Posted on 05/07/2008 7:50:50 AM PDT by Gabz
Wow! What an arctic blast! Can you remember a colder Good Friday and Easter? It wouldn’t be so bad if it had been cold all along, but to be in the high eighties and then wham! Frostbite! And then, to add insult to injury, it stayed miserably cold with repeated heavy frosts until at least the tenth of April! Condolences to all of you who had your warm season gardens planted.
The weather will swing in the opposite direction like a demented weathervane soon enough and we will be miserable with the high temperatures. Sure doesn’t look like we’re going to have much of a spring this year. Looks like it’s setting up to be a dry season, too. On the other hand, the spring flowers and greening up lasted a bit longer than usual this year because of the cool weather. Some years, it seems the azaleas and other pretties are here and gone overnight. This year, with the cool spell, they’re sort of in slow motion—blooming and lasting for a bit. The trees, all russets and golds and bronzes, have kept their early spring raiment on for us to enjoy, instead of turning green right away.
Speaking of remembering—many of you are old enough to remember when summer time meant going barefoot. Except for trips to town or church, shoes were abandoned the day school let out and forgotten until school started back in the fall.
Remember how you had zigzagging paths through the yard so you could avoid the big patches of clover? Remember why you avoided those patches of clover? You went out of your way because the clover was alive and working with honey bees and you didn‘t want to get stung. First, because bee stings hurt, and second, because you knew if a bee stung you it would die. Now, can you remember the last time you saw a honey bee?
Clover is becoming scarce in our over-manicured yards, but honey bees are practically non-existent. Bees are critically important for pollination. There are bumbles, and wood bees, and other lesser bees. They all do a fine job of pollinating—but none of them have the added benefit of giving us honey.
Here’s a scary fact: something approaching 80% of the honey bees in the U. S. have disappeared this winter. Not died outright, because there are no carcasses. Disappeared. The hives are mostly empty, the honey left behind. And not just here—all over the world devastating losses of honey bees are being reported. The correct term for this disappearance of bees is Colony Collapse Disorder—a fancy name for no one knows.
Theories abound. For one, something similar happened in the forties. Some scientists think it has something to do with cyclic sun spots affecting the earth‘s magnetic field—sunspots were worse in the forties, as they are now. Bees use the earth’s magnetic field to guide them as they travel to flowers and then back to the hive. So they all got lost—at once? That’s about as plausible as all of them being abducted by aliens.
Several types of mites and various diseases also plague honey bees—but both mites and diseases leave bodies behind.
Pesticides have also been blamed, but which ones, and why aren’t all hives, especially if they’re in the same place, affected?
So, what happened to the honey bees?
A simple explanation for pollination is this: the bees move from flower to flower, picking up a little pollen here, dropping off a little there, and presto! The plants are happy, the bees are happy, and we’re happy. The plants get pollinated, the bees collect pollen to make honey with, and we get our veggies and stuff. If there aren’t any honey bees to pollinate things, several things happen. We don’t get any honey, and crop yields go down—way down. Some of this can be counter-acted by shaking the blossoms of your crops together, mimicking the action of the bees. This can be done on a small scale, such as in your garden. What happens to thousands of acres of crops?
Of course, with the early warm spell, and then the week long freeze, we may not have to worry over much about not having any bees to pollinate anything this year. The cold weather damaged the fruit crops—grapes, fruit trees, blueberries, and pecans to name a few, and all suffered in varying degrees. The extent of the damage remains to be seen, but it’s a pretty sure bet that fruit prices are going to go out of sight this summer.
Reminders for this month:
May is usually warm enough to plant the things that really crave heat—okra, lima beans, field peas. Sweet potato slips are usually available mid to end of the month.
End of May is time to spray your azaleas to head off lace bugs, and your junipers and arborvitaes and Leland’s to head off spider mites and bagworms. Spider mites are tiny, nearly invisible insects that suck the life out of plants. When they attack junipers and such, usually what you notice first is a branch or one side of your shrub turning brown. Left untreated, spider mites can eventually kill their host.
Bagworms aren’t the ones that build huge webs full of disgusting yellow striped caterpillars, the ones that began in April and are crawling all over everything right now. Technically, those are tent caterpillars, and there seems to be an overabundance of them this year. Yucky they may be, but usually the birds will take care of them. Most of the time, they’re too high for us to reach in order to spray anyway. Bagworms are caterpillars that make a nest of juniper needles and hang from the shrubs and trees like forgotten Christmas ornaments. Of course, with all the chemicals that have been banned, picking the bagworms off may be your only solution.
Big reminder: Don’t forget that Mother’s Day is this month. Flowers are always a great gift!
Nascar Truck race is on and I will be on the Freeper thread. Look for me when ya see me coming and the Latch String is always out...
Hang in there, Gabz!
