The Garden in July

July has been off to a good start, the bees have successfully started making honey for themselves and started filling out their supers with wax. Some are quite more stronger than others, and considering doing some splits. Flowers are in full bloom, and some more seeds have been planted to take place of ones that did not make it or have just decided not to grow. Some vegetables that I have tried for the first time this year have not been successful as I had hoped, but I have made note of which ones and will try again next year!

My two strongest hives have both deeps on the bottom and 3 mediums on top all filled out with comb and starting to fill with honey but mostly eggs and brood. I have been debating or not to make splits from them. The benefits of making splits is that you are doubling your chances of having a colony make it through the winter and better yet, if you keep the genetics of that queen you know it will be a strong colony. Also if there is a large population of bees and there are swarm cells, this gives them a reason not to swarm. The only issue with splits is if they don’t grow strong enough in time for winter you not only loose that hive, but you took away a good amount of bees from a stronger colony.

This year I planted almost all flowers that were beneficial to honey bees, and in doing so I have seen a rise in pollen coming into the hives.

In the garden the sunflowers are sky rocketing to the clouds, bees are gathering nectar and pollen off of them and the birds have taken advantage of the mature ones by picking at the mature seeds. Plants are all over grown and some have already peaked and need to be cut back.

Weeds are popping up and the invasive ones are already gotten out of control, but theres hope to manage them and get them back under control again. The eggplants have not been grown out enough yet to harvest, but theres still some time and I am hopeful. Lettuce has all been eaten to the point they have all gone to seed and the tomatoes have tons of mini bright yellow flowers sprinkled in between the green forest of leaves. Cucumbers are sneaking up through the vines but have not been mature enough to be picked. Some longer ones have not grown to their length instead have grown miniature and turned yellow from me waiting for them to grow more.

Tiger Lily

Floral Boquets

Pumpkin Plant

The sneaky slugs have taken their harvest in the pollinator garden slugging their way on the gladiolas, alliums and the hollyhocks. All the Hollyhocks that were planted two years ago decided to make a much long and anticipated appearance this year. However an unlucky domino effect of hollyhock rust has just jumped from one leaf to another completely destroying all of their strength and beauty. Aphids have also taken residency on much of the taller yellow flowers. I made the option of purchasing lady bugs off amazon shipped live and released the next evening. The lady bugs were very effective…to a point. They got rid of all the aphids but then flew away where there was nothing else to eat. Which was great, however the aphids had returned and returned in a full family reunion style.

Next year I plan on purchasing some more lady bugs if the aphids do come back, or try to have lady bug houses around the gardens for them to stay and stick around. I also plan on diversifying the seed plantings of the vegetables. This way there is a wave of crop rather than a burst for a couple of weeks than nothing for a month. This I will try on my lettuce, spinach and mesclun seeds. This years trial and error accord with the garlic, carrots, onion, sweet peas, string beans, poppies and hollyhock. But in other news the Butterfly Bush is in full bloom attracting tons of butterflies of all different sizes and colors and the Tiger Lillies have multiplied this year in bulbs.