Garden Dreams: The Vegetable Garden

Barbara: A few days ago I shared the story of how my Dad started gardening on Block Island and how my sister helped him after he became ill. Until he passed in 2004, Dad and Mary Beth worked side-by-side and built on the bones of the garden he started back in the summer of 1968. In the five years since, Mary Beth has created a masterpiece. As promised, I’ll take you on a little tour starting with the vegetable garden.

It’s been a tough growing season this year, as many of you know. The rain never seemed to stop and the sun hid behind the clouds for most of the spring and early summer, so the gardens got a slow start. Luckily the week I was there it was beautiful. (Guess I brought some of that California sunshine with me.) Most of the photos were taken when I was on Block Island in the beginning of July, but a few are from seasons past.

The view from the house.

The Vegetable Garden

This is at the far end of the property. I love waking up with the sun and wandering around here. It’s so peaceful and the dewy earth smells fantastic. It’s also where I can usually find Mary Beth — weeding, pruning or watering. It takes a tremendous amount of work. Good thing she loves it!

Herbs are planted in the center raised bed and the vegetables are in the beds that surround it.

One misty August morning last year.

These posts have been fun for me. I’ve rediscovered lots of old photos like the ones in the previous post and these of my daughter, Kristin with my Dad.

John and Kristin harvesting tomatoes in 1982.

Kristin's prize tomato. Her grandparents are behind her with their heads cut off (?!!).

This flower bed sits directly in front of the vegetable garden. It’s the most beautiful of the garden beds. The perennials are artfully planted and timed so that it’s never without a magnificent display of blossoms from early spring through the first frost in late October.

The Island’s summer visitors stop by the side of the road to take pictures. It’d be fun to see some of them.

This is the one that stops traffic all day long.

Walk around any corner on the property and you will find a lovely surprise — birdhouses and birdbaths, wind chimes, and pots brimming with flowers. It’s a never-ending delight and every season Mary Beth finds new treasures to tuck into the garden.

The slow drip of water attracts all kinds of bird who fight to bathe here.

Some of the best treasures are the ones we rescue. Mary Beth’s client was tossing this bird house. She brought it home and rebuilt it. After a coat of paint, it was ready for some new tenants.

Afternoon sun lights the bird condo that sits near the bee hives behind the vegetable garden.

Another spot I love. There’s nothing so soothing as sitting here with a cup of tea and a book to read.

Lovely, weather-worn bench waiting for a visitor.

Terracotta frogs guarding another birdbath.

While the vegetable garden is mostly planted with humans in mind, Mary Beth always remembers to add treats for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. I love these exhuberant, fuzzy sunflowers.

Dewdrops highlight the fuzzy stems of this gorgeous red sunflower.

This little honeybee is so covered in pollen that she's hard to see.

The next post will focus on the flowers beds. Till then be sure to spend a few quiet moments in your garden just taking it all in.

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Happy Bees and Frustrated Deer

Bees from the third swarm moving into Green Hive.

Mary Beth: Crazy days! For a couple of weeks things were so chaotic that I got the point where I didn’t want anything to do with my bees. Thankfully they’ve settled down, but those bad girls sure gave me a run for the money. At the end of the swarming, four in all, I ended up with three hives — the original Old Blue, home to a much smaller, much crabbier bunch of bees; Hippie Shack, the Top Bar Hive which houses the very laid-back bees from the first swarm; and Green Hive, the bees from the third, much smaller swarm. The second swarm was the one that got away.

I’m not sure what will happen over the winter, but based on what I’ve seen in the last few days I’d predict that the Hippie Shack will make it through just fine. I’m a little concerned about Old Blue, but if they can expand their numbers enough I think they’ll limp through. Unfortunately Green Hive looks underpopulated and there really isn’t very much activity in the hive, so I’m thinking that they may not have the resources to survive the long, cold Block Island winter.

Old Blue on the left and Hippie Shack to the right.

Swarms aside, the thing I’ve found most interesting about this first bee season is that the honeybees haven’t been hanging out in the garden much. I had high hopes that I’d be watching the girls working hard to pollinate my vegetables, fruits and ornamentals, but that hasn’t been the case.  It’s most likely because I don’t have large enough patches of any one type of plant. Honeybees typically visit only one kind of plant during each outing and, while my garden has lots of plants, they are probably too scattered to make it worth their while. So instead of heading to the garden, the girls been gathering nectar and pollen from the plants in the swamp and beyond.

Rose petals floating in the swamp behind the hives.

This week the milkweed is in full bloom and the bees are going crazy for it. They are working this area all day. One very curious thing I’ve noticed is that some of the bees get stuck to the leaves. They eventually work themselves free, but the poor things kind of flop around for a while until they get their feet unstuck. Has anyone else seen this?

One of the girls working the milkweed.

Poor little bee with her foot stuck to the milkweed leaf.

