Hummingbirds are out

A Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird looking straight at me!

First time ever, I witnessed a female hummer sipping quietly at the feeder and a male hummer came diving towards her in a pendulum style "U" shape - back and forth above her, maybe 5 or 6 times, almost hitting her while she was feeding and making a very strange chirping sound. Guess he was doing a mating dance of sorts, she didn't seem to impresses as she flew off in the other direction! lol

We have 4 feeders around the property. This one is at the back kitchen window and it motivates me to scrub some dishes as I have some entertainment in the process.

Lots of seed envelope patterns

Hope this link works for you. It takes you to a blog of maggie, who has designed a few seed envelopes. Plain ones and Patterned ones too.

Nice, would have come in handy during the seed exchange!

Caustic Musings » Lots of seed envelope patterns

Last Week of April

Thought I would pass this along: Its an oragami version of a seed packet, if you are into saving your own seeds!

Been starting seeds all day today. Need to put down the soil blocker and start some dang laundry. Making it a quick post by adding some pics from the weekend. Did get to go to a seed exchange party on Saturday night (from meetup).

Got to meet some fellow gardeners and took a tour of Erins really cool urban homestead garden (she is a follower - and has an awesome blog too ). Thought the making of her own beer was very cool. Dumpling has gently reminded me that we dont need to add any other projects to our rediculously long list of projects, so I will be content by just reading all about it for the time being :) One day though, may-be some wine making too hee hee. Brought some veggie and flower seeds to the party and exhanged for some scarlet runners beans, heirloom beans (dragon's tongue), jeruselum artichoke, a tomato plant, a jalepeno pepper plant, one super nice looking lemon basil plant, and...peanuts!? didnt even think about planting peanuts before! lol. Will give it a try and report back.



Greening of the forest and fields.
Start of our herb garden. Placed right in front of the vegetable patch. So far, lemon balm, rosemary, oregano, lemon basil, italian basil, sage, garlic chives, dill and parsley.

Squash and zuchinni seedlings srarting to take off.

First tomato flowers of the year!! Sweet 100 baby cherry tomatoes.

Busy Bees and Gardeners

Been a busy 2 weeks here at the farm - Hardly have time to blog anymore. At least I can still snap some pictures throughout the week and find a spare moment on Sunday night to upload and type a few notes!Here's dumpling checking the first hive. This was the first time that the hives were inspected since their installation. We have 2 hives and one is doing much better than the other. The hive with the top feeder had about 3-4 frames filled with bees working on making comb. The hive with the bottle feeder had only 1 frame. On the picture below I'm holding the sad little frame that had the only bees in that hive.

The other hive is buzzing with activity.

This is a shot from the more active hive, about 3-4 frames filled with bees.

This is me and dumpling looking to see if the smaller hive had a queen. We found eggs, so we think all is well. Maybe a problem feeding? Not sure why the drastic loss of bees but we will transfer a frame of capped brood from the other hive to help get the smaller hive back to par.

Carefully replacing the frame back in the hive.

Thanks to the TBA - they told us about the tip about gloves - apparenly the best kind are the dishwashing gloves from walmart! (and they had pink :) Even the expert on africanized bees used them, so we know they are A-OK.

Close-up of the happy hive. Both hives have babies!
We got the black frames, so it is easier to see the contrast of the white larvae and egg against the black backdrop.

In addition to working on the honey, we got the first 16 tomato plants is in today - April 18th!!- hope we are in the clear for frost free date!

Potatoes that were planted in late march are starting to pop up.

Hyacinth bean seed hatching...err sprouting! Huge seeds broke the soil blocks. Glad I got this shot because I came back a few hours later and they had already put out their first two leaves and were literally hitting the grow lights. I only had 5 seeds, so planted them at each of the corners of the garden. They will climb all over the fence. I read they can grow up to 1 ft a day when the heat kicks in. After watching the seeds sprout... I believe it.

