Our Lady of Perpetual Parsley

. . . and kale, and, alas, Oxalis too.

It's true. If I never wanted to grow anything but kale, tomatoes, beans, parseley, cilantro, and oregano, I could dispense with all deliberate planting.

Missed dropped tomatoes, kale plants gone to flower, bean roots hibernating underground, my garden is full of potential. If the circumstances are right, as in the tiny kale forest below, up they pop.

I let the parsley go to seed because the bees like it. Bonus is I never have to deal with fiddly parsley seeds and their picky germination requirements. Apparently, benign neglect is the key.

There are downsides, I assume. I haven't figured out all of the succession keys yet, so I have either "all" or "none" as the settings. Remember the Tunnel of Cilantro?

I also can't really choose with any pinpoint accuracy where these plants will show up. True confession -- I may see parsley all over as I may have flailed some seedhead branches all around while singing a few weeks ago. . . "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyyyyyyyyymmeee." Still, it's a generalized planting technique.

However, if you like serendipity, if you are lazy, and especially if you're willing to eat stuff when it feels like showing up -- I am still trying to force pint after pint of lovely Sungold cherry tomatoes on neighbors, and may hand them out as Halloween treats tomorrow -- I can heartily endorse it as a technique.

What pops up without effort in your garden?

New year, new tasks

I used to wonder why so many farming stories included work on irrigation systems. Apparently, they were all true to life, because they require upkeep -- even our tiny backyard system does. Fortunately, I have competent farm help. Eric fixed the two broken places AND extended the one that no longer reached the reduced bed. Taz helped. A lot.

(Apparently a plumber's job list is never done. I hear him plunging the bathroom sink right now. What a great guy.)

Some of the volunteers I don't even remember planting, like this mustardy thing. I don't like these; they're too spicy for me. Maybe the chickens will.

Nasturtiums are easily the most giving and re-giving plant. Although I asked Ellie not to plant them, because they're invasive, she did. . . and I'm pulling them from the pathway already. And yes, I know they're edible. . . just not high on my list of "yummies."

Red Russian kale volunteers big enough to make up a dinner this week. Terrific. They are so much bigger than the lettuce I actually seeded at about the same time. Just goes to show that when they get to do their own thing, in my yard at least, they're generally very happy.

Cilantro Pathway furnished enough for a pot of Red Lentil and Lime soup this afternoon. Again, when I keep my hands off, things seem to go really well.

Sarafina even put in some time giving the asparagus a haircut. There were already some spear-like shoots. Hopefully this will tell it that it's winter and it should think about a spring resurgence.

Another sign of the times is my children risking their life and limbs to get the Christmas tree in the green bin. I think this picture is after it served as a sled down the front steps a number of times.

All that's left for this week is to draw the garden plan, taking into account where the already-sprouting seedlings will go, and then plant the rest. Fun times.

I meant to do one of these

I still like the copper chicken sculpture. Maybe I should try to make more garden art.

Oddly enough, Tor, Ellie, and I aren't as good at archery as we hoped. The box with a turkey drawn on it remained mostly unscathed, but the irrigation pipe is a goner.

Cilantro can be picky for me -- won't germinate, bolts immediately, etc. But let a plant go to seed, and it's Salsa Pathway! Maybe I'll use the last of the tomatoes and make a batch, after harvesting with nail scissors.

Both coming and going

 It's never "done" outside, right? Not only that I could make things look a little better or work a little more efficiently, it's just that with a living system, there is no "done." One thing could come to an end, but the circle of life rolls right on, over and over and over. Bane and boon to me, and a good thing to remember when I have an overdeveloped sense of my own importance. Some day, I'm going to be compost, too.

Lettuce seeds are finally, finally poking up. This is terribly blurry, but it's repeating all over a bed. The lettuces I planted from transplants are ready enough to eat tonight, once I figure out what to have for dinner.

 

The nursery-planted onions are also looking pretty nice, despite being used as a bed by Taz on sunny days. Will the dogs never cease their garden depredations? I hope someday to start enough cipollini from seed to grow jars of pickled baby onions. A girl (or future compost) has to dream, right?

From what I read, asparagus is supposed to be cut back when it dies for the winter. It's my great hope that that yellowing is presaging the winter die-back, because our seasons sometimes trick plants into acting strangely. The Anna apple behind the asparagus, for instance, is putting out a last two or so apples.

 

Even though it was chilly and overcast when I was out there, a few intrepid bees were flying. I couldn't catch enough with the still camera and didn't even think to use the video! I counted four distinct pollen colors -- bright white (one bee was almost completely covered with white pollen, in addition to her pollen baskets), red, and pale and strong yellow. I hope things are okay in the hives. Unless I see drastic and obvious problems, they're pretty much on their own until spring.

