is also essentially weedless and easily manageable. You can fertilize them a variety of ways, but basically you want to get in some nitrogen. As you fertilize and water them constantly, they begin to heat up and decompose, and create a nice little warm spot for plants to thrive. At the end of the season, you can spread it out as compost as that is what you are left with. Many, many people all across the interwebs have had great success.

I checked with my buddies that are in charge of the community garden to see if they were cool with me dragging some straw bales and setting them up near my raised bed. They said “YES!” and so that’s what we did. They are wanting to do some different gardening techniques and methods at the garden so this was good timing.

I decided to use some of the incredibly rich, compost-like potting mix I picked up (Happy Frog) and scatter that on the top of the bales. The official way to do it is to use lawn fertilizer or bone meal, but I don’t have any of those things and didn’t want to run out to Lowe’s again. So I am trying it this way. I saturated the bales with about 3-4 gallons of water. I am hoping for some more rain tonight and will try to swing out there after work a couple days this week to continue to drench them.

 

Chris wanted me to “post on your website” his own homesteading project – deer meat smoking. He loves what people call “snack sticks” and decided to make about a thousand today with our neighbor, whose dad has a super nice smoker.

 

Here are some photos of him making a huge mess but having a grand time.

 

 

After several hours of stuffing casings, fiddling with the smoker, and cleaning up – we should have enough spicy, smoked deer meat to last us through the zombie apocalypse. Speaking of which, time to get back to the season finale of The Walking Dead! If they kill off any of my favorites (Daryl, Hershel, Glenn, Maggie, Rick, Carl, Carol . . . in no particular order) I will be very upset!

Learning to be fearless

Even though I haven’t been posting much, my homesteading/gardening fervor has continued to percolate throughout the winter months. I don’t feel like my first Southern winter in any way compares to winters back home, but I have definitely noticed the additional few minutes of sunlight at the beginning and end of the days the past couple weeks. Spring is definitely just around the corner.

One thing I’ve been up to since October is volunteering and taking horseback riding lessons at a wonderful equestrian center in a small town nearby. I have been doing nearly weekly riding lessons on Wednesday evenings after work and then helping out with a class on Saturdays. The center is designed to accommodate young people and adults with a wide array of cognitive and physical disabilities as well as at-risk youth. It is such a wonderful place, and I am so grateful to have found it. I’m learning so much about handling horses and how to have confidence around large animals. Each horse at this center has their own history with varied difficulties – swayed backs, rescued horses, horses whose families could no longer care for them but weren’t ready to retire. I adore everyone that I get to work with and learn from, both human and equine.

 

The temperature was pretty nice yesterday so most of the horses opted to pop their heads out of their stalls, saying hello to whomever strolled by.

It is also time to start thinking about gardening. I went through my seed inventory and have so many varieties of veggies to squeeze into whatever space I can get my hands on this year. I am going to grow in containers again this year and out in my little plot at the community garden. I’m mulling over what I want to plant where. I also think I am going to start some seeds this year, even if I only grow 1-2 transplants of each type of tomato and pepper plant I want to try.

I asked for a new composter unit for Christmas from my hubby – and got one!

 

It looks a bit like R2D2 and in this photo appears huge even though it isn’t really. I wanted something like this so it could be transported where the whim of the Army takes us next. Plus it is really heavy duty, can be spun and thus “turned” as often as I want, and animals are not able to get into it. It feels so good to just toss any non-animal/dairy food waste out in R2D2 instead of the garbage and know that it is going towards something. Even if I accidentally let a bag of herbs go slimy in the fridge, I know it isn’t being completely wasted.

Another little project I am cooking up is beekeeping. I’ve written here before about my admiration for bees. I got to thinking over the winter that even though I can’t have chickens right now, there is another creature out there associated with urban farmers that has an even smaller footprint.

 

And wouldn’t you know, there was a Beginner’s Beekeeping Class about to start the first week of February at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. The class is instructed and held by an active local beekeeping society – the Jefferson County Beekeepers Association. I decided to take the class and even if I decided against keeping bees, I would at least learn something and meet some people. My books and a couple catalogs are pictured above. Three classes in and I am fascinated and on board. I am a little scared to be surrounded by thousands of bees, but am pushing through the fear for the promise of honey and pollinators. I am planning to suit entirely up until I get more comfortable with the process and am not as likely to get stung that way. The experienced beekeepers that run the class are very wise and the first thing they addressed was stings and allergic reactions – their point was that you are not highly likely to die from a bee sting, which I think was reassuring for most of the attendees.

