Spring in the Garden, 2021

 "Out here in the fields/ I fight for my meals./ Put my back into my living." - The Who, Baba O'Riley

View of the main garden and
greenhouse as of May 14th

That song has been looping in my head every day for the past week. My back is certainly feeling how much work I've been putting into my "fields". I've done more for the soil this week than I have since we put the garden in, 3 years ago. Mostly this is because I can see how degraded the soil has become in those years. From nutrients being pulled out to grow the food, to being swept away by our harsh winter rains, this is one of the problems of big fields of annuals. I'm not yet sure what the long term solution will be (I'm hesitant to have too many perennials with my annuals) but for now, regenerating the soil is something I know I need to be doing more regularly. This was entirely expected from how and when I put in the garden. If I dig down half a foot or so the soil is still a beautiful dark color and looks quite healthy, it's just the top layers that are exhausted.

When we made the garden we got a giant load of wood chips and woody debris dropped off through a free program called chipdrop.com. We had a lot of chips left so they got scattered in various garden beds, around trees, and what was left was stored in two places on the property for future use and to break down. Well, they've mostly done that. Even without making true compost out of them, adding greens and turning and watering, time alone has done much of the work of breaking them down. I have used some over time, mulching various areas of the garden and yard, and appreciating that they were already half broken down. Digging into the piles revealed a lot of mycelium, the fungal network that is crucial to plants. Adding some around the yard sprouted mushrooms of various types (inedible) all over that were certainly fun to look at.

This year I used the last of those chips. I mulched the garden paths with them, which helps to provide a visual of where walking is acceptable for my kids. It will also help retain water and add nutrients (and mycelium) to the soil as the chips continue to break down.

We also used a bunch of them to help create a small new perennial food bed. Last fall we did a lot of work removing the plants along one side of our house that we disliked, because they grew over the walkways and became a nuisance. They weren't particularly pretty or useful either. I transplanted my blueberries along most of that area, up to the fence for the back yard, where they're much, much happier.

The back of that little side area, beyond the fence, was left with the giant root ball from a nasty, thorny tree that we didn't have time to deal with before winter so it was pushed off as a spring project. Well, spring came and it showed signs of trying to grow back from the root ball. Our basement troll, my brother-in-law, decided that he'd take it out for us. It was no small project either, since the large rocks for the retaining wall needed to be moved around. When it was removed, however, we had an area approximately 2 feet by 6 feet ready to have new things planted. What was in there previously, aside from the root ball, were a bunch of bricks (?) and mostly sand. We spread the sand under our bike parking area to level it out. Then we filled in the trench with any and all kitchen compost we had, weeds that had been taken out of the main veg garden, any other green material we had, and the wood chips. We topped it off with a few inches of finished compost from our round yard waste bin, which was 2/3 full of soil after years of just adding plant material and living in a sunny spot. We planted a few strawberry plants, an artichoke, and calendula. We're going to get a trellis up and grow cucumbers there this year as well. We're hoping to get a perennial vining plant for that area but we need to decide what that plant will be so that we know what kind of trellis to put in. A kiwi, which is what we really want, (or really, two kiwis since you need a male and a female plant) can grow quite long. We need to take shading and pruning into account. But, it's looking likely that we'll get some kiwis in there soon.

I used the rest of the soil from the yard waste bin, and some more wood chips, to replenish some of the soil in the main garden. We had a bit of compost from our black tumbler that I used in the row where I'm planting sweet corn. It looks ridiculous because there are uncomposted (but otherwise fried and no longer viable) pumpkin seeds, as well as egg shells. I'm confident that those will eventually be covered up and break down to add nutrients to the soil, and in the meantime I hope they're attracting worms and their lovely poop to the garden.

I'm starting to focus more on creating as much of our own compost as possible on the property. This is the cheaper way to do things, naturally, but that's not actually my main motivation. It's completely impossible to keep plastic out of industrial compost. Particularly over the last two years, I've been increasingly finding bits of plastic all over my garden as they get pushed to the surface and cleaned by the rain. I could spend hours every day picking it all out and never come close to getting all of it. Yuck. Who wants that in their garden? I pick it out as I find it, both glass and plastic (though I'm less concerned about the glass, which is inert) but I'm also resigned to the fact that there will just be bits of plastic in my garden. Over time I hope to bury it all deep and cover it up with plastic-free home compost.

More Perennials

We added new perennial fruits this year. Last year I tried growing some annual vegetables in two raised beds along the side yard and it was an abysmal failure. Too shady. But it's sunny enough for raspberries, so that's what we did. I ordered two new varieties, an early red berry and a golden mid-summer berry. We should be getting heaps of fruit all summer and into the fall now. (We grabbed our last berries in late November/early December last year, although there were very few and some of them were half moldy/half unripe due to the rains.) Since raspberries like to spread, I also transplanted the ones that had escaped the beds back where they belong. Next year, if anyone wants raspberries...hit me up. I'm sure I'll have more escapees and nowhere to put them.

