🏡 In and Around our Garden - May 2023
In this letter I talk about my favorite garden plant currently, give an update on our bees as well as our seedling problems, and talk about our switch to Substack!
The last month or so has been a whirlwind for our family. Morgan delivered our fourth child, Wilder Oaks, at home on April 16th. The experience, like the other three, is unforgettable and a reminder of how beautiful and mysterious life truly is. Since Wilder’s birth, we have been slowly getting back into a rhythm as a family. Gardening, like other non-essential activites took a backseat while we all adjusted to the new normal. And … the new normal is quite alright. Mama and Wilder are both healthy and our other three children are thrilled to have another sibling in the family. It feels right.
While our world slowed down a bit, the garden did not! As temperatures continue to rise and days get longer, plants in and outside the garden have begun to take off.
☘️ Red Clover, Red Clover …
Probably my favorite plant in the garden right now is Red Clover. It’s a beautiful plant with so many great qualities. Have I already written about it? I think I have. Please allow me to indulge and once again say why I love the plant. First, the blossoms are pretty and attract beneficial insects like honeybees, butterflies, ladybugs and hoverflys (which eat aphid larvae and other pest larvae in the garden). The flowers have also been used as an herbal remedy for centuries and are great for drying and adding to teas. Red clover is also an excellent source of multiple vitamins and minerals and can be used in salads, eaten fresh or cooked. It’s nutrient density also makes it an excellent feed for ruminants (cows, sheep, goats) and chickens! They love the greens and are often their first choice in a pasture when given the option. That is what’s great about the above ground parts of red clover, now let me tell you about their roots. First, they have the ability to send their tap root deep into the soil, even as deep as a few feet. Majority of their roots are fibrous however and spread throughout the soil helping break up compaction, increase soil porosity, and improve water infiltration. This makes red clover an excellent plant to over-winter in your garden because it will hold your soil during the non-growing, wet winter season and will smother out any early spring weeds that will want to pop up. Lastly, red clover is a legume, and many legumes have a special ability to use nitrogen from the air, unlike other plants. This includes red clover. Most plants cannot use nitrogen from the air and must get what they need from the soil. Red clover, however, can. This is because of a special bacteria that lives in its roots and takes the nitrogen gas in the air and converts into a form of nitrogen that the red clover plant can use. This allows the plant to grow without using nitrogen from the soil and when the plant dies, it actually releases the nitrogen stored in its tissues into the soil for other plants to use, therefore increasing the available nitrogen in the soil! How neat is that?
🌱 Seedling problems … Resolved!
So last month I talked about how pitiful our seedlings looked and how disappointed I was in them. I wasn’t sure if it was operator error (Morgan :), the new lights, old seeds, or the new seeding mix we started using. Well … check this picture out 👇
The only difference between the seedlings on the left and the seedlings on the right, is the soil mix that was used in the trays. Everything else was the same - Same seeds, same lights, same watering schedule. The tray on the right has the store bought seed starter soil mix and the one on the left is the home made version I have always used. It’s obvious the store bought mix has problems. And that is a bummer because I’d like to say that it really doesn’t matter what you plant your seeds in, just grab a bag of seed starter mix and go for it. But after this experience, I certainly can’t say that. If it were just me, I’d keep using my own method of course. However, I change what I do and see what others are saying online. Do you have a seed starter mix that you like? Comment on this post and share with me and the community what it is! I’d love to know.
🍅 Planting Tomatoes
Have you ever transplanted tomatoes before? Did you know you can bury the stem up to the “seed leaves” and that it is actually advised to do so? Check out the picture below for an explanation!
🐝 The OG Farm Animals
Lost in the shuffle of having a baby were the honeybees. Usually in early April, I will add the third super onto our only honeybee hive. With April being a a blur, I forgot. After adding it this past weekend, I am hoping the late addition won’t slow honey production too bad. I had to build new frames to go inside the super because my old ones (with wax comb already built on them from previous years) were destroyed when the freezer they were stored in lost power and never turned back on. The new frames will have to be built out with comb and will add quite a bit of work for the bees before they can start adding and capping honey. I will pull this super in October and harvest the honey inside then. The bottom two supers I leave alone and never open up. It’s the queen’s chamber and her domain. Ive written a post about why I do this previously. I’ve experienced great success managing my bees this way.
👇 Here are a few pictures from this last visit to the farm where the sole hive is located.
As noted in the caption above, there were several drones outside the hive when I visited recently. Drones, are the male bees in the hive and have one purpose - to mate with a virgin queen from outside the colony. After mating, they die. And the, no longer virgin, queen returns to its hive and boots the old queen to the curb. A lot of beekeepers do their best to avoid this behavior in their own hives. The reason being, when the old queen leaves, she takes half the colony with her and that slows production. However, it’s a natural process and helps keep the genetic make-up of the hive diverse and ever-changing. This is a vital way for hives to fight regional diseases. Swarming is a sign of a healthy colony and I wish more hobby beekeepers would take note of this fact.
Lastly, Some HouseKeeping! ✔️
We have switched from mailchimp to Substack for our newsletter. This should open up a few new features like comments and likes for our newsletters. We also have a page (acommonlife.substack.com) on Substack now that archives our previous posts and makes it easy to navigate through. Another neat feature is the ability to chat with your subscribers. Shortly after I send this letter out I am going to try it out. We shall see how it goes.
So, with all of that in mind, please comment and like our letters. It will help us reach more people and also give us feedback on what you all like and care about.
With that said, Thanks for being on this journey with us! We look forward to what is in store!