re: 2023 Spring Garden Thread

Pillage, I planted 8 blueberry plants in the fall too. 4 Alapaha and 4 Brightwell. Just fertilized them with Holly Tone a couple of weeks ago. They are leafing and have several flowers. Excited to see how they do.

They’re in an area of my property with pretty poor drainage, but I’m excited to see how they do. Friend of mine told me blueberries can handle poorly drained soils better than some other plants.

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what is everyone’s fertilizer regimen when sowing, transplanting and maintaining?

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When transplanting I put a little bit of bone meal and calcium nitrate in the planting hole. Once everything starts flowering I switch to a low nitrogen "bloom booster" fertilizer. Last year I used Sea Grow 4-26-26. But it seems harder to find nowadays. And what I can find has shot up in price astronomically. So I may try some Jack's Classic Blossom Booster 10-30-20 this year. It's a little more nitrogen than I'd prefer. But I'll probably feed less often. Every 2 weeks instead of every week.

I did get around to opening up the beehive yesterday. Finally!

They’re looking pretty good. They ate through a good bit of their honey. But still plenty left. There’s also a good bit of drone brood. No swarm cells. In my bottom brood box the comb is almost black now. That’s about 3 year old comb and I think it’s about time to start cycling those out. Gonna start dating the frames from here on out.

Good laying pattern on most frames. Queen still has some room to lay.



Love the different pollen colors!


Blurry pic of our queen hanging on at the bottom of a frame.

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And I'd be nervous as shite putting that frame back in with her hanging off the bottom like that.

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I waited until she crawled back up onto the frame. After that I basically finished up and closed the hive. I’m always nervous about rolling the queen!

Build a bat house?

Nope they just set up shop in the trees. I watch them come out of the trees at dusk in the summer, but can't see them during the day.

haha, thanks! I might need to put up a bat box so I can collect the guano.

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I've been meaning to build a bat house now for going on 15 years now.

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I've been wanting to do this but have no place to put it. I have no trees, the house faces the south side so I don't want the house showing on the front of the house, and I'm not crazy about sticking a pole up in the middle of my backyard.

I don't think Entergy would be too crazy about me putting one up on one of their poles either

Also, it is a night and day difference between how my seedlings looked in the storage room and now that they have been outside for over a week. Much healthier and popping up quick. I hit them with a little fish fertilizer as well. I think my dog got a whiff of that stuff and that's how one of my watermelon seedlings got knocked over.

I need to desperately get in the beds and give them some TLC. I lost control of the bermuda last year so I've got some serious work ahead of me. I'm hoping not this weekend but next, I can get in there, scrape off the pine straw, and take a shovel to the whole thing. Hopefully turning everything over will loosen up the bermuda to make it easier to pull but also let me work in some compost. I also need to attempt to do something about my 2 year old kale. They are probably 3 foot tall despite me me hacking them down to the ground multiple times last spring.

Nice! You’ll have quite the variety growing in your garden this year.

My potatoes are really taking off in the raised bed at the moment. I started raising rabbits a while back and I put about 50 gallons of rabbit manure in the beds before planting and it’s making a huge difference compared to my in-laws raised beds withou manure. Last year the only thing that produced for me was peppers can’t wait to see what the spring garden yields this year