What have you done today in the Garden?

I power washed one of our decks yesterday (in the rain, of course!) and today I began painting the railing & spindles. It's quite a job but is is looking much better.

Tomorrow, I promised to help a friend with her landscaping. I have potted up about 20 plants that I will donate to the effort. Hope it comes out well. Hope our backs last too!

BTW @Sjoerd that is some wheel of wax!! I have never seen anything like it. I enjoy hearing about how you tend to those bees of yours.

@Jewell I don't have any honey bees left either (our neighbor gave up her hives), but we do have tons of bumblebees (don't know what kind), and we have Mason bees too. I put out one of those mason bee homes 3 years ago. Nada until this year!! Lots of holes have been plugged up! Very exciting. So what kind of bumblebees do you have & how did you identify them?

 

Did some picking and watered some.

 

Hubby cut the pyracantha hedge and i picked a lot of rhubarb and watered the polyanthus.

 

@Jewell I saw (what I thought) was a honey bee today! It was collecting pollen along side a bumble bee.

 

I am still working on power washing our rail fence in preparation for painting.
I also meet with my friend and did a garden consult. It was a lot of fun! I took over 20 potted perennials and we managed to place them. And we planted 7.

 

Picked blueberries today and did a little weeding. Mainly working inside rearranging and getting rid of stuff.

@Jewell I don't have any honey bees left either (our neighbor gave up her hives), but we do have tons of bumblebees (don't know what kind), and we have Mason bees too. I put out one of those mason bee homes 3 years ago. Nada until this year!! Lots of holes have been plugged up! Very exciting. So what kind of bumblebees do you have & how did you identify them?[/QUOTE]
A post in the neighborhood app. From a bee keeper said that the yellow jackets have been heavily preying on bee hives in the area. He asked that people be sure and destroy any nests of yellow jackets. Didn’t do any research to find out more. Have seen a few honey bees recently but not many.

CM, I only go by their coloring. We have western, red belted and fuzzy horned bumblebees...I think. Here’s our state extension page. http://pubs.cahnrs.wsu.edu/publications/pubs/fs263e/?p-page=1

 

We have been melting more old bee's wax. There are a couple of people that want a kilo to use for repairing old furniture.
The bees seem happy when I looked in on them a few days ago and have gone a bit mad with gathering, as the lime trees here were seriously in bloom.

We have moved some plants around in the garden and harvesting this and that. The spuds are the most fun so far. The kapucijners are finished.
We have been planting some green manure, leeks and removing old strawb plants.

Nice that it is raining today. I am enjoying catching my breath.

 

Did some more picking. Its starting to come in now.

 

Picked some blackcurrants, gooseberries, raspberries and loganberries.

 

Ate blueberries and weeded for 5 minutes.

 

We are setting up for pickling and other preservation. There are more coming. This year all I grew were celebrity tomatoes.

 

Wow DM, what a haul!!

Went to my community garden plot with my daughter for "five minutes, Mom". We wound up staying 1/2 hour and harvesting 3 zukes, a pile of peas, a pile of beans, several shafts of swiss chard, an onion for her dinner, 2 carrots, 4 garlic scapes, 4 beets, 4 small potatoes and a partridge and a pear tree!!!

I hope to go tomorrow to do some weeding.

 

A perfect garden would feed you every day, hopefully something different, and not make you work too hard. Its just wishful thinking so I keep dreaming. I went out today and picked again. No room left upstairs so the tomato preservation has to go in shifts. I am proud to report 16 jars of bread and butter pickles, and about as many garlic dill pickles. Sunday is tomato day.

 

My first pepper ever, I took a little bite off the end because I wasn't sure if it was sweet or hot pepper, turns out its sweet, lots more on the way!
and a TONE of catnip, it's now mostly dry, my daughter and I made some cats toys by cutting up and sowing up an old shirt, one cat is very into it, the other one isn't quite sure what this strange smelly toy is.

 

We have some catnip hanging too. I wonder if it would be better to run the next batch through the dehydrator?