Another thing that I’ve noticed is that the real workers in my garden have been the bumblebees. These plump fuzzballs have been feverishly pollinating the garden while my prissy honeybees wander off in search of greener pastures. I’ll have them to thank for my tomatoes, squash, beans and the like. Kudos to the bumblebees!

Marybeth puts sage and lavender into the smokepot.

Barbara and I suited up and opened Hippie Shack to see how the hive was doing. We were so relieved to see how very hard at work they’ve been building their new hive, which is about halfway full of comb. And my worries about a virgin queen were laid to rest when we found lots of larvae in the comb cells. There was also a decent amount of honey.

Workers tending to bee larvae on the TBH comb.

The Top Bar Hive, what some call a more natural hive, is designed to let the bees build their combs without a foundation. Most of the combs in the Hippie Shack were nice and straight and there was only a little wild burr. What little there was was easily removed with a small tool I made from a piece of copper.

MB lifted out a few of the bars so we could inspect the comb. This one is still a work in progress. A finished TBH comb extends all the way to each side and tapers to a squared-off bottom, matching the shape of the hive box.

When I removed the burr a little honey got on my glove, the tool, and the wall of the hive. The girls rushed in to recover it — no way they were letting any of it go to waste.

The bees were determined to recover every last bit of honey that got smeared onto my tool and glove.

My biggest challenge with the TBH was putting the hive back together without squishing anybody. As you can see from the pictures, the bees were everywhere and that made it really hard to slide the bars back together. Unfortunately I did crush one of the sister bees and everyone, including me, got all worked up. I had to smoke them a bit more to get them calm enough to close up the hive. Too bad that smoke doesn’t work on me. I get really upset when that happens, but the bees seemed to take it in stride and they were back to business as usual a few minutes after the top was back on.

Trying to move the bars back into place without crushing any bees was extremely challenging.

My girls have their work cut out for them. Over the next few months they’ll need to reproduce enough workers to lay in a nice amount of honey to get them through the winter months. Hopefully it’ll be smooth sailing from here.

One of my largest garden beds.

Deer News: From looking at Tweets and search keywords it appears that deer troubles have increased a lot in recent weeks. The deer fence that Ray and I built around our garden has kept the deer out of the vegetable garden, but the flower beds are still vulnerable. For these areas I use an organic spray recipe that I got a few years ago in my Master Gardener class. I’ve had great results with it and highly recommend that anyone having trouble with these pesky, destructive animals give it a try. I’m not guaranteeing anything, with deer you never can, but this concoction will give you a fighting chance. Be forewarned, its pretty stinky, but it’s definitely worth the trouble. Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

Deer Spray Recipe:

There are many recipes for homemade deer spray online. Here’s how I make it.

4 raw eggs
1 tablespoon or more of hot sauce, the hotter the better
1 teaspoon dish soap
2 teaspoons of garlic juice or garlic powder
2 teaspoons of white pepper

1. Blend all ingredients in a blender with a quart of water. It helps to strain it before putting it into your sprayer because it will clog it, which is really annoying.

2. Pour in a gallon sprayer, add more water to top it off to a gallon and let it sit out of the sun for a couple of days so it gets good and smelly.

3. Spray your plants with a fine mist to coat all the foliage and flowers.

4. Respray new growth and after it’s rained.

I no longer measure anything out because I make gallons of this stuff every season. I use it on my gardens and all of my client’s gardens as well. I think the secret is to switch it up a bit from time to time, because deer will get used to the spray after a while and it won’t be as effective.

So you should add things like a few drops of clove oil, peppermint oil, cinnamon oil, or 1 cup of milk, etc. to change the smell and taste a little. I’ve been adding a sliver of Irish Springs soap to my batches lately and this seems to work really well. I find that the deer may take a bite here and there, but after tasting the spray they move on.

We’ll be posting more photos from the garden soon. Meanwhile, Barbara’s back on the West Coast working on a special post about farmer’s markets. Until then, bee well!

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Deer Fencing and Other Spring Happenings

Mary Beth: Memorial Day weekend on Block Island was a busy one and if it hadn’t started to rain I’d still be out there. The reason I was so busy was that this is the year Ray and I decided to come up with a real solution to the deer problem — well, I decided and Ray graciously offered to help make it possible (encouraged no doubt by my promise of delicious home-baked goodies).
In years past I’ve relied on some temporary netting and deer repellant spray made from a recipe I learned in my Master Gardener training. These tactics deterred the deer most of the time, but I was so tired of re-spraying the veggies after watering them and of the deer trampling the plants while trying to find something that didn’t taste bad. Plus I like eating the cherry tomatoes off the vine and it grossed me out to think about the rotten raw eggs I’d sprayed on them.