 

If this predator had been inside the hive, for instance, it would have indicated a weakening of the defense system. I watched for a good while and didn't see anything to lead to the conclusion that the yellow jacket was not scavenging among the dead bees out front. Every hive has some, and it's easy meat. Yellow jackets, the jackals of the skies. . .

Elsewhere, everywhere I looked, seeds I had not planted were leaping into growth. Some were welcomed, like this ruby chard. I don't like it enough really to plant it -- but it's nice enough, and edible, and I'll eat small leaves in salads and stuff the big ones, so up it grows, right by a snow pea.

 

I'm beginning to believe that some of the missed Italian shelling beans will actually get to produce a green bean or two before it gets too cold. I'd never, ever plant beans in September, but here you go!

  

Volunteer tomatoes, on the other hand, are going to be pulled no matter what the season.The little kale next to the onion gets to live until I want to eat it.

  

We're still enjoying the fruits of some of the volunteers. A Kubocha squash I didn't plant under the apple tree nevertheless just came out of the oven, soft and ready to puree for soup (yay for bacon trimmings to fry up) and the heavily cut-back kale is still roaring along. Since the tiny volunteer Red Russians among the onions are yet babies, these make a nice stopgap.

House o'Kale

Somewhere there lurk overview garden pictures, for another day, but last night there was a local gardener's meeting. I raced home afterwards to serve up the lentil soup my eldest had made (talk about wonderful; not only had she made it, but the parmesan rinds she added gave it depth and great savor). I worried a little that it wasn't enough food, but at the foot of the front stairs, guess what lurked:


Sauteed with garlic, this accidental kale made a lovely side dish.

A Day Late. . .

And a few queens short.

Yes, it's another bee post!!

My oldest hive has a queen I call "The Bomber Queen." I think she's about three, if the hive hasn't replaced her without my noticing, and the hive is everything you'd want in a beehive. Calm, productive both of brood and honey, just lovely.

See the abundance of stores? See the worker showing up with little suitcase legs of bright orange pollen? I love this hive.


I have a beekeeping friend who is very interested in breeding feral queen stock; reasoning, I believe rightly, that it's better to have a mixed gene pool and feral bees are probably more adapted to life here than queens imported from somewhere like Hawaii or Ohio.

In the past couple of weeks, we've been doing things to the Bomber Hive -- splitting it into smaller sub-hives, in hopes that by using one of his fancy "make a queen" kit thingies, we could raise up a whole generations of daughters that would at least have one rocking parent. Oddly enough, even though we put two sets of eyes, adding up to over 85 years of seeing experience, to work, we managed to miss the queen as we went through the hive.

So she went to Berkeley.

No problem, we decided -- we can raise queens there too. Here, the leftover bees will just raise up some queens all on their own. Bees manage to make a new queen when they're in need. For bees "in need" can easily mean "the people took the queen to Berkeley," so they just needed some early larvae to lavish royal jelly on and hey, presto, new queens.

Queens?

Yes, because it's always not a good idea to put all of your hope on any one larvae making a strong, healthy queen, the bees will just sort of make a few spare ones, too. I don't know -- maybe there are competing committees or something.

At any rate, we decided, hey, we can also try the method of putting queen cells off of frames into smaller breeding nucleus hives made from Stefani's other hive that specializes in bees and not honey!

Seemed easy, and yet. . . there are some things for which timing is fairly important. Comedy, for one, and probably juggling, and it turns out, queen rearing.

The little heat wave we experienced might have sped up the hatching for these new queens, or it could be that the two days, Wednesday and Thursday, that might have been good days for me to get in there and move some frames with capped queen cells were so busy I didn't get in until yesterday, but:


That cell, the one in the middle pointing down, the one with the nice large chewed opening in the end? Yeah, that's where the young queen was. She had gotten out. I didn't see her, but I wasn't surprised.

I did see evidence that she'd been around the hive, though:


See the nice, round-ended queen cell hanging down? See how it doesn't have an opening at the bottom, but a ragged hole on the side? Can you say "regicide"? Or in this case, I suppose it's state-sanctioned assassination, as the first or strongest queen to emerge will fight to the death other young queens emerging, and if she can get to some that aren't yet hatched, she'll take care of that little problem right away.

Sigh.


At least five total queen cells or former queen cells. It would have been nice to have gotten more, but now all I can do is wait until this queen manages to fly, mate, and begin laying eggs. In about 20 days I should know. It's been exciting, anyhow.

Since the beehives are right by the chickens, I managed to finally identify the tomatoes that volunteered in the chicken coop area:


Principe Borghese, the kind I wasn't going to grow this year, because I have so many awaiting foccaccia or sun dried tomato bread in the freezer.


It's probably appropriate that they're growing there, because they look like little monochrome elf eggs. Eggs and hatching, pretty much, all the time here.

