re: 2023 Spring Garden Thread

Garden is soggy, but the water receded pretty fast. Gonna try to get the rest of the pine straw down. Also I just finished checking all of my squash for vine borer eggs and still no signs of them so far :knockonwood:. Being that a lot of people around my area are reporting SVB activity I figured I’d be proactive.


That oughta hold ‘em off for a while.

It should keep them safe at least until the squash starts flowering. I’ll continue monitoring the blue hubbard plant and my trap (green canister hanging on my fence).

Also I need to get out there and prune the tomato plants a little bit. So far I’m not seeing any signs of BER. So fingers crossed there.

I built a new bed to transplant some black eyed susans into and used a big scoop of my compost to sweeten it up

got a couple volunteers LOL. I guess I’ll find out soon enough what they are

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Sorry for the image sizes. I forget how to adjust them on here.

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I’m good.
Nice pics.

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That’s good news. Colony must’ve been really strong.

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Yeah, I've underestimated how quickly they can build up in my area. Thought it may be a bit slower because of all the pasture but that doesn't seem to be the case. They plain ran out of room and started backfilling brood cells with nectar. The old queen's wings were clipped so I'm assuming she tried to swarm, couldn't fly, and ended up dying on the ground. That probably left all the workforce she was bringing with her to return to the hive.

It's also my first spring with bees so I'm still learning as I go. But the queen cups back on March 4th should have been an obvious sign.

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But if you’d like to resize in the future, you just put “width=xxx” right after the image link. With xxx being a number like 300 or 500.

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I'm almost positive that the first time I learned how to resize images, it was you telling me how to do it in an earlier year's Garden Thread

Looking great. Much drier than mine I've got a handful of wilty potatoes. They didn't like all the rain. Hopefully they'll bounce back in the next couple of days.

After replanting same rows of corn multiple times, I’d almost given up. 1 shot just above the eye of little beotch eating a kernel yesterday and I’ve got renewed hope.

I got these last year and had the kids paint them for Mothers Day. Great pots. Looks like I missed my window in picking some up this year.

Dang you already got some butternut growing! You’re killing it!

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Dang you already got some butternut growing! You’re killing it!

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Only thing I’m concerned about is the flowers aren’t syncing up so that males and females are both out, so this one may not have gotten pollinated. It hasn’t grown beyond this size in days.

I finally got a couple of free hours on Easter and did a very quick cleanup of a quarter of my garden. Lots of bermuda to tear away but I was on a mission. I was able to get about a third of my bigger bed cleared out and put my tomatoes in the ground. It was well past time, they were starting to flower. I used the pots (aka solo cups) they were in to split my peppers, some of which have peppers growing.

I quickly got into my hives and found all but of the queen cells had opened. I ended up taking that 1 and attempting a 3rd split off into a 5 frame nuc. The original was still so packed with bees that I shook 4-5 additional frames into it and they were still healthy as far as population goes. I may try and move that nuc early in the morning tomorrow and let them re-orientate to make it easier to move them all back to the original area in my backyard.

I could have done more but wanted time with the family relaxing too. For now, I'm just happy about getting some plants in the ground. The 18th can't get here fast enough. I plan on taking that Friday off and getting everything done that I've put off the last 3 months.

Also looking into a career change. I saw my sons here and there but didn't see my daughter between Sunday to Friday last week. I love my family too much to do that for the rest of my life.