I don’t think my house, though, is where I will “keep” the bees. As I’ve mentioned, we are renting a nice house with a teeny tiny yard with neighbors very close by and do not plan to be here forever; I am still actively campaigning for home buying this spring, but that is another topic. However, I spoke to my friends at the community garden and as it turns out – they would love to have a hive or two of bees! I decided to commit already so I mailed in a check for a package of bees through the Association. Now there are many decisions to make about the type of hive, suit, tools, etc. This purchase goes directly against my “consumption fast” I have been sticking to pretty well since Christmas (no unnecessary purchases – only bills and food). But . . . well, I can’t have chickens right now (maybe this summer) and I can no longer fight the urge to raise animals, grow things, and create!

I’m planning to meet up with my friends at the garden soon to scout out the best location for the hive. I went out there today with Dixie to see what ended up growing after I scattered some seeds out there last November.

 

The pea plants got frozen and are crumbling but I left them to completely die off so that their roots can release some nitrogen into the soil. I had some carrots that I could pull, and the kale plants are coming along! I am hoping they get really nice and big over this summer. I think when it comes time to put more things in that space, I’ll pull the smaller two or three and just let one or two grow up. I did some weeding as well so never mind those creeping greens along the edge of the photo.

This raised bed is fairly small – I would guess about 4 x 4 feet. As you can see, it was constructed with cinder blocks and I think I’ll use the holes in the blocks to grow things as well. They are about a foot deep, and maybe 5 x 6 inches. I could do one or two carrot plants per block, a couple radishes, a bush bean plant, Tom Thumb pea plants . . . I don’t want things that will get too tall or else they will block the light.

The carrots were crunchy and super sweet. I washed them up, peeled them, and had a little snack once I got home. The carrot tops went into R2D2. I only wish now I had planted an entire bed of carrots last fall.

New Year, new books

I seriously can’t believe it is already January 2013 and that I haven’t blogged a thing since November. I am not quite sure where the past two months went, particularly December. I think I was trapped in the occasionally mind-numbing daily grind as well as holiday and travel preparations. We had a wonderful holiday week in Iowa with our family and friends and traveled back a week ago. A lovely respiratory virus came back with us though it took a few days to appear for me. I am home sick today and figured I might as well make use of my time resting on the couch.

Despite not sharing any of my gardening/green/sustainability thoughts or intents for awhile, I continue to spend most of my free time reading, dreaming, or thinking about all of the above. I got a bunch of new books over Christmas  - several were gifts, some I picked up on my own at my favorite Iowa bookstore.

I am looking for some inspiration, particularly with container gardening ideas. This is that time of the year when the seed catalogs begin to arrive, and it is hard to not want to go overboard. I think this year I am going to grow some seedlings with my grow lights like I did a couple years ago, but didn’t last year as we were trying to sell our house and it seemed like it would be too messy and distracting. We have plenty of room to set up the tables and lights in the garage. I still have my seeds from last year I didn’t get the chance to use but I will probably compulsively buy more.

I came across an awesome article on Pinterest about straw bale gardens. I think this will work wonderfully in our backyard – we have full sun, but terrible soil (an inch of topsoil on top of rock is not the ideal environment for a garden) and raised beds is not an option as we are renting. Plus, if we happen to move this summer (I am actively hunting for the perfect buy – small, not too far from the city, with some space/land, in a cheaper bracket than we bought previously), we can transport them if need be.

I planted some winter greens back in . . . November, I think? I seriously am not sure when I plopped them in the soil, but the arugula is doing wonderfully. It is growing more slowly than it would in the spring or summer, but it is amazing to me that they are growing at all in January.

 

The parsley and sage are also doing well this winter.

 

As for New Year’s Resolutions, I’ve decided to focus on being less wasteful, thriftier, and saving more money. As I mentioned before, it is really difficult to recycle here in Alabama and much easier to throw everything away. We’ve been doing pretty well with piling up our recycling in the garage and hauling it away once a month or so. I’m really trying to crack down on food waste in particular. I cook almost everything I eat from scratch but am guilty of allowing leftovers to languish in the fridge. I guess the goal is to make every meal so delicious that we don’t want to waste a bite, but that doesn’t always happen. In any case, I am working on bringing all leftovers for lunches or freezing leftovers if sick of them. Which reminds me, I have minestrone soup in the fridge I made last week that needs to be rescued and frozen ASAP.

As for being thriftier, I am learning a lot from the book above, “Be Thrifty.” It is pretty amazing how being thrifty and sustainable often go hand in hand. Homemade dish soap and laundry detergent, anyone?

Oh, is it November already?

I have not totally abandoned this here little blog, but instead found myself in my usual post-growing season period of disinterest. I have noticed this the past two years that I’ve gardened, and I am not proud of this characteristic, but seemingly by the time late August-September roll around, I am just ready to be done gardening. Any gardening project I have in the works or necessary end-of-season cleanup I find difficult to get motivated to complete. I think this will be especially weird to get used to living down here in Zone 7b/8a (Birmingham is riiiight along the dividing line between these two zones). Where I come from, we have our garden beds about emptied out and tucked in for the winter by the end of September, early October – here, I can still plant a late fall harvest of greens or overwinter them. It is just a different way to experience the seasons. I finally feel like it is autumn, as the trees are lovely and the air is cooler most days than they were for most of September.