We went without electricity from Christmas Eve through the day after Christmas one year. Some drunken doofus took out a power box down the road...and of course the town didn’t want to pay double-overtime for a holiday repair. *Rolleyes*
Yes, the Gardengirl fig is doing GREAT! Do you know what kind of fig it is?
I posted my pictures of my garden on my homepage because I know some FReepers do not have high speed Internet and all the pictures would have really slowed this Garden Thread down. If they want to see it then they can chose to do so.
I am so glad you were able to save your freezer contents. We have a small generator that will run a frig/freezer, fan or two, and charge phones and computers. We bought it the day after Katrina hit this area and we lived off it for 2 weeks. Oh, it will run a coffee maker also ... we could not do without that!
I understand the rolleyes on that one.
This wouldn’t bother me so much if I could get out into the garden, but it just won’t quit raining.
My garden isn’t even tilled yet, LOL! I have about two weeks to get it together, and Husband and I are both so busy these days, it’s going to be a miracle if we accomplish it. (Plants are ready to go, but the ground isn’t!)
But, the fact that neither of us can live without home grown tomatoes and peppers will motivate us.
The weather has just finally warmed up, up here...but we’re to have a night next week when we’re back down to 36 degrees.
Enough! Uncle! ;)
Bless your heart!!!!! I have to avoid high picture threads and posts because of my dial up connection.
I literally live on the wrong side of the tracks. My best friend lives 9/10ths of a mile east of me, on the same road and on the same side of the road. She has DSL. I don't. Verizon has not come west of the railroad tracks which are less than 6/10ths of a mile east of me. And they have no intentions of coming west of the tracks in the foreseeable future.
Not sure what the proper name for your fig is. The cuttings were given to us by a friend who lives “Down East”. Think—the end of the world! Go as far east as you can—when you’re close to running out of terra firma, you’re Down East! Our original cutting came from one of the outer islands, called Davis Island, so that’s what we called it. Most of the downeaster’s have one growing in their yards. No telling where or when the original came from! It’s a bigger fig than the brown turkey, and not quite as sweet, but still very good!
I’ll try to work on a homepage—later. Greenhouse is slowing down but I’m still doing flyby’s and mostly reading hit and miss style!
My garden has to be RE-tilled. We’ve has so much danged rain, then the tiller decided to take a vacation............
I have nothing in the ground. Every time I’m ready to put corn in, it rains, same with the beans.
GRRRRRRRRRRR
Hear you loud and clear! We got our cold stuff out and it rained 10” in one day. Talk about concrete! The garden stayed underwater for three days! I figured we’d lost all of it. So far it looks great, and we finally got the warm stuff out. Now “Mr. Squirrel” has decided we planted it all for his benefit. He dug up some of my green beans before they even sprouted, he got most of my Indian corn, some of my sunflowers.... I’m thinking fried squirrel and gravy. Damned tree rats!
Completely off subject—Know anything about publishing? Maybe we could work out a deal! LOl
When my wife and I moved to Texas from Louisiana we had bad Internet withdrawal! Dial up only. And when Earthlink shut down the only local number we were using every call we were making was long distance. We decided to go with HughesNet Satalite for internet and cell phones for our telephones.
I think it’s partly because we have so many of the stupid things! Hunters used to keep them thinned out. Now everyone thinks they’re cute and feeds them. They empty out my bird feeders faster than I can fill them. I have 3 rat terrorists and they loathe squirrels but they do more damage to the garden chasing them than the squirrels do digging. Besides, the squirrels jsut wait until we go back in the house.
Visit my homepage and you will see my two Irish Setters as they are today and the fence I put up to keep them out of my garden.
Great pics, and your gardens look fantastic! We fenced ours in one year—to keep the dogs out. Voles had a field day—they ate EVERYTHING we planted. Are you sure I can’t send you some squirrels or voles or nut grass? LOL
What does this nut grass look like?
Bears? Yikes!
I’m picking! Trust me, you don’t want any nut grass! It’s invasive and almost impossible to get rid of. Each piece of grass has a “nut” for the root. Unless you get the whole nut, it just regrows. The nuts can be way down in the ground and they’re almost impossible to get out. The only thing I know for sure will kill it, short of a nuclear blast, is fencing the area and turning hogs onto it. They love the stuff. Short of that, sometimes shade will kill it, so you can plant pumpkins or sweet potatoes, something with lots of viny coverage to shade it out.
I have stripped them of all their branches and shucked all of the brown outer covering off them (kind of like corn husks).
I do have a question. If I use them right now (as fresh and green as they are) do I risk them rooting? I do not want this to happen at all! I just want poles for support not a bamboo grove!
I have no idea if they will root or not! Know nothing about bamboo. Keep us posted!
When they closed the local garbage dump a few years ago they cut off the food supply of over 40 Bruins raised on the stuff so they headed for the nearest garbage cans. The garbage company had to go the daylight pickup hours so people didn't have to put the cans out the night before...
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