Wow, that is extreme. We're lucky in that we're going from 4 ish to 30 in the afternoon. We've also had luck in stabilizing things by keeping a lot of stored water and soil on the greenhouse floor.
According to the weather dudes, you folks out west will be getting a warmer than usual spring too.
Best of luck!
In reply to eastpark :
But ShawnG lives in Eastern Canada, Eastern Canada starts at Hope.
That +45 was inside the greenhouse. Outside temperature was +24.
In reply to Rons :
You're not in eastern Canada until you hit Quebec... Then remember that 13 hours non stop driving to where I live in eastern NB and you haven't even hit Nova Scotia yet.
According to Vancouver, anything east of Hope is redneck apocalyptic derelict abandon, and not worth visiting. The sun may even rise in Chilliwack, and set in Tofino.
SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) said:According to Vancouver, anything east of Hope is redneck apocalyptic derelict abandon, and not worth visiting. The sun may even rise in Chilliwack, and set in Tofino.
I live a half hour West of Hope and we do have a different mindset from vancouver. We do not try so hard to save the world all by ourselves while preaching to anyone who will listen.
In reply to SkinnyG (Forum Supporter) :
For me it's a joke that reflects on things like the 5am phone call about closing out a mortgage and getting asked - oh we're young asleep?
Yesterday I added some bird netting to the dome house and moved some plants outside to harden off before they go in the garden.
Shortly after I found a welcome visitor in my tomatoes.
I was going to get the pressure washer out to clean the tractor when I realized the fire pump was down at the dugout and I only needed to build an adapter...
Used my fire hose and got the tractor washed in about five minutes...
Running errands today.
Picked up supplies to trellis the tomatoes, peas and beans in the garden.
Picked up more parts and made my irrigation system fully automated.
Big market tomorrow. Going to be a long day but should be worth it.
Sunday I'll be back in the garden transplanting like crazy.
Well, the market yesterday stunk.
Nobody wants to spend money right now. It's tax time and everyone seems to be feeling the pinch.
It wasn't just us, most of the vendors had a lousy day. I watched people walk in, look around and walk back out empty handed all day long.
Then the wind got really bad and the organizers shut everything down two hours early.
We didn't even cover our booth fee.
Today I got most of the direct seeded veg in.
Beans, Beets, corn, dill, carrots went in today.
Transplants start going in tomorrow.
Got my cherry tomatoes transplanted and a trellis started. The wind got so bad that I couldn't put down mulch without it blowing away
Forecast called for a thunderstorm so I put the mower on the tractor and mowed our yard and pasture.
Storm went completely around us.
It looks like someone actually cares about the place now.
Plus, I'm terrified of a grass fire when I'm not home.
Ooof. Long day yesterday.
I was out transplanting and mulching at 6am.
At 9ish I got a call from our bee supplier, they had a rough winter and wouldn't be able to fill my order.
It's too late to order bees from Peavey Mart so I delegated and got the wife unit to start trying to find us some bees.
We found a local guy getting out of bees who was willing to sell us all of his equipment, plus an established hive. This worked out great because we had to go to Saskatoon to meet with our accountant about our taxes.
We met the accountant in the afternoon, we're getting a refund for the first time in years because we're poor now. I'm finally a burden on the system!
We were set to meet the bee guy at 8:30 so the bees would be going to bed and we could move the hive.
We ran errands and got dinner while we waited for bee time.
Turns out buddy was getting out of bees because he ended up being afraid of them which left me, someone who has no experience except for a couple hours spent helping a friend who keeps bees and has read a couple books, to do most of the work.
I strapped the hive together so the lid wouldn't blow off, taped the openings shut with duct tape and we lifted it into the truck. He got stung once, zero stings for me.
We paid him and drove home, getting in at 10ish. Jenn and I drove into the bee yard and unloaded the hive onto a hive stand with no issues.
It's late, we went to bed, I'll deal with the hive in the morning.
Slept in a bit this morning, made breakfast and went out to check the bees at about 10am.
I've never done any of this stuff before so here goes.
I loaded up the smoker, put on my bee jacket and veil, got my hive tool and bee brush and headed to the hive.
No gloves because you lose dexterity and can end up crushing bees. If I get stung on my hands, oh well.
I smoked the hive entrance to calm the bees, then gently opened the lid and puffed in some more smoke before opening the lid entirely.
The sound will make you nervous, just an angry buzzing with bees all around you and crawling on you.
Deep breath, stay calm, move slow, don't swat....
I found a really neglected hive. Bees will build comb where they're not supposed to and glue everything together if you don't do a little maintenance once a month or so.
Sorry, no pictures, I was preoccupied.
I started scraping off the extra wax, brushing away bees, smoking and working slow, getting it to a point where I could pry the frames loose and start checking them.
I had brought another new hive out and set it up next to this one so I could transfer the bees to the new hive in case the old one was more rotten than it looked. I'm glad I did because I broke the top box getting the frames out.
I started removing frames and inspecting them, moving them to the new hive as I went.
The old hive had a rotten top cover and most of the traffic was coming out of the top and not much out of the proper entrance. The bottom board and entrance looked pretty filthy and partly blocked. Another good reason for a new hive.
Bees build upwards so one trick to give them room in the spring is to swap the top and bottom boxes. My inspection was also letting me move the frames from the old top box to the bottom new box.
