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Featured Image: The strawberries seem to be quite happy, sending runners out over the edge of their raised bed. It’s nice when Mother Nature agrees with my ideas.
I picked about a half pound of blondköpfchen (“little blonde girl”) tomatoes, a sweet cherry tomato similar to the sunbursts you can get at the grocery store; a handful of ground cherries; a couple of late strawberries; and a Tolli’s sweet Italian pepper. Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photo before eating them.
A former coworker came buy and took home the extras from last week’s Farmers’ Market. It was good to see him and catch up a little – he was fired two days after I left that job.
I re-situated the soaker hose for the grape hedge and the cherry tree. I’d pulled it up to put the block-and-board frame in.
I also finally got around to replacing the broken cranks on two of the windows. It’s nice to be able to open those windows again.
The bees are out in force, collecting pollen in preparation for hibernation. I’m not very good at identifying bees (and there aren’t a lot of good resources out there that Google has been able to help me find), but I’m reasonably certain these are Bombus impatiens, or impatient bumblebees. Bumblebees make excellent pollinators, so I’m always happy to see them around.
Left/Top: I often find bumblebees snoozing on the hyssop in the mornings. It’s one of the first flowering plants on the Farm to get sunlight in the morning, and one of the last to lose light in the evening, so they often sleep there overnight.
Right/Bottom: The late raspberry blooms are also a popular bumblebee buffet.
The second planting of peas are coming along nicely.
If spring’s planting was a good indicator, these should start blooming in about 3 weeks.
The weather is turning cooler. We haven’t gotten below 50°F yet, but I’ve noticed the tomatoes are not fruiting nor ripening as quickly. I need to get the row covers out and in place. I’ve been adding water jugs (for heat mass) to the beans and tomatoes for the last week. I’m also planning to make some solar heaters, reusing plastic bottles to make heat cells, to feed heat to the plants.