Harvested today, a variety I’ve not tried before but thought I might as well give a go because I’m struggling to get hold of any International Kidney. These are Red Duke of York.
They seem to be perfectly acceptable to me, but I’m not really sure they’re up to International Kidney as far as my wife is concerned.
I went to hunt for some kit in my bee shed today and as I turned around to close the door afterwards almost had my head taken off by a queen hornet leaving. I hung around for a while and she went back to a position under the ridge of the roof, behind a gusset that I added to give the roof more strength (presumably why I didn’t see her in the first place). I can’t have her setting up home there. She doesn’t seem to like the door being open, so I’ve propped it open for now and we’ll see what happens. If she doesn’t want to move on voluntarily then I might have to be a little more firm.
My concerns about one of my colonies potentially swarming were not helped today by far more action around my bait hive. I tried to follow the flight paths of the scouts though and they seem to be heading off the property to the north west so (crossed fingers) they’re not mine. I guess we’ll find out for sure soon.
Well, I’ve run out of compost for sowing at the moment, but I can buy a little time perhaps. I’ve not sown carrots nor parsnips yet due to the weather, so today was time to get on with them. I was going to experiment with multiple sowings of parsnips, but it’s way too late for that now so they all went in together. There’s still time for more sowings of carrots though, so they didn’t 🙂
I also got a bit more weeding done and spread more woodchip on some of the paths that still need doing. I had something like eight dumpy bags full of woodchip when I started and now I’m down to the last two because so much needs redoing. The old stuff has just been swallowed up by the mud.
Because if a swarm ends up somewhere like this, it gets expensive for someone.
I really couldn’t deal with this. At least some of the tiles would have to come off for a start and a few of them were already cracked and presumably couldn’t be put back. Neither am I a builder.
This one I had to leave to someone who knew how to make good again afterwards.
I received a call about a swarm this afternoon, but it didn’t go quite the way I expected…
The caller wanted to know if I had a box he could use to keep a swarm that had arrived in his garden. Seems an odd request. Why would I be selling hives? Or perhaps he didn’t realise quite how much a hive costs and thought people just give them away? As it happens, until I get these brood boxes made up I have absolutely nothing anyhow. If I have a swarm arrive myself at the moment I shall be madly assembling kit in the workshop 😀
As the call went on it transpired that he knew absolutely nothing about bees or beekeeping. Now I’m all in favour of people taking beekeeping up as a hobby, but not if you have no clue what you’re actually doing. And it’s not like there isn’t a fair amount to know, even to just get started.
Somehow I don’t think this is going to end up the way he thought…
And right next to some of my hives, too. Hopefully there’s at least some Spring honey there to be had, though if they’ve eaten it all on the days they couldn’t fly I shouldn’t be entirely surprised.
Anyhow, it means it’s time to go and put some clearer boards on and we’ll see what transpires.
More sowing in the greenhouse today. Mostly climbing beans and cucurbits — the stuff that needs something bigger than a module tray. Beans mostly seem to take care of themselves, but the last few years I’ve had problems getting cucurbits to germinate, especially the squashes and courgettes. I’ve thought about taking the covers off the propagators during the day to limit the heat and then replacing them in the evening to see if that helps. I reckon it gets pretty hot inside the propagator trays during the daytime. Perhaps first I should stick a thermometer in. Get some actual evidence first, hey?
I’ve never tried this variety before. They’re huge! Some pods are easily 100mm long. We’ll have to see how they go down with the rest of the family.
With my new-found space in the greenhouse, it’s time to catch up on all the sowing that I haven’t done for the last month because of the miserable weather. It’s quite a pile, having gone through my plan and dug out all the seeds that need dealing with. I’ve decided to alternate small groups of seeds with other jobs and when I run out of space (inevitable) I’ll take over some of my father-in-law’s greenhouse that he’s not using at the moment. Then just keep going until I’m done. Which may be some time 😀 Did I say it was a big pile?