I have been puttering around doing different growing and outdoors activities, though. On September 9th, I planted some seeds in my little community gardening plot.

I even brought over one of my trellises I had made last year for cucumbers and melons. They are easy to take down and reuse for more than one growing season, and I am so glad I didn’t let Chris talk me into getting rid of them when we moved (I prevailed with the majority of my gardening tools and equipment, hehe). I scattered a ton of different greens seeds – kale, lettuce, my remaining bush bean seeds, and some carrot seeds. Along the trellis I planted two types of peas – sugar snap and snow pea.

It was a particularly lovely September Sunday late afternoon and Chris was able to finish driving the fencing stakes to support the compost heap we had helped make the weekend before.

I think I got back out there once more to check on things, but didn’t bother to take a photo until I swung through on September 30th. Things were not growing as well as I would have hoped!

About the only thing growing well were the peas; the only other plants hanging in there were couple bean plants, a few fuzzy carrot tops, and a couple sprouts of kale. I think this fall has just been way too dry, and I have not made the effort to head out there and water. There was about one weekend in September that I remember it rained nicely; other than that, nada.

I decided on October 7th to see whatever grew underneath the lush sweet potato vines I grew in the tall potato bags, as well as what grew in the bucket of straw and potato eyes.

You are looking at it! Some very tiny potatoes, about 15 of them, with a few no bigger than Robins eggs. The potatoes that grew were along the bottom of the bucket, where the soil was, and there were none in the straw.

The sweet potatoes were not very large, and I think I was overambitious and put far too many plants per bag. I should have done one or two plants maximum per bag. The potatoes that did grow were tangled and twisted up – I think I got about seven or eight. They seemed to want to grow outwards, not downward, as they really only took up the upper half of the potato bag. Interesting.

I also decided to clean up my pots from this growing season. I don’t think I mentioned yet that grasshoppers and at least one other pest (some hornworm looking thing) completely decimated my beautiful swiss chard, kale plants, and green beans that I planted. I didn’t notice the damage until they were too far gone, so I waited till they were skeleton-like plants and then tore them out. I am wondering whether I should be concerned about eggs or larvae currently hibernating in the soil of these containers? I also am surprised that they even found my plants in my tall containers, but a good lesson for me to not be so lazy.

My herbs are still going strong – parsley, basil, sage, thyme all look great. My mint, which I don’t have a photo of, dried out a bit as did my rosemary. I am hoping if I start watering them better, I can resuscitate the rosemary so it will overwinter. We’ll see.

I stopped out at the community garden today with Dixie to get a little fresh air and let her stretch her legs. My sad little plot still has some vigorous peas climbing up the trellis with some blossoms as well.  I ripped out the two bean plants that were shriveled and dead. The carrot top fuzz is a little bigger, and there are a couple kale plants doing fine.

I was also inspired by a story on winter greens in this month’s Organic Gardening to re-plant a box of arugula, a box of spinach, and more Swiss chard in my containers in the backyard. I realized that though I am really enjoying all the squash and apples I can get my hands on, in any form, eventually I will want some greens again. Isn’t it so much easier to step outside in the chilly air in December and snip the greens rather than paying too much for produce that has been shipped from far away? I say yes, and hope I have some success. I am going to see how cold it gets and how far I can push just keeping the greens out in the open without having to cover them. Should make for an interesting (to me, anyways) experiment. I feel almost certain my desire to garden and see green things will pick up here after a month or so of late fall/early winter and limited exposure to sunlight.

I have been coveting owning a home and land lately. I am trying to make the case for buying a house next year (I know, we just sold our house by the skin of our teeth!) but I am just ready to own again, even if it is only for a few years before we have to pick up and move again. I have been checking out the real estate listings for acreages. There are actually a lot available just outside the city, some with upright small barns and pastures to boot, all within commuting distance to Birmingham. I keep telling Chris – if our dream for the future is to someday own a small family farm in Iowa and live as off the grid as possible, why not practice at it and hone our skills while living wherever we are living? It would definitely be risky, but I think it is a discussion worth having. We are really lucky with our nice, new rental home and our friendly neighbors. But I think we are both wanting way more space to stretch out in. I know Dixie wants more space, too.

$6 for eggs

I came across this blog post today from The Kitchn, one of my most favorite recipe sources. It touches on the debate over whether it is “worth” it or not to pay $6+ for a dozen of pasture-raised eggs. I err on the side of yes, it is to me, but it is an interesting question, as this is not necessarily and affordable price for many or a price folks are generally willing to pay.

If I had my own chickens as was the plan when this blog began, I would be able to smugly think to myself, “I get my eggs from my own chicken, so hmph.” Hopefully I am getting there.