Mrs. Chippy's plant world and edible landscape design

Debra from Mrs. Chippy's plant world

 Last week I took an incredible road trip to visit Debra from Mrs. Chippy's plant world and edible landscape design in St. Petersburg.  She had a large diverse collection of beautiful tropical edible plants throughout her entire property.   No wonder, she's a master gardener and practices natural organic permaculture gardening principles.  This tropical paradise was loaded with honey bees feasting on all her flowering plants.  The bee in the sunflower image below was completely covered  in pollen.  I wish I had a better camera to show the mess she was making.

honey bee completely covered with pollen

Debra sells red wriggler worms and was able to set me up with a nice worm casting / compost system.  With this system the worms will make super food for your plants and provide a powerful compost that makes the best compost tea.  Plus the worms multiply.  More worms = more compost.

Getting up close and personal with my compost

I had purchased her worms through the Indian Rocks co-op but incorrectly placed them into my compost pile which I later found out was a very bad idea.  Thinking it through, I quickly realized the mistake and dumped my two compost bins and manually went through all the compost looking for worms.  Since it was the next day, three hours of sifting only yielded about 20 worms or so.  They blend in so well.   Debra was a great help and quickly set me on the right track to raising worms correctly.

In addition to learning about many exotic plants I traded honey for plenty of cuttings and plants to bring back to The Florida Bee Farm.  It was a blast learning from an expert.    Here's a few pictures of Mrs. Chippy's plant world.

Honey Bee and Gardening Talk with the Boy Scouts

My nephew Joey who is also a passionate gardener, arranged an event with his Boy Scout troop to visit the Florida Bee Farm for an educational tour and talk about Honey Bees and Gardening.  Joey and I planned the presentation so we would both talk about different aspects of Honey Bees and Gardening.  Joey was pretty knowledgeable about gardening and already knew quite a bit about Honey Bees from coming out to the Bee Farm with me.  I gave him a few "homework assignments" on topics he wasn't familiar with so he could also learn something and also pass it along and teach the other scouts.  Joey is a good teacher and mentor to the younger scouts. 

Visitors to the Florida Bee Farm

Talking about Honey Bees and langstrom Hives

While touring the gardens, one of the scouts was excited when he saw large eggplants hanging from the eggplant plant.  He said how it was one of his favorite things and how he loved eggplant so I broke a large one off and gave it to him.  He said he was going to ask his mom to fry it up as soon as he got home.

The morning was pretty overcast and cool so when we got around to seeing the bees, there were only a few brave bees out flying in the cool weather.  And a couple of shivering guard bees hanging out by the entrances.  The kids and adults were looking forward to seeing the bees so I was disappointed that the weather wasn't warmer so they could experience seeing zillions of bees zipping in and out of their hives along the bee superhighways in our yard.

A great group of scouts showed up

Honey tasting time

In charge of honey tasting

Just around this time it started sprinkling and then turned into a steady rain.  Between the shed overhang areas and the covered greenhouse there was plenty of space for everyone to hang out and stay dry.  The highlight of the day however was the honey tasting.  Several of the scouts were given a container of honey and a bag of plastic spoons to distribute to everyone for tasting.  They were able to taste all the honey they wanted and it was quite obvious that the honey was quite popular.   

All in all it was a very pleasant experience meeting some nice kids and parents and sharing the Florida Bee Farm. 

Lessons, lessons, and more lessons

Gardening in Florida can be challenging and I've been experiencing my share of lessons for sure.  It seems that nothing works right the first and sometimes the second try.  But usually it can be figured out after some experimentation.

I'm proud to say that almost all my vegetable plants have been started from seed which is what I've been struggling with for the past year.  So many mistakes but I'm starting to get the hang of it.  Starting plants from seeds is quite satisfying and will be an economical way to grow vegetables and flowers.  The mistakes I made along the way are common for inexperienced Florida gardeners.  Having to deal with the mildew and bacteria in the soil has been a real eye opener.  And over watering, over fertilizing and over thinking some of the challenges thrown at me has killed quite a few small plants.  Especially the over watering.

