Salad Days

For the past several days we have been enjoying fresh salads for lunch!  Here I am picking some spinach, and there is plenty of baby romaine and buttercrunch lettuce and radishes in the background to add to the salad.   I have about 3/4 of the regular gardens planted.  We got a good dose of much needed rain yesterday, so when things dry up enough to work in the garden I still have hot pepper plants to put in, and tomato plants and cabbages.  I also need to plant various root vegetables and pumpkins and more green beans.    It sounds like we will have a Farmer's Market this summer with some restrictions for Covid 19, but we are not sure of the start date.
     It is SO nice to have fresh vegetables again!

A very nice stand of spinach ready for picking.

In my greenhouse, enjoying the fruits of my labor.

Things Are Really Buzzing Now

After what seems like an eternity of cold, windy, rainy weather it is fairly sunny today with only a hint of probable rain.  Our bees have been holed up in the hives for days now, but today they are going crazy!  The whole yard is humming like a well oiled engine!  If I step outside I can hear the whole yard buzzing.  We are in a dandelion flow right now - and the bees DO love dandelions!  Beekeepers can never mow the yard when these weeds - er, "wildflowers" - are in bloom!  It is a good source of bee food.

Here is one of our hard working forage bees gathering pollen and whatever else on a dandelion.   Almost every dandelion in the yard has one or two bees on it.

One of many areas in the yard with dandelions.   I will have to wait to mow this area!

So many bees lined up to bring pollen into the hive!  Almost every one of our 10 hives looks like this.   We have the entrance reducer on right now until the hive gets going to help prevent predators and fighting.   With such a narrow opening for the bees, they wait in line so to speak.

Another hive of bees waiting in line to bring in the dandelion pollen.   This is a stronger hive, so the entrance is larger for them.

This strong beehive decided to use a crack in the hive for an entrance right from the very beginning!  So we are letting them "do their thing" if it makes them happy.

For some reason the bees have decided to get their water from this leaky hose fitting!  Once the bees establish a water source, that's it!  They tell the other bees, and that becomes THE place to get water!  I guess I will have to endure this leaky hose for a while until I can train them to use some other source for water!   I will have to make sure that I don't just grab the hose without looking first!!

Here is another bee getting water from my leaky hose outside of the greenhouse.

We doubled the size of our Upper Garden.  For those of you who have been to my house, you can see that this garden is twice the size it was before!  We intend to make wider rows that can be cultivated with a riding tiller.  This will save our old 70+ year old backs!  We have to garden smarter as we get older! 

Things are growing nicely in the greenhouse.  I am gradually bringing out trays of plants to harden up out there before putting them in the garden later this month.

Until I plant tomatoes here in the middle section of the greenhouse I have trays of onions, tomatoes, herbs and peppers hardening up. 

Here is some Tom Thumb lettuce growing.  I just love this small buttercrunch head variety.  Just one or two small heads of these lettuces make up a good bowl of salad for dinner.  When they are ready to harvest, the heads are about 5 or 6 inches in diameter.  When you cut the bottom roots off, the whole head just falls apart into small leaves that are easily washed for the salad bowl.   As you can see, I have some weeding and thinning to do here, though!

The long range weather forecast is for 70 degree temps.  So we will be busy tilling up the gardens again, and I will be spending hours and hours outside planting and planting, and planting......   Our growing season is only 90 to 100 days, so things have to be done right on schedule.    It will be SO nice to have fresh veggies again!