Under our fruit trees, in the area we've dubbed our "food forest" (mostly because it's delightfully, horribly funny and pretentious to call three fruit trees, some flowers, and some herbs a "food forest") I planted two black currant bushes. My grandmother always had currants when I was little and there's something about the jam that just makes me feel like a kid again. Plus, my mom's hot cross bun recipe calls for dried currants so having a few of those on hand is a necessity in my life.

In the front beds where there are no longer blueberries, the soil was tragic. It gets baked all summer long by sunlight all day. In winter, those beds don't really have any protection from the rain. It wasn't soil anymore, it was dirt. Lifeless. I did some trench composting but that didn't help very much so I added wood chips and some compost. In the far corners of each I planted table grapes, one red and one green. They'll grow along the fence and when they fill out they'll help create more of a visual barrier between us and the sidewalk/road.

Columbine flower

Since grapes won't fill out an entire raised bed I'm also growing a miniature popcorn, pole beans, butternut squash, and shelling peas. These beds are far enough away from the main garden that I'll be able to save seeds from all of these. I still need to figure out what to do for a trellis, another feature I'm adding to give the front yard more privacy (our street has become incredibly busy over the last year due to a variety of factors) and to increase my growing space by quite a lot. Growing up whenever possible can vastly increase the amount a small parcel produces, so I can grow more without removing more lawn.

I haven't focused on them in previous years so much, but this year I finally felt that I had time, money, and effort to spare for flowers. I have a few annuals that I love to plant, like nasturtiums, but as with food plants I love to have a lot of perennials that I can count on enjoying every year going forward. I now have columbines, a lupine, an English lavender, baby's breath, a yellow bearded iris, monkey flowers, "darkest of all" daisies, sweet peas, nodding onions... I won't bore you with the full list but it was fun to pick them all out and figure out where to put them.

Another good reason to focus on flowers was because we got...

Bee-Curious

For years I've toyed with the idea of getting honey bees. However, I had some major qualms. I was nervous about stings naturally, but mostly I didn't feel confident about taking on the lives of these creatures with no experience and no guide. They're incredible creatures and deserve really good care, the way I would treat any livestock or pets. Every animal deserves a good life.

Enter my brother-in-law, who lives with us. He kept bees in Alaska and loved it, and he's talked about getting more of them for a long time now but hasn't been settled enough to do so. He's got bee boxes (which he made), equipment like a bee hat, and experience. But it's not his property and the children who live here are not his, so he didn't want to get bees if we weren't interested. With my interest and his experience, and a shared property, we can make this work.

We got the bee boxes and his equipment from Alaska and I ordered a 3 lb. nuc. It's a crazy world we live in and you can actually order bees through the mail. I did not do that, however. Last spring, between supply chain issues due to the pandemic and more people growing and raising their own food, there were horrible stories about bees and baby chicks/geese/ducks arriving dead through the mail. How awful on a number of levels. With visions of opening a box of dead bees in front of my children flitting through my head, I opted instead to drive down to Rochester and back to get bees from Hive 5 Bees. It was pandemic efficient, with them loading the box of bees into my car and me driving away. (One note: they did not wear masks. Ugh. It was my only gripe.) It was a cardboard box with a mesh covered entrance on one side. Inside were five frames and approximately 10,000 bees. I paid an extra $5 to have a mesh bag over the box to ensure no escapees during the hour and a half drive home. (Worth it.)

Hiving the bees

Hiving them, or putting the frames from the nuc into the hive, ended up being mostly a non-issue. My younger brother and his roommate were here to watch, and everyone but my BIL (all suited up) kept a big distance. The bees didn't act aggressive however and mostly seemed curious. We watched them carefully for the first few weeks to make sure they were settling into their new home properly, rather than swarming and looking for a new one, but it quickly became apparent that they loved the box and the location from how quickly they began building out comb. 

You want to have a hive where it will start getting morning sun, since heat will help wake up the bees and get them out collecting pollen earlier. It will also help keep the hive slightly warmer in the winter, when much of their energy will go to keeping the hive at the proper temperature. (There are debates about whether or not to insulate a hive, especially in a wet and cool but not super cold climate like ours, and we've discussed insulating at least the top but haven't settled on anything yet.) We've had enough time for several groups of brood to be hatched and start filling out the hive, which we've seen by a general increase in activity and number of bees in and around the hive each day.

It can be rather unsettling to be close to the hive. It is right up against one part of the garden and when I'm working in that section I sometimes have to consciously relax because the constant hum of the bees activates the danger parts of the brain.  Other than having them bump into me a lot (they're really derpy fliers) it hasn't been a problem. If I spend too long close to the hive, my dog--who has never gotten particularly close to it himself--starts to whine. Smart dog.