Cucumbers! Have about 60 of these, so I will be sharing at the plant swap on April 24th.

Here is a picture of the garden after many months of tilling, adding fertilizer and finally making the row hills. It took a crew of us.

Me, Mom, Doodle and Dumpling all slaving away. The weather was quite perfect though. Low 70's so glad this got done before the scorching heat kicks in.

Here is dumpling getting ready to install the drip irrigation.

Mowing season is officially on!! Snapped picture of doodle on the infamous "Big Muddy".

And final picture of the week...You know you are a farmer when...You get a composter for your birthday present and are really excited about it!! This baby is right next to the back door so the leftovers and scraps go right in the tumbler, then right out to the garden.

Happy Spring!!

Gina and Chris

Rows Have Been Installed!!!

Just a quick blog to note a major accomplishment at the flower farm! Neighbor/Strawberry farmer down the road from us graciously installed the front rows of plastic for us today. We now have 7 Rows - each 150' long. This will allow us to have about 10,000 plants in this summer - minus weeding in the 90 degree heat! Feels very official now :) thank goodness for good neighbors! Better get back to starting more seeds -

Happy Easter!

Every March/April in Virginia Beach the Bradford Pear Trees explode with blossoms. Chris and I were always aware of them since they are a favorite in landscaping around this area and are quite common. The thing we never noticed before (at least until we got our bees) is that these babies are LOADED with flying insects. Bees, wasps, butterflies. The flowers smell kinda like stinky cheese and it attracts swarms of insects. We had just finished refilling the hives with sugar syrup and stopped by one of our Bradford Pear trees on the property and the trees are literally covered in bees. Got a good shot of a bee up close with its pollen sacks filled with yellow pollen. Heres Dumpling in his bee suit - asking me "do you see all those bees?! Couldnt figure out what that stinky smell was til i stuck my nose in a bunch of these!

The bees must like it. Captured one in action! Love the color of the sky against the white flowers.

Update on the Seedlings:

Planted over 1,000 more seeds this weekend. Its an exhausting process since I have to hand sift the compost, then sift the peat moss to make the soil recipe (about 300 blocks at a time), then punch out the blocks 20 at a time using the soil block maker, then label the varieties and finally place each seed in the divot of each tiny soil cell. Some seeds are so small I use a toothpick dipped in spit (yes you read that right! It's a idea I read about this winter and so thankful - it has saved me lotsa time. The method allows the seed to stick to the tooth pick, then releases when it touches the soil) Brilliant!

Ageratum (Purple Floss Flower) is the fastest, most robust seedlings I have seen of the entire batch started thus far. They literally started germinating in a matter of hours after they hit the soil blocks and are thriving under the lights. Starting another batch of 80 more today, and will be ordering more. Only got 200 seeds of these, so next time will be ordering thousands!

Sunny D is modeling our newest gardening gadget- The earthway seed planter. This baby is going to save our backs this summer. It works by creating a furrow (rudder like attachment), plants each seed for us by turning a plate inside that drops the seed according to our spacing, then covers them up with a chain that runs behind in perfect rows. We just have to make sure the soil is extremely fine tilled or otherwise the seeder will get clogged. It came recommended from "The Flower Farmer" book and set us back about $120 - but I am sure it will pay for itself in the first use and we will use it everyseason for years to come! Its good for flowers but also for planting rows of anything, like corn or beans.

Sweet peas are really happy out in the greenhouse. They are getting their first set of tendrils and I will place them outside once they start getting big enough to start climbing around each other. I am relutant to let them out to part with the safety of the protective greenhouse just yet - I have heard slugs can devour them in an evening...

Only planted about 100 of these. Wish I would have started more - have a feeling I will always be saying that! but we will also plant them in the late fall, so they will be ready for early spring next year. (got a late start in March so hopefully they will put out some flowers before the intense summer heat begins)

They seem very happy!

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.