Happy Bee Day!

The day has finally arrived - we have been learning all about bees since Christmas, joined the Tidewater Beekeepers Association, and are ready to start our adventures in beekeeping!

Got our 2 packages of bees delivered Saturday night!!! 6 pounds of bees in total. We fed them a mixture of sugar and water (sprayed it in the box with a spray bottle). Sunday the wind picked up but we decided to go ahead and install the packages so the bees could get aquainted with their new homes.

Here is dumpling installing the packages.

Poured sugar water on them. They were all drinking it up - Too full to fly! also they dont fly when they are wet and sticky.

Knocking the bees out of the box into the new hive.

The hives are tied down because of the wind. Did not want these babies tipping over!!

Chris feeding the bees. Top feeder with rungs so the bees dont drown.

Delicious syrup. Might be all gone in a day or two. We will be back to check on the colony and refill until the nectar flow begins.

Checking on the queen. Yep she's there! Elongated body, bigger than all the other bees. Shes got to lay thousands of eggs in the next few months.

Dumplings masterpiece! We will "bee" back to check on them in a day or two to check on the colony and release the queens.

Been a very busy few days here at the farm! Chris and I were both sick with horrible colds all this week, but we managed to get alot of work done in the field and in seed prep. Chris is already tilling up the front acre and preparing the soil to be worked. Met with the power company to see about getting power out there for the well so we can get the irrigation installed. Plants need to get into the ground by the end of April, so we are going to be on short deadline to get everything ready in time!!

While watching him - I just keep hearing that song playing in my head "She thinks my tractors SEXXY!"

Liked this pic-I can vision what thousands of flowers in bloom with the bed and breakfast in the background will look like in a few months!

In addition to the front field, the kitchen garden is prepared and tilled too and all the hard work of getting tons of horse manure, chicken poop and leaf mold by the trailer load full seems to have paid off. The soil looks and feels totally different. The pic below shows where the row of zinnias will go to surround the garden, and on the inside of the fence is where there will be cucumbers growing up the fence.

We are on schedule for the seed starting so far and I have been experimenting with how to get more seeds on each shelf to maximize our tiny bathroom space.

Started the tomato seeds as well.
Got 5 different varieties going!

Experimenting with some trays, I found these for $1.00 at wal-mart. I can get 180 plants per tray, thats 720 plants per shelf. With 5 shelves thats a total of 3600 seedlings at a time!! Whoo hooo

Sunny enjoying the weather out on the porch

View of the kitchen garden freshly tilled.

All the bulbs are finally starting to spring up around the property. Got this shot during a sunset walk.

Lemon Basils are on their way showing first true leaves.

Rudbeckias are taking off too. These are so easy to grow, am sure I will be growing a ton of these. I am looking forward to gathering buckets full of their yellow daisy-like flowers.

Another view of the basils under grow lights

Sweet Peas busting out of their seeds. The seed coat is so tough. We managed to take the germination time from 21 days to 1 week by reading a tip about nicking their seed coat with fingernail clippers. This allows the moisture to contact the inside of the seed much sooner and shave a few weeks off their sprouting time. It worked like a charm!

All of the sweet peas are out in the greenhouse now. They are one of the only flowers I am growing that actually prefer the cooler temps, so they are out there in the hoophouse without any heat. I just tossed a sheet of plastic on top of them to prevent any birds, mice or racoons from trying to grab a snack. Only planted 120 sweet peas since we were behind schedule for them and should have gotten them in for the fall or at least a month or two earlier then we were able. Sweet peas are not fans of warm weather, so I hope we can get a few stems from them before the hot days arrive.

First Batch of Seedlings - Day 5

Daylight savings time is here! We are noticing the difference it makes to have some extra hours of sun after work. The rays encourage us to squeeze in a few more chores before heading indoors for the night. With a stretch of warm days in the upper 60's coming up this week - we will be tilling up the vegetable garden, marking out rows and plant things like elephant garlic, potatoes, and asparagus. Most of the flower seed babies are up and growing, well on their way to getting their first set of leaves...after only 5 days! I was able to get another 240 seeds in blocks tonight motivated to get the next batch brewing -

Rudbeckias

Lemon Basil

More Rudbeckias

First batch are being moved off the heat mat to make room for the next group.

