Forget Sowing, Only Go Winter Sowing!

Seriously, I don't know why I ever waste my time trying to start seeds indoors, when they rarely turn out as healthy as the plants that are winter sowed.  These tomato plants did so well in their mini-greenhouses.

I sowed these seeds back in January. Not only did they germinate, they are so big and healthy!

I'm only going to winter sow from now on!  It's so easy not to.  You just sow the seed in the winter outdoors, and forget about it until spring.  Totally easy and totally awesome.  The best part... you don't even have to harden off the seedlings because they have already been exposed to the outdoors.  Awesome!!

Adventures in Beekeeping: 3rd Inspection

Its been 2 months since I started my beekeeping adventure with my 3 friends from class. However, I have been behind with blogging about it. Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging, I wish I had more time to update this blog more frequently.  Our hives are located in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and despite it's urban location, the neighborhood is full of flora. The residents in this neighborhood are pretty serious about their gardening.

For example, this gorgeous rose bush is just a block from the hives. Stunning, right?

There has been so much activity at the hives. Here's a post about our 3rd bee inspection that happened on May 6th. These are photos of my beekeeping partners, Victoria in the white dome veil and Paul in the black veil.  In these photos, they are smoking the hive to get it ready for the frame inspection. In the last photo is Paul looking at the frame to check for healthy signs of wax, brood and pollen. 

The worker bees have been extremely busy with building brood wax comb for the frames. Brood are bee egg embryos. The Queen lays one egg per honeycomb cell. Within the frames, we are seeing lots of pollen and brood. The Queen has been extremely active with laying her eggs. A very good sign that the hive is healthy.

As I mentioned in previous posts, we maintain two beehives.  One in a backyard and one on  a rooftop.  Here is the one on the rooftop. In this photo, we saw that there were lots of bees returning to the hive after foraging for pollen. I love watching the bees flying back to the hive.  I can watch this for hours.

We took the cover off the hive and saw lots of bees on top of the frames.  Some were eating the pollen patty of food.  The pollen patty is full of nutrients for this young hive to feed on.

Here is a closeup of the top of the hive.

Paul pulling a frame out to inspect.

A closeup of the frame.  Here you can really see the capped brood.  And the pollen!

I love this photo. It really shows how many bees are flying all around us.

When we open the hive and inspect the frames, many of the bees fly out.  Then they all try to come back into the hive, here they are all bearded in front of the entrance.

And a closeup of the bearding!

After we were done with the inspection, we closed the cover. Then all of the sudden, Paul says, "Victoria, DO NOT MOVE!"

A bunch of bees had landed on her bottom.  Wowsers!  We took the bee brush and brushed the bees off! Thank goodness she did not sit down before we saw the bees on her!

After we left the beehives, this gorgeous flowering bush stopped me in my tracks. This is down the street from the hives.  How gorgeous is this plant?  I don't know the name of it.  But would love to find out.  Do you know what type of flower this is?  It's lovely!  I'm so happy that the bees have flowers like this to forage on!

I (heart) Back to the Roots

Last month, I wrote about how I bought a Back to the Roots mushroom kit.  I followed the instructions exactly.  At first I opened the front of the box and made slits into the plastic bag and misted it with the enclosed water sprayer 3 times a day.  I did this for a few weeks and nothing happened.  Therefore, I decided to dunk the entire bag of the oyster mushroom spore into water for 24 hours as the instructions read, and literally 5 days later.... Voila!  The beginning of baby mushrooms!  I think I actually jumped for joy.  Haha

Then it was Memorial day weekend and I was away for 2 days and when I returned, holy cow. Look what formed in 2 days time!  Wowsers!

Here is a side by side so you can see how incredible this is. A before and after.

I had to take pictures from every angle just so you can see how amazing this product is!

Doesn't this look just amazing?   I have to say, the mushrooms don't look exactly like the photos shown on the Back to the Roots website.  These are totally giant!!

Like, Oh My God, just wow!  I can't get over it.  I've always wanted to grow mushrooms and this is way too much fun!  (Man, that didn't sound as nerdy in my head.)

On the Back to the Roots website they say, you can potentially get 3 harvests from the same box.  Awesome!

I couldn't resist, I had to cut the big oyster mushroom off and cook this bad boy.  I love love mushrooms, so this is surely a treat!  To give you a sense of scale, here is the large mushroom in my hand.  Ginormous, right?

I sliced it up with a leek from the garden.

And sauteed it with some olive oil.  Then scrambled an egg into it.

And ate the whole thing between two slices of toasted multigrain bread.  Sooooooo yummy!

I can't wait to try growing another harvest of these shrooms.  Yes, please!

I Don't Expect I'll End Up Eating These

For the last 2 years, I've seen peaches start growing my my peach tree, and every year, I've eaten exactly none!!  2010, lost them to a windy storm. 2011, they were lost to some furry critty, likely a squirrel, that ate every single peach!

So when I look at my peach tree dripping with fruit, I just think how sad it is that I won't be able to taste any of them.  Last year, I put netting around the peaches when I started noticing they were getting stolen off the tree. The netting did not deter the critters, they managed to get around the netting or eat through the netting.  Jerks!

They do look great though, don't they?  Do you have problems with animals stealing your fruit or vegetables?  What do you do to prevent this?

Maybe I'll be lucky and one will size up and survive the critter carnage, so that I can at least try one of these peaches.  I'm not holding my breath though.