2014 garden update

Cannot believe how fast time is rushing by!  here it is well into February already and feel like I’m wayyyyy behind on the garden and such

Did not get fall seeds planted.  when the COLD hit, had some seedling carrots in the ground and some store bought broccoli.  last I looked ground around them was FROZEN solid

See that the garlic is coming up nicely.  After our early December cold, it warmed up considerably, and even though the nights were freezing, day time temps were in the 60’s.

Now we’ve had a little (and I mean LITTLE) rain, and the sun is coming back.  See the onions are sprouting also.

In the greenhouse, the lettuce seedlings that were just one or two leaves are not much more than that.  Have gotten no other seeds planted, but did buy some good strong lettuce, spinach, kale, bok choi, and pea seedlings.  Yes, for the price of one of those pots of peas could have bought an entire packet!!  Still, did get them into pots in the greenhouse and they seem to be doing okay.

SAD BEE NEWS, think the bees are done for.  Not positive yet.  There was a dramatic reduction in the bee population between the middle of December and the end of January. Was it the quality of the sugar I was using?  Was it disease?  Did the Queen die?  is it a natural population drop for the season?  Suddenly there were VERY few bees.  Of course, the only way to know would be to open the hive and have not done that as I didn’t want to stress out further what might be a small viable population.  Have continued to feed, even though there were only a few bees visible.   Then we had this little spurt of winter storms and there seemed to be nothing happening.  Its supposed to be warm again this weekend, so we’ll see if there are still any there.

There is still much garden clean up to be done from last year, and have to get into strong gopher barricades. 

BUT FIRST, get seeds started this weekend in the greenhouse