Tonight these seeds got into blocks:

Blue Glitter Eryngium (80)

Digitalis Gigantea (80)

Digitalis Purpurea (80)

Blue Ageratum (80)

First Batch of Seeds - Taking off!

A few pictures of the week.
Finally I feel like we are able to start doing some real farm activites around here!

Preparing the front 1/4 acre - Composted Horse Manure. Thank godness for tractors.

First batch of organic seedling mix, ready to go!

2 heat mats to speed up the seeds sprouting

The potting bench dumpling made me, from cabinets! Best bench on wheels. great for storing all the supplies. Thanks dumpling!!!!

Potting bench in use! In process of planting 120 sweet peas.

The seeds of the sweet peas have to be nicked first. This speeds up the germination process since they have such a tough thick seed coat. Nicking them first allows the water to penetrate into the seed much quicker.

Planted Thrusday, Sprouting by Saturday! Thanks to the magic of the heat mats.

What was planted:

80 Lemon Basils

80 Rudbeckia Prarie Sun

80 Rudbeckia Indian Summer

80 Rudbeckia Cherry Red

80 Ammi - Green Mist

By Sunday the lemon basils had their first leaves coming up already!

First Batch being tucked in for the night!

Lots of compost on the way to going to be spread in the vegetable garden.

This was all moved into the veggie garden in about 2 hours.

First Bee of the season, a few things going into bloom now. of course mostly weeds.
Sunny Delight. The best kitty in the world. Loves to follow everyone around just to hang out!

dumpling found the perfect place for the beehive - Great windbreak and gets the morning sun to get the bees up early

First Warm Weekend in March

Ordered Seedling Heat Mats this weekend, basically my last component of the seed starting endevor. Organized my seedlings into Index Card files. (Dumplings idea of course!). This will be good since they are organized according to what row they are going into... We have 6 rows planned.

There are 450 plants in each row :)

Row 1 - Zinnias (I am most excitied about this row, thats why its facing the road!)
Row 2 - Rudbeckias/Shasta Daisy's - Many Varieties
Row 3 - Sunflowers
Row 4 - Bouquet Fillers/Spike Flowers
Row 5 - Smaller Flowers - Cosmos, Scabiosa, Dahlias, Celosia
Row 6 - Butterfly attracting Flowers (Dill, Butterfly weed, Butterfly bush)


Went to Michaels arts and crafts and got popsicle sticks to lable the seedlings with.

Have the biggest variety of zinnias - like 20 types. Very Exciting!!

Sifting out the peat moss to create the perfect light and airy seedling mix. All organic ingredients

After the peat moss is sifted...very light and fluffy.

These are the bigger chunks that I weeded out... put this out in the garden

Composting all winter...Looking for restaurants/coffee shops to donate non meat food scraps and used coffee grounds for the garden. Keep your food out of the trash...we can use at our flower farm!

We got a 5 gallon bucket full of used coffee grounds from Chris's Squadron.

The compost pail that we use.. Got it at tj maxx for $12.99 - Very Cool

Got to visit the bee yard with fellow TBA members this weekend! Our first real experience out in the field. After reading books and watching videos all winter this was a cool experience to get to hear all the bees buzzing around our head. I was only scared for the first few minutes but then got used to it. Of course I had the full bee suit, dumpling did not.

Poor dumpling.. He only got the veil and gloves. I could tell he was feeling alittle wary.

Feeding the bees. Looking like space cadets...but we learned a bunch!

Dumpling was inspired and finished sealing our 2 new hives. Our bees are coming next month!! The english hives are so pretty, will make great yard art with the copper tops. Bee-utiful!

I have plans to plant flowers near the hives that will make windbreaks and also provide pollen and nectar for the bees. We learned that mediteranean heather provides the first flowers for nectar production, as early as Jan. so I will definetly be on the lookout for that!!


Things are finally starting to warm up. It has felt like the longest winter ever with all these outdoor projects just waiting to launch!