We’d talked for years about a more permanent solution and a few weeks ago we finally ordered the supplies for a deer fence. Ray found some untreated Atlantic White Cedar that he had milled by a one-man shop in Massachusetts. The mill trimmed out twenty-two 4” x 4” x 8’ rough-cut posts which we set into 2-foot deep holes. We compacted the soil around the posts and then stapled 7’ black PVC 2” x 2” fencing to them.

Once we got it all set up, the posts were about 6’ tall and the PVC fencing stood at about 5’ 8”. The black fencing is great because when you look at it straight on it’s almost invisible. Ever the perfectionist, Ray decided the fence needed to be “prettied up”, so he beveled the tops of the posts. And he was right; it’s amazing how a small detail can make such a big difference.

I confess that when I first saw those honkin’ big posts in the ground I had my doubts, but it looks really nice and the fence is attracting lots of attention and more than a few compliments. (Hopefully it’ll attract some new clients for Ray as well.)

We still need to add finishing touches like gates, but the hard part is over and, with luck, I won’t have to use a posthole digger anytime soon! Best of all, it will be so nice not to wake up in the morning worrying about the damage the deer inflicted on the vegetable garden. Not that I’m wishing ill on my neighbors, but I hope the fence discourages the deer enough that they will take our property off their list of places to munch.

Another benefit of the fence came as a pleasant surprise. As you know from previous posts, I’m a bit of a freak and another thing I’m freaky about is feeling confined. I was a little worried that I might not like working inside the fenced area. What actually happened was the fence made me focus on the task at hand! I’m pretty distractible and if I notice something in the periphery, I’ll wander over to it and lose track of my original task. Now I can’t do that anymore. I wonder if I can apply this technique to other areas of my life? Small portable fencing anyone?

In addition to the fence project, I decided to plant out half of my tomatoes. They were getting quite large and I wasn’t sure when I’d get back into the garden. (Between the persistent rain and the backlog of clients that are eager for me to begin the season’s work in their gardens, it may be a while till I can tend to my own.) I spread out the lettuce plants in between the tomatoes and it felt great to see everything coming together.

I also planted some plants I bought for the bees: scabiosa, white salvia, baptista, more lavender, Joe Pye weed and lemon balm. Next I found the 37 dahlias that I’d stored away this winter in the cellar and put those in the ground. Then I fertilized all the roses and gave everything a dousing of fish emulsion with EM-1 mixed in. I was cross-eyed with exhaustion and shocked that it was 7 pm when I finally made it into the house. Yup, I’m so glad I took two days off from work!

The Block Island Bee Report

My bees are generally doing well, but there was some weird thing going on with one of the frames. For the second time the bees had built a comb that bubbled out in the lower brood box and they’re able to get behind it. I took the last one off, but this one was bigger. It had lots of larvae and they seemed to really be busy on it so I didn’t have the heart to pry it off.

The bees were edgier than usual and seemed to be pissed off — maybe it was the storm that was brewing, so I closed up everything and let them be. I’ve decided to let the whole thing play out and see what happens.

The bees had really loaded up the bottom brood box. The second brood box was coming along too and they had 3 frames built out with comb. Another frame was loaded with a different color pollen. Pretty neat! Overall, I noticed there were a lot more bees. Because it was so crowded, I didn’t see the queen this time, but she’s clearly been very busy laying eggs.

I got two new tools last week and they made it easier to handle the frames. One tool is a frame perch and the other a pry and grip tool. I recommend both of them to the beekeeping readers.

Flowers that are blooming this week: clematis, rosa rugosa, rhododendron, iris, columbine, clover, buttercups, amsonia, allium, red honeysuckle, purple salvia, blueberries and wisteria.  Summer’s almost in full swing!

Southern California News

Barbara: Traveling and work demands have left a big gap in our blog, but I’m happy to be back with some time to catch up.

There’s not a whole lot happening in the garden. Our weather has been pretty gloomy between “real” clouds and the persistent marine layer. My natives seem fine, but I think they’re sulking about the lack of sunshine. They’re bound to start growing when the sun returns. Of course, by then the heat will be blasting, and I’ll have to remember to be sure they get enough water this summer. Mary Beth tells me that the number one reason drought-tolerant plants fail to make it in the first year is that they don’t get enough water because these plants aren’t truly drought-tolerant until they get established. Of course, the number two reason they don’t make it is because of too much water. I’ll just need to pay attention and get this mix just right.

This weekend I went to the nursery determined to stick to just returning something I didn’t need. How may of you want to guess what happened next? Right. I came home with more plants. Sigh.

At least I was a little more selective than usual. I have a little atrium where I decided to try to grow herbs for cooking and garnishing. The nursery had a nice selection of organics that should do well in part shade and I chose plants that bees like. I bought lemon balm, lovage, German chamomile, purple sage, and onion chives. I’ll also plant two “bee pots” — containers of plants that bees love — in a sunnier spot. For those, I got hyssop, which smells amazing, and borage. That should make the little wild foragers here in Irvine happy.

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