My fears of all kinds of stinging happening has not come true. As of yesterday there have been three stings: one curious dog snoot that was pushed into the entrance to the hive earned a sting (my younger brother brought his housemates' corgi over), and two people (HusbandX and our toddler) have stepped on bees and been stung. The bees haven't acted aggressive when we've gotten into the hive to check on things, however. We suit up every time (at least with hats and gloves) but it almost feels like overkill at this point because a few come to check us out and the rest just carry on doing what they were doing. Some say that bees get to know their keepers and others that it's a load of crock because they die so quickly, but they communicate quite well about other things, including measuring the length of comb to make on the frames and where good pollen/nectar spots are. I say hi to the bees every morning when I go check on them, and I don't care if it helps them to know me or not. (I talk to my plants too.)

It's entirely unnecessary to check on them every day, I just enjoy watching them. This has become an area of the yard where adults will take their coffee and tea to just sit and watch the bees work. The kids will sit on the garden wall and watch the comings and goings of the bees. We see the different colors of pollen they bring back on their legs and discuss what could have red or orange pollen like that? Did you see the one girl just covered in pollen like she'd fallen into a flower?? My toddler keeps telling everyone that she wants to be "a beehiver" when she grows up.

Viewing panel into the beehive, when 
they were just about to start construction
on the third box.

It also hasn't been a lot of what I'd consider work, at least not so far. We've opened the hive up a few times to check on the bees and see what they're doing, but mostly we just let them do their thing. Really, we only wanted to know when it was time to put another box (called a super) on top. Now we don't even need to pop the top anymore to see what they're doing because my BIL built a super which has two viewing panels in it. For science! These bees are part of our homeschooling science, but it's fun for everyone to be able to check out what's going on inside the hive without disturbing the bees. We saw the day they started building out comb in the new box, and now we can see them starting to fill it with honey. The basement troll is taking a daily picture of what they're doing, just for fun and science. 

Probably the most surprising thing for me is that I did not expect the hive to have a smell. It does, though. It gives off a very strong scent of wax and honey. This shouldn't have surprised me if I stopped to think about it, but it does. It's such a pleasant smell, I love it.

We're not certain it's 100% necessary but we've ordered a queen separator to keep her out of the upper boxes. This will ensure that there's only honey, no brood, in anything above a certain point. Whatever honey we take--and we're going to be incredibly conservative this first year to ensure they'll survive the winter; we don't even want to feed them sugar water unless strictly necessary--won't destroy baby bees in the harvest. We want the honey of course, but even more we want to have a robust hive. My BIL is actually hoping that we can split it next year and have two hives.

I know I'm far from the only beekeeper in my area. There's a company at our farmer's market that sells hyper local honey from my neighborhood. It's a good area, with so many people having large gardens. Plenty of flowers abound. 

And since it's not an either/or, I am also consciously trying to make better habitat for native bees. Even more than my honey bees, it makes me super happy to see big bumbles, of which we have several types in the greater Seattle area, looping around my yard. There are also several very small types of bees, including an iridescent blue/green bee that's gorgeous to behold. Those are plentiful visitors to several areas of my garden each summer.

I love the bearded irises

The two biggest things we're doing to help bees, other than adding ornamentals and more flowers across both the color and season spectrums, is first to leave open sections of soil around. 70% of all bees are ground nesting. I was super confused what the holes in my garden were for a long time until I saw one of our giant bumble bees flying out one day. There are smaller holes to be found in open dirt for tinier species of ground nesting bees. I do my best to leave them undisturbed as often as possible.

The second thing is that we've set up an "insect hotel" on the side of our shed. It's pretty small but we're going to make more little houses for insects. It's not hard to set up a basic mason bee hotel out of a bit of lumber and a drill, and our shed has decent protection from the elements.

The other things we do are just basic good practices, particularly when there are young people around who do things like eat random stuff or throw dirt on each other: I never use pesticides on any part of my yard or garden, nor do I generally use fertilizers. (With one exception--I did put some organic fertilizer on my blueberries to acidify the soil when I transplanted them. Moving forward, I'm going to mulch them with pine needles instead.) 

With all my efforts we've noticed an explosion of both insect and bird life in and around our yard. It's been really fun to both see and hear. In summer we get a dozen dragonflies patrolling the yard, on the prowl for mosquitoes and other yummy insects. The number of birds we hear, and the types of birds we hear, have both gone up in the past few years. I love to take my morning tea out on the back porch and just listen to the birds (when the kids will let me). With all the bad news constantly bombarding us about how poorly birds and insects are doing, it feels really lovely to know that we can help them and it doesn't even take much effort. And really, I can't even take credit because a lot of it involves just not doing things. I don't use pesticides/fungicides/fertilizers. I don't remove the leaves that fall in my yard. I don't remove all dead branches and plant material instantly. Even the things that I actively do, like planting more flowers, tend to be of the "set it and forget it" variety that pay dividends forever more, both for the humans and every other living creature around here. This is one area where laziness pays off.