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!
Your peony is probably one called Sarah Bernhardt (sp).
It’s one of the few that will do in our area and bloom with any consistency. It’s going to like being against the house because of the lime leaching out of the foundation. :) Our soils are generally too acid for peonies.
I have mine in and old 65 gallon trash bin that someone left at an abandoned worksite. I cut a hole in the bottom just big enough for a square point shovel and take a few shovels full out the bottom and throw it on the top.
Just use enough water to keep it going now and keep turning it on a regular basis. Every two - three days is plenty. I toss leftover veggie stuff from the kitchen in too.
Thanks for the ping.
Excellent article.
A very nice thread, I will put a link for it on the survival thread.
Thanks, Granny! Still too busy to do more than fly-bys! Catch up later!
Thanks for the info. I have heard about our acidic soild but i don’t have enough experience to tell the difference. I know we have red mud/clay.
I have found since I moved into this house that the previous owners were quite the gardeners. I have things everywhere and stuff popping up all the time. The plants are not placed at random either. I am pretty sure the previous owners had a specific reason for putting everything where it is. I am glad they did!
Naj, you may be interested in the info of the post I am replying to....;)
Thanks Dollface-—
Yep, our soils are very acid— around here partially due to the pinestraw used as mulch.
That plus the heat, the dry etc... means peonys croak.
Another question about composting and I hope you or someone can help. I have another compost pile that I started last year and have been tending. This was a nice big pile but has dwindled because I used quite a bit of it to till into my garden soil. This is beautiful stuff ... quite black ... earthy smell and lots of "Rolly Polly" bugs, earth worms and some nasty grubs! This pile is producing some heat but nothing compared to the new pile.
Is it done? By "done" I am asking should I just use this compost as it is or mix in some of the new pile into it and see if it starts cooking again?
Compost piles can be used year after year, but I use mine as soon as it is done and start a new pile. You could add it to the other one, but if it has a nice black color and smells earthy, I’d use it this year.
Leave the earthworms in the compost when you throw it into your garden. They help keep the soil loose. The grubs will have to be picked out one by one.
The “rolly polly” bugs can be caught by using an aluminum pie plate with about 1/4 inch of beer in the bottom. Just bury it to the edge in the soil and they will crawl into the beer and drown. You can also use a half of a grapefruit shell and put it on the dirt upside down. The will crawl under it and you just pick it up and dump them into a bag and toss into the garbage.
This is what I want to do, since my garden is already set up and going great and tilling in more compost is out of the question now.
Good for you, don’t make yourself sick from overwork.
We can be read next month or next year.
LOL...
Already, wow, are you serious?! Congrats on your zucchini. ... sounds like a wonderful dinner. Your dogs like veggies? I’ve noticed at times only small bags of rice are available in my local stores these days. We eat a lot of rice, but I didn’t think it was that popular with everyone else.
I have only one zucchini plant planted out so far, as I’ve been nervous to plant warm weather veggies because of our freezes last week. I’m still waiting on planting out tomatoes as well. My cool weather crops are holding up nicely though.
I have planted out some calendula, snapdragon, english daisy, dianthus and a few other little flower seedlings I think will tough enough if it turns cold again.
Well, if the squirrels keep messing with the zucchini, Califreak may end up planting some squirrels six feet under ;)
LOL! Oops. : )
I don’t know if it’s the squirrels or that weird cat that keeps sneaking under the fence and playing with the plants.
It was so funny to watch. This cat was battling the zucchini plants the way some cats get nuts with a paper bag!
When it saw me, it darted under the fence so quickly I wondered if I’d really seen what I thought I’d seen.
I did cover the gap in the fence up and I’m planning on sowing more squash in a day or two.
That’s a good place for them! They’re digging up my green beans and the rat terrorists chase them off, but the rt’s do more damage running through the garden than the squirrels do digging. Sigh I think my garden is a major link in the food chain! Grand Central Station has nothing on my garden!
I knew what you meant—it was just funny!
And yes, I am serious about the zuks. And my dogs, Irish Setters, love veggies. Green beans cooked or frozen, zuks fresh or cooked. Oh and potatoes, do not get in the way when I am peeling potatoes for fries or mashed because the peels belong to them. Potato peels are like candy to them.
I give them raw carrots as a treat but they do not digest them at all ... they chew them up and then poop them out just like they chewed them. Cooked carrots are better and digested by them.
I pulled some radish from the garden last week and gave them a couple, leaves and all. Cashmere (female, 85 lbs) took hers and ran around like crazy then hunkered down and ate. Aladden (male, 125 lbs) just stood there and chewed the whole thing up right there.
Don't ask me what they do with watermelons!!!
Ok, I will tell. The fig tree you sent me is doing just great. New leaves and all. I planted your fig in the same hole that my failed Brown Turky had been.
I could not give up on that Brown Turkey tree after I dug it up so I put it in a container with some new comopost and soil. I have been watching it every day and this morning there is one (1) small sign of life. A small green bud. The other figs I planted at the same time have growth all over them and nice big leaves.
I’m in Missouri. We have unpredictable/highly variable weather here. There’s a saying that goes, “If you don’t like Missouri weather, just wait 5 minutes.” We have a decent growing season once it gets going, just hard to know when to start things. You must be in a pretty mild climate to have zucchini already.
Well, if I have as many tomatoes and squash as last year, I may try feeding them to my dogs. I may grow potatoes this year as well, although I probably should have planted those already.
Oh and rice ... I buy it in the large bags at Sams (same with my flour) and store it in 5 gal. plastic food grade buckets. I love rice and I like baking my own bread. Home made bread does not last long around here but if it does I refrigerate it and it makes the best French Toast!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.