By planting 10x as many seedlings as I needed, there ended up being more than enough survivor plants to populate the Bee Farm's garden.  We have plenty of healthy tomato plants, a few giant eggplant plants, green beans, cucumbers , carrots, onions, garlic, mint, peppers, jackfruit, bananas, pineapple, kale, and a few cold weather plants started - cabbage, broccoli and califlower.  The Moringa trees are growing like crazy and even after significantly cutting back one tree, it's still over 20' tall.  More Moringa than we'll ever need which is great.  Now the blueberry plants status is uncertain.  I cleaned the moss from their stems and trunks which was a tedious job.  And then they were sprayed with an anti fungus agent several times.  Finally I think I may have over fertilized them.  They look a bit stressed out and probably won't bear much, if any fruit this year.  But hopefully they'll rebound next year.  They needed work.  The strawberry plants are struggling and I'm not sure why.  Their numbers keep dwindling.  Pineapples are thriving now that they've been moved into a better location.  And the banana trees are going nuts so we'll probably see bananas soon.  Several small eggplants are now showing up also.  Our Papaya "Orchard" is producing a lot of small fruit which I've been trying to keep covered so bugs can't burrow into the fruit and lay their eggs.

It's been over a month since this blog was last updated and too much has changed around the bee farm to write about.  The Bees are doing great and have a lot of fall honey ready to harvest.  However most of it will probably be left for the bees to use over the winter.  The new Italian cordova genetics introduced into the hives with the new queens has been great and the bees are pretty laid back which is nice when working in the gardens.

Last month I found a local horse farm that gave away free composted horse manure and they even loaded my truck and trailer.  And I found some more free fine mulch from an oak tree stump grinder.  Wonderful stuff.  So the compost piles are turning good soil for future plants.

Planting seeds, monarch butterfly plants and a new plan for catching bees

I'm kind of skipping over a lot of projects lately so there's a few things missing in the blog.   It's been quite busy.

2nd attempt at a successful swarm trap

First thing is I'm reading a fascinating book called "Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley.  It is based on research by some of the top bee scientists / animal behaviorists that describe how the honey bees make collective decisions and how they communicate.  It completely leaves you in awe.  One chapter talked about all the experiments that were done to determine how bees choose their homes when they swarm.  After reading this chapter I made several modifications to the swarm trap in front of our home and moved it up into a tree as well as changed the direction it was facing and made it more desirable to honey bees.  Now we'll see how this works out.  Only down side is if I catch a swarm I'll have to retrieve it with a ladder which will be a bit tricky.

Today we planted seeds in our miniature greenhouses we made from items bought at the dollar store.  My earlier attempts at planting seeds were not thought out and researched as carefully as I should have.  This time the seedlings will have a better chance.  However it looks like we're running a takeout restaurant with these containers lined up on top of the rain barrels.  The seeds will be more protected and controlled in that humidity and water delivery will be accurate.  Not quite sure if I want to put them in direct sun as it may cook the seeds.  Still working out a few details.

milkweed

milkweed (on the right)

Not long ago I was at a friends home who had raised beds with flowers that attracted monarch butterflies.  There were butterflies everywhere so I inquired what type of plants they were.  They were milkweed and the more I researched milkweed the more intrigued I became with this plant which is not easily obtained.  But thanks to the internet, a dozen plants were located not far from where we live.  Milkweed is also loved by honey bees and supposedly makes top grade honey which will be another benefit.

The raised beds are as healthy as can be and the plants are growing like mad.  I cooked up a 55 gallon barrel of delicious compost tea for the plants and spent the other day going all around the yard feeding plants.  A giant tea bag was made from a paint strainer bag and it was loaded up with compost and some rock dust.  After dipping and hanging in the barrel, an aerator was added to keep the tea oxygenated.  I used an electric pump to fill the barrel with rainwater from the rain barrel setup.  The resulting bacteria in the compost tea needs a couple ounces of molasses a day for food.  In the near future the plan is to hook the compost barrel up to a garden hose with a pump so it can be easily applied anywhere using a garden hose.

Tomorrow it's time to inspect the hives and see what's going on in there.  Should be an interesting (and beautiful) day.

Rain barrels working well with low pressure soaker hoses

The rain barrels are filled and the plants are thirsty.  So the next step is to get the water to the raised beds and come up with an efficient irrigation system.  One local gardener I bumped into at Home Depot was showing me pictures of his garden and recommended using soaker hoses instead of drip irrigation.  He told me that it's more of a long term solution that works regardless of how you space your plants.  He didn't have a rain barrel system and used city water so soaker hoses hooked up to a pressurized system are much different than low pressure soaker hoses and a rain barrel system.

One option was to hook a pump up to the rain barrels and make my own pressurized system but a simple system was more what I wanted to build.  After extensive browsing the internet, there was one video about a soaker hose system hooked up to rain barrels.  The guy seemed pretty happy with the system but it bothered me that there wasn't more youtube videos or websites talking about the rain barrel soaker hoses from Mr. Drip / Mr. Soakerhose.  And there wasn't much else out there that worked on low pressure and rain barrels.  So I wasn't sure what to expect when the two 50' hoses and fittings arrived in our mail.