First things first

Life with small children (okay, less small than they used to be, but old habits die hard) can often feel as though it's all reactive. You try to anticipate, but really kids are just bags of immediate wants and needs. I'm pretty spontaneous myself, but I do like some planful time. It helps center me for the onslaught of my days. If possible, I like to get up before anyone else, the time I used to run, and now I read the paper. Then I take a walk in the garden. Sometimes I hope that it's going to be a quick overview, but often I end up harvesting, doing stuff, getting happily side tracked. Today was a seriously sidetracky sort of day. The best!

I'm tickled at the bursting bounty of my bell pepper plants. I know that they need fertilization to keep going at their peak, and I have a low-tech idea for that which I'll blog about if it works, but still, just think of all the yumminess coming up:


The potato harvest seems like such a high return on investment. Somewhere the weights of the planting potatoes have to be written down. Even though I don't mean to, a visit to the potato bed seems to sneak in at least once a day. I'm not going to repeat the red and purple regular sized potato plantings -- the red ones are only good for boiling, really, and it's not my favorite preparation, and the purple ones are very . . . well, purple. Not for me.

But the fingerlings? They're called "Red Fingerling" and "French Fingerling" at the store where the original ones came from, and the French are buttery and fantastic. Maybe tonight we'll taste the red ones:


Can you see the "European Bell" pepper under that Early Girl tomato? Neither can I. Note to self, tomatoes are space pigs. Give 'em their own bed.


A quick tie up of a big branch and some judicious pruning freed the pepper to have at least a little light and some hope of fruiting.

The volunteer squash is doing fine -- I'm going to have to start walking over it soon. Of course, depending on what it is, I might end up tearing it out. It will be compost, at worst.


Today is the tomatillos last. The municipal green bin is being emptied today, and since I won't compost anything with this much powdery mildew, I was waiting for room for the plants. Any tomatillos worth saving will go into another batch of enchilada sauce, and then we'll just call it a day. I'm not up to coaxing them along. Maybe some year I'll fight powdery mildew, but not this one.


The Cherokee Purples are like little happy surprises peeking among the foilage.


Yesterday I managed to mostly turn under the cover crop. Now I have to find out what was supposed to follow the buckwheat, soybeans, and clover. I'm sold -- now I just have to make certain that I've scheduled cover cropping in between rotations, and find a source for modestly-priced bulk seed.


Flowers mean that beans can't be far behind, if the beetles don't eat them all. Little pests.


The other bean bed is happier with some iron slug bait. I was finding too many babies half chewed. We replanted in the empty spots, but I bet there's going to be enough for the whole year anyhow.


When I was ready to go in the house, the basket was much heavier.


Ten minutes after going inside, a freshly beaten egg and enough butter to make me feel a little guilty made a breakfast to seriously savor. That's the kind of fast food I can get behind!


Squash blossoms, Cherokee Purple tomato, and some of the volunteer tat soi from a path. Now I get to think of lunch.

Bees and tomatoes and beauty

Before the weather remembered that it was February, I did get over to my friend's beehive. She's been very patient with me, but would like to actually get some honey from her hive. If this hive doesn't step up, I may be reduced to sneaking filled frames over there to "find!"

One picture first -- this is how you can tell that a hive has been robbed of honey.See how the edges of the cells are rough, as though some little mandibles have nibbled the cappings away?


That was from one of my hives, the "dead" one.

In front of my friend's hive, there were a couple of drones dead -- I couldn't tell if there was anything disease-wise wrong with them, but they didn't look right. Perhaps they'd been preemptively pulled due to Varroa mites.


Inside, the hive looked relatively quiet:


I found some really wonky comb, and cut it off, but then saw that most of it looked pretty good. This is comb that was tied in (you can see the remains of the rubber bands in the picture above) from the top-bar hive last summer. Flat caps are worker brood, raised ones are drone brood:


There was enough brood to make me think the queen is doing well. I would have liked to reverse the hive bodies, but right about then I felt what I was pretty sure was a bee in my bra. That's a phrase I've never really wanted to use! Anyhow, that took the starch all out of me, and all I wanted was to get inside and disrobe.

So we put a honey super on, and I'll go back another day and switch the lower boxes. After it warms up, that is.

(And yes, it was a bee, but she didn't sting me before I managed to get her out of me. I was very very pleased by that.)

Tomatoes in February?


A front-yard volunteer has decided that it's time to bloom. I hope the weather holds. It's going to be fun to find out what variety is lurking under the lime tree. (Cue horror movie music.)


Lastly, while I'm all about the edible (I sort of get pretty gardening, but not enough to want to do it), I don't think a garden is enough without flowers. These happen to be edible Johnny Jump-ups, but I'm still excited about them.


It's going to be a pretty spring.