Heriz-Smith

Today I planted the carrots in the cold frames. I should have done this three weeks ago! I planted Napoli from Johnny’s.

Started planting the lettuce for fall/winter in the cold frame too.

Black Seeded Simpson, Really Red Deer Tongue, Flashy Green Butter Oak, Monet Cutting, Lingue De Canarino, Revolution, and Bronze Arrowhead. Also planted Mispoona Salad Select

Last Sunday and Monday (12th and 13th of August) I extracted what I hope will be the first honey of the season. If we’re lucky, we’ll get more when the Golden Rod flow is finished. I got about 80lbs from the one hive came through last winter and thrived.

The other hive that also made it through the winter seems to be doing OK - but no surplus yet.

The hive that started as a nuc this year seems to be doing OK too - but no surplus there either.

A couple of weeks late I just put in the fall radishes Munchener Bier, Black Spanish Round, Cherry Belle, French Breakfast, Easter Egg mix, D’Avignon, and Hailstone (and some arugula too).

I thought it would be OK, after the small rain storms we had over the past few days, to thin and transplant the Chard - but I think it may have been too dry after all. Even with a nice watering, they all looked quite stressed afterwards. We’ll see how they look tomorrow.

Update (8/19) They all came through fine. The next morning they’d perked up and looked good.

This is the time when there are weeks weeds everywhere: weeds in the paths, weed in the beds, weeds in the borders. Weeds everywhere. At the same time though, lots of plants look really good. The leeks look great, the potatoes are doing well, the beets look really good. The French beans are about ready for the first picking, we picked our first cherry tomatoes two days ago, and so on. A lot of lettuce has bolted, I do need to pull it all up and put it on the compost. And I need to buy some BT for the brassicas. They started out looking so good under the row covers but once they grew too big for that, the moths found them. I picked the first Kohlrabi this morning, it’s beautiful.

Some neighbors down the street asked me to come and help get a swarm this evening. I had to climb quite high up a ladder into the tree - the bees had gathered all along and around a branch. The swarm was probably about 2 feet long or more. I was hoping they’d be docile and easy to brush into the cardboard box I held under them but instead they started to sting. I climbed down and put on a long sleeved shirt and gloves, then climbed back up to get more. A few more stung me through the shirt, but it was much better the second time. I’m not sure if we got the queen - I guess they’ll see where the bees are tomorrow.

Tonight was also the first night we started to hear the crickets.

The bergamot is in bloom. We’re going to try to make note of what is in bloom so that we can plan better for what to add or move in the garden.

We’re eating more out of the garden these days. Tonight we had what must be about the last of the peas, onions (the wax crystal), beets (very baby beets, about the size of marbles) and beet greens.