The first thing was 3/4" PVC pipe from the rainbarrels were ran underground to the garden area (about 25-30' away).  Then a 50' section was installed in each raised bed.  One bed was installed and tested it and it really worked well.  After doing the second section, I was surprised to find out that both of them hooked together worked just as efficient as running one. Plenty of pressure and moisture delivered to the plants. This system is just right for my setup as you cannot attach a standard soaker hose from a hardware store to a low pressure rainbarrel system.  And you cannot use the rain barrel soaker hoses with pressurized city water or it will blow them out.  Here's a video of the system in action.  (sorry about the smudge on the lens)

In the future the plans are for adding 2 more raised beds and a dual outlet irrigation timer if I can find one.  Otherwise it will be 2 separate timers.  Timers I also discovered are picky about water pressure and this system will need a low pressure timer.

I have been so busy there wasn't any time devoted to blogging about the plants I put in this week.  It's a work in process and the cold weather earlier in the week messed me up.   Tomatoes, kale, chard, onions, califlower, peppers, mustard greens, and a few others were planted.  It's all starting to come together.

New plants and now a freeze warning

I didn't even have time to get a picture of our new plants in the raised beds.  A few days ago we bought a lot of veggie plants and they looked really nice in their new garden home.  I just kept forgetting to bring my camera.

It's been several years (2011) since we had a freeze around here so I'm going to have to take the blame for this cold weather.  Planting the new veggies must have jinxed it.   It's pretty chilly in the 40's during the day and forecast to get down to 33 degrees tonight !  Also a good excuse to put on a nice pot of delicious vegetarian chili.

Freeze warning tonight - Cover your plants and lions

So today was spent covering all the plants or at least as many as I could.  I had a roll of tyvek leftover from a building job so I made an enclosure over the raised beds and covered it with (noisy) tyvek in the gusty winds.  Quite the challenge made easier when the wife showed up.  The cold weather will be here for 2 days and will jump back into the 70's.  Hopefully it's the only freeze this year.  At least we don't live in cold weather parts of the country.  We went to COSTCO yesterday and 60% of the cars in the lot were from out of state.  Not that I blame them.

Cozy plants all tucked in for the night.

Even the bees were not their normal active selves.  They came in early today anticipating the chill I guess.  In case of bad weather, I made boards that I could slide into the hives to close up the bottom and keep the girls warmer.  They'll appreciate it tonight. 

Raised beds and bringing the honey bee nucs home

Busy busy day yesterday moving the mulch pile and building 2 of 5'x10' raised beds for gardening.  Also moved those heavy earth box type plant containers out 2 feet so I could get between the fence and plants to prune, etc.  After building the raised beds they were lined with a 1" of newspaper hosed down.  Then a layer of leaves and finally a 1/2" layer of mulch.  Mulch was also added on the pathways around the raised beds.

Today was just as busy.  We drove a few hours north to a farm to get some premium compost and get a tour of their organic eco farm.  Quite interesting as they grow a lot of plant varieties that most people say is impossible for their climate.  We learned a lot and bought a few plants to take home as well as had the pickup truck bed completely loaded with compost as well as a small trailer we were pulling.

Next stop to visit a beekeeper about a half hour up the road to pick up a couple nucs which is like a small scale bee hive loaded with brood, a queen and a lot of bees.  In no time the brood will hatch and you'll have a full scale hive soon.  As the wife wanted no part of having the bees inside the truck, I dug out some space in the back of my truck bed to hold the nucs.  The nucs were pretty ragged with some holes we found out so it's a good thing they weren't in the truck with us.  Especially with the massive traffic jam we encountered on the way home.  At one point while the beekeeper was getting the nucs ready for travel, the bees seemed to get quite riled up.  Unfortunately I was standing there in a pair of shorts and tee shirt a tad uncomfortable with all the "agitated" bees new interest in me.  I finally dove into the truck to take cover. 

Once we got to the bee farm we unloaded the nucs and set them on top of the hives so the bees could orient themselves to the land.  Tomorrow morning the bees and frames will be transferred from the nucs into their new homes.  The beekeeper gave us a couple feeder jars filled with green margarita/lime mix which coincidentally is what we're going to have during tomorrow's Superbowl party.  So nice to already include the bees in our festivities.