Good news is, I was finding healthy combs with fresh brood and capped honey, I wouldn't have to feed the bees to get the colony nice and strong.
I moved all the top frames to the new bottom, took the rotten top box off and sat it in the grass so the bees could find it and clean any honey and wax out of it for their own use.
I added a second box to the new hive and started checking the bottom frames. It was less good news in the bottom. I found three frames with bad foundations and in poor shape so I shook all the bees off and left the frames outside to be cleaned. I also found two frames with mold in them, this happens when the hive is in poor shape over winter and the bees can't regulate the humidity in the hive well. I pulled these frames out as well, after dumping the bees in the hive
I replaced the bad frames with five brand new frames so they can build fresh. The new top box will have lots of room for the colony to grow.
I didn't find any signs of disease, mites or hive beetles so, hopefully I will have a healthy colony in a few weeks.
I'll check on them again in a week or so to see how they're doing and to see if I still have a queen.
All done and no stings!
New hive:
The elder trees around the property are so full of bees that you can hear the buzzing when you walk by.
Lots of bees loaded with pollen heading back to the hive. Yay!
After the bees were done, I transplanted more peppers and tomatoes, then went to the mailbox to pick up my tree seedlings.
Spent the afternoon potting dogwood, lilac, willow, cherry and Scots pine.
I have raspberries and Saskatoons to deal with still.
Garlic is finally starting to show up.
I love how quick you went from snow to spring.
In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :
It's crazy.
No "60 days of grey and wet" it went from -5c at night to +5c in the span of a week or so.
Like we had winter until someone flipped the switch from "winter" to "summer".
You are really encouraging my thoughts of saying screw it and getting out of the rat race.
Keep up the good work.
Been a busy week.
Our flower bulbs appear to have been a miserable failure. Evidently planting them in raised beds simply allowed them all to freeze and die over winter. Every one I dug out to check is soft and moldy. Lesson learned.
The garlic which was planted in the ground and mulched is coming in strong.
We have my wife's stained glass and my woodworking in a gallery in Manitou Beach, hoping it brings some sales.
Our tree seedlings showed up so they're all potted up and growing roots.
We have three markets this weekend so we're going to be busy.
I mowed the slope where our fruit trees are going and built the trellis for the raspberries.
Markets were OK. Better than they have been. We made enough to cover our table fees, fuel and put a little money in our pockets.
Talking to a friend of ours on the coast who has been at this a lot longer than we have, craft and farmers markets are dead all over this year. Economic troubles have everyone watching their money more carefully. Her sales are down by about half.
Found a great deal on a ceramics kiln for the wife unit. $400, needs a new element and some parts for the kiln-sitter (control box). It's not a glass kiln but it's not $2000 either. If I retrofit the old control box with a new digital unit, we can control heat up and hold times so she can fire glass with it. Parts are ordered already.
My beans, peas, radishes and potatoes are coming up well. The crazy wind here is knocking crap out of the tomatoes and peppers. I hope they do OK.
We need more birds around to help control the bugs. Rather than spend time building bird houses, we saw this idea somewhere and decided to try it. Chipped teapots are $2 at the flea market.
We also discovered that we have some new additions. Three new kittens from our barn cats.
Hive inspection this morning, finally remembered to take pictures.
I'm lucky, my bees seem to be calm, happy bees.
Very happy, there's brood in the comb so more bees coming, the queen is laying eggs well and a bunch of frames are chock full of honey and very heavy.
Once they've filled most of the frames in this box, if they start making queen cells, I'll try to split the colony. As long as I can do it by mid June.
If not, I'll stick a honey super on top and see if they will give me honey this year.
In reply to ShawnG :
I am blown away by how much progress you've made in such a short time. How much of the farming did you already know how to do vs how much is on the job training / learning as you go?
I grew vegetables in my back yard but that's about it.
I'm learning as I go, I love to read so between books and the internet, there's not much you can't learn for free these days.
I should also add, being terrified of failure and not having a plan "b" will do wonders for your motivation.
We had a thunderstorm roll through last night, 2 inches of rain overnight.
It was calm this morning so I mulched two beds of potatoes and a bed of beans before the skies opened again.
The mulch seems to work really well at keeping the weeds down. I like it better than weeding. Apparently i can grow lambs quarters and couch grass really well.
Garlic is coming up well, next year I'm not going to mulch the bed over winter as it only slowed the spring germination. The beds where I pulled the mulch off are much farther along than where I left it on.
Once the garlic is a bit taller, ill side dress with fertilizer and put down milch to keep the grass down.
I was going to sell the old Ford but I had brainstorm today and measured the track width, it's the same as the tractor. This means I can fill the truck with manure or mulch and drive down the row with it. The truck will straddle the row exactly the same as the tractor. Should be a time saver.
Not sure why I didn't catch on to that before.
I have a friend with a big commercial garden. He no longer plants anything below ground. He windrows compost and cow manure and plants everything directly into the row. He can pull potatoes out just by tugging on the stem and the whole root assembly comes out clean. And when you cover the ground with compost weeds are much less of an issue.
In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :
Yup, we considered that but didn't have the resources to put it in place.
I get roughly 9 tons of free fertilizer from the wife's horses every year but it needs to age.
I'm hoping that we can transition to a system like that over the next few years.
That's the problem with tillage, it keeps bringing dormant weed seeds to the surface. Unfortunately it's also the only way to really break ground out here.
Eventually I'm hoping to not need my rototiller anymore.
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