Elderflower Cordial

Pick elderflowers in the morning.  Fill jar and cover with alcohol (I used 100 proof vodka).   Weigh down flowers with a second jar or glass to avoid oxidation. (Optional).  Steep 2 - 4 weeks.  Add sugar or honey, strain and bottle!  

Praying Mantis Sighting

A praying mantis egg case hatched close to this site because I've spotted many immature mantids running around.  Did you know they have 5 eyes?  2 large compound eyes and 3 simple eyes between them.  

What's Happening in the Garden This Week?

Well, actually these photos are from last week but, close enough!

Cabbage: Red Express and Golden Acres

The hops finally outran the chickens munching on them and can provide some shade

Single leader tomatoes: Juliet

Tomatoes

Onions in bunches of 4

Potato patch

Green Arrow shell peas

Belstar broccoli

Broccoli getting its grow on

PA Native Plant Bed

The Audubon Society at Beechwood Farm Nature Reserve in Fox Chapel PA has an excellent selection of ethically propagated native plants.  Who could ask for more?  I am tickled pink about some perennial flowers and shrubs I was able to get from Roxanne, the native plant queen.  Every year I add a few new ones to our plantings.  

Going with a purple/blue themed flower planting up against Jason's yellow studio

What did I get? Well...

• Sensitive Fern (so cute...check him out in the little pot in the picture below).
• Leather Flower (a native clematis.  Score!)
• Blazing Star
• Wild Senna
• Blue Lobelia
• Wild Geranium
• Spicebush
• Serviceberry
• Bloodroot
• Tall Tickseed
• Swamp Saxifrage (a kind of ugly little plant perfect for a marshy area...love it!)

Some of the plants are going in our lot next door to our house that we are slowly building soil in (literally, we need more soil here, not JUST soil improvement!) and some are going in my little purple flower themed bed by Jason's yellow studio building.  

A native clematis?  Be still my heart.

Roxanne gave me a gift of a small plant, American Columbo.  It is an endangered plant in Pennsylvania that they are trying to propagate and having trouble keeping alive overwinter.  It takes years to grow big enough to set seed, so my task is to try to get it to stay alive long enough to do so and then share the seed back with them and report what it liked as far as growing conditions.  Sounds like a fun challenge!

Evening Elderberries

iphone + dusk = grainy photos....buuuut, in any case,   The elderberry patch I planted last spring seems fairly happy and is ready to bloom soon.  I have Johns and Adams varieties as well as some wild elderberry plants.  My plan for the elderberries is to make a healing syrup for winter ailments, and of course leave a few for the birds (or maybe they'll leave a few for me).  To read more about the healing properties of the elderberry, read on here.  

Tallest elderberry on the left clocks in probably at about 8 feet tall.  Not bad for 1 year of growth!

Elderberries get overflow water from the rain barrel...they like it damp

About to flower

Of course when I planted my elderberries I had a bit of a mix up with labeling, so I know I have different varieties but as far as who is who, I haven't a clue.

Bee Update

The girls are doing well.  As far as my home hive that I split several weeks ago, both splits are doing well.  The laying queen in one is trucking along and I spotted the new virgin queen in the other hive and was able to catch and mark her (Lucky break...I actually saw her crawling on the towel I use to cover the open hive as I am working to keep the sun out as much as possible and keep the bees calm).

At Garden Dreams, I waited a bit too long to split and the girls got a bit cramped.  This is why I sold off most of my hives.  They need my attention in May and it is when I am most busy with work, but I make time for them on my day off!  And two hives is the perfect number for me (Oops now it is four hives again!)  You know you have waited too long to attend to your bees when you see swarm cells well on their way, which I did when I looked in a week ago.  The build up happens fast and you have to be on it, or they run out of room.  Swarming is the natural impulse of the honeybee this time of year, and we beekeepers try to gently dissuade them and ask them to stay with us a bit longer.  

Once I did split, the old hive that was now queenless because I removed the queen to the other split bearded out on the front of the hive every day.  They seemed cramped and grumpy, wanted to swarm but with no queen to take with them (that is totally a guess but it seems to make sense).  I had left them a queen cell to raise a new queen but had a feeling they would swarm with her as soon as she hatched, so something needed to be done.

Bee beard

New split with stuff in front, encouraging the bees to "reorient" to their new hive once they make it by the branch obstacle

So, I added a bit more room to the cramped hive by moving some things around.  When I inspected the other hive (the one that had the laying queen), I found lots of eggs, lots of capped honey, but not much open honey or pollen (food for the brood).  So, I had.....

1) Hive A (aka "Bee Beard Hive") who was cramped full of bees with no laying queen yet...hopefully a virgin queen running around in there somewhere because I saw a hatched swarm cell. (In case they swarmed with her, I left them another cell...maybe I'll live to regret it!)  They were short on space and chock full of honey.

2) Hive B with a laying queen and some capped honey but not much food stored for brood (pollen and open honey near the brood nest) and not as many bees, and some empty space.  

I had read about switching the positions of the hives so returning foragers enter the wrong hive and the weaker hive becomes stronger, so that made sense and that's what I did.   I moved the hive that needed bees and had extra space to the position of the original hive (before I split the hive in 1/2).  It seems to have worked, as there has been a lot of activity at the "weaker hive" and no more bearding at the hive that was so cramped days ago.  We shall see.

I also made a nuc with a waxed cardboard medium nuc box I bought from Dadant.  It is like a tiny file folder box but with bees inside instead of hanging files.  I went with two frames of brood with a queen cell with larva and royal jelly, 2 frames of open honey and a frame of pollen and a frame of nurse bees shaken in for good measure.  I hope they do alright as the temp is dropping into the upper 30s tomorrow night.  This is the smallest split I have made as I usually just use a proper hive.  I ended up putting a tray over top of it weighted with a brick to keep the rain off, though the waxed cardboard is supposed to hold up to several rains.  It is a temporary home, for sure.

Mini nuc

Medium waxed cardboard nuc

Medium nucs are hard to find, as most beekeepers use deeps for their brood nests.

Ventilation 

What's Happening in the Garden This Week

A heat wave has sent everything into Full Growth Mode.  Temps hovering around 90 degrees for the last several days.

My Ninebark shrubs have buds.  Looking forward to seeing what the flowers look like.

Soon to be squash patch...composted (kind of) chicken bedding where I'll plant the squash and and cover crop of oats and peas for the plants to ramble over.

Garlic

My PA native azalea, Pinxterbloom Azalea 

A Red Buckeye tree I got from Tree Pittsburgh, and my beloved Greek Bay (in the clay pot)

Chicken Milk Moustache....drinking kefir again

Grumpy Broody Hen went through a few days in the dog crate and is now back to herself with the flock again

My sylvetta and chicory mix from Franchi Seeds

Greens: mustards, romaine, pak choi

Green Arrow shelling peas (on left) and Conservor shallots (on right)

This asparagus is 2 years old.  We harvested for 2 weeks and then let it grow.

Experimental winter rye and woodchip bed.  The Juliet tomatoes are thriving...all the other tomato varieties seem pissed off

Ice water helps beat the heat

Hot bees have been bearding out of the hive a little