Photo tour of the garden

While taking some photos of the tomatoes for this week’s weekly update, I decided to take some additional pictures to show planting progress.  So here is what I have in the garden this week.  I’ve had a couple of people have asked to see more pictures of the garden.  I’ll attempt to do this a bit more often throughout the season.

Tomatoes and peppers

Tomatoes and peppers

Broccoli (left) and Cabbage (right)

Broccoli (left) and Cabbage (right) Garlic behind

Brussels sprouts (right), peppers (center), tomato (left)

Brussels sprouts (right), peppers (center), tomato (left)

Garlic and 2 basil plants

Garlic and 2 basil plants

Peas and onions

Peas and onions

Salad greens

Salad greens

Squash and watermelons

Squash and watermelons

Honeyberry plants

Honeyberry plants

That’s what my garden beds look like right now.

Homestead weekly update

Welcome to this week’s homestead update.

Last week, I forgot to talk about the beekeeping meeting I attended.  When I took the beekeeping short course, it included a year’s membership to the Susquehanna Beekeepers, that’s my local beekeeping organization.  Each month, we have a different speaker that’s an expert on some part of beekeeping.  This month the speaker was an expert on the Small Hive Beetle.  I learned quite a lot about them.  They just made it to my area, so lucky me, I get me bees late int he year and we just started having problems with the SHB.  But according to the expert, there’s not a lot that we need to worry about when it comes to the SHB.  As long as the hive is strong, the bees are able to keep the SHB in check. Continue reading

Unique fruit I may grow, part 2

Welcome to part 2 of the unique fruit that I may add to my orchard.  As I mentioned in part 1, there are many interesting fruit plants available.  I’ve planted a lot of the standard fruit trees, but this list is of some of the more unique types of fruit.

Note: I linked to as many of these as possible on Amazon so you can see pictures of the flowers or fruit.  Since I don’t have my own images of these, I thought it was the safest way to show what they look like without stepping on someone’s copyrighted images. Continue reading

Homestead weekly update

Welcome to this week’s update.

In the hive

In the hive

I still haven’t received my bees.  Up until now, I just had my hives sitting in place without frames.  Each year, I see what look like scout bees around the area.  I think they are looking for a place to build a hive.  I decided to put the frames into the hive.  Who knows, one of the scouts may find the hive and decide to build in it.  So I took the frames out to the hives.  I filled one hive and when I removed the top of the other, something flew out.  I was greeted with this site.  At first glance, I thought this was burr comb. Continue reading

Unique fruit I may grow, part 1

When I wrote up the weekly update last week, I talked about the honeyberry plants that I just put into pots.  It got me thinking that there are many different fruits that I want to plant.  Some are the normal things like apples and peaches, but there are others, like the honeyberry, that are a bit more unusual.  Over the past several months, I’ve been keeping a list of some unusual fruit that sound interesting.  I like having unusual things growing on my homestead, so some of these fruits would be a welcome addition.  So here’s a list of some of the unusual fruit that I may or may not plant on my homestead.  All look very interesting to me, but I know that I can’t plant them all.

Note: I linked to as many of these as possible on Amazon so you can see pictures of the flowers or fruit.  Since I don’t have my own images of these, I thought it was the safest way to show what they look like without stepping on someone’s copyrighted images. Continue reading

Homestead weekly update

Welcome to this week’s homestead update.

I mentioned last week that I had forgotten about the other trees that I ordered.  This past weekend we planted them.  Actually, my wife and daughter did most of the work.  I found that I have a hernia so I have to take it easy.  So I got started on planting the trees and they came out to keep me from doing it all.  We planted the Lodi in a row with the other apple trees.  But the Brae Star is a full sized tree, so we planted that a little farther away to allow plenty of room to grow.  The other trees were peach trees.  We planted a July Elberta and a Starking Delicious peach.  The July Elberta ripens in early August and the Delicious ripens in mid-July. Continue reading

Homestead weekly update

Welcome to this week’s homestead update.

Asparagus harvest

Asparagus harvest

I picked the first of my asparagus this week.  We planted about 25 crowns 3 years ago.  This is the first year that we get to make a harvest.  I noticed the shoots coming up on Sunday, but they were just tiny.  Then on Tuesday I cut these shoots.  It isn’t enough for a meal, but it is a start.  I snapped that long one, there was only about 5″ of tender shoot on it.  The bottom portion is woody.  I did find one spear that was about 6″, but it was cut in half.  I know this was a usable spear Sunday, but Tuesday it looked like something just cut it in half.  I wonder if cut worms attack asparagus. Continue reading