Gimme Some Sugar

Come on now
Gimme some sugar
Gimme some sugar
Little honey bee
-Tom Petty, "Honey bee"

We are now the proud caretakers of a backyard hive of honeybees, thanks to my father-in-law and the good folks at Brushy Mountain Bee Farm. Hopefully, this will provide us with a source of honey and the bees will help pollinate the garden and the other flowers in the yard. We (and by that I mean my wife) successfully hived a swarm of bees that arrived today in the mail. She grew up keeping bees with her dad as her 4H project so she knew what to do after a little refresher reading. Her dad gave us one of their old hives and with a little TLC and some new replacement parts it was refurbished and ready to go. The swarm arrived today in this box, complete with a separate container to house the queen. The bees are collected around it so it's hard to see in this photo. The plan is to let them get acquainted with their new hive and then check on them in a week. Luckily, that will be Memorial Day weekend and my father-in-law will be visiting so he can get to see inside the hive and tell us how they are doing.

Parade of Peppers

UPS just delivered another round of peppers for transplant that I had ordered from Burpee. These are The Godfather variety, one that I had last year and really liked. It's an Italian frying pepper, more sweet than hot. I liked them in quesadillas and the occasional salad. Like the last batch, I took them straight to the garden and transplanted them. It's about to rain so they should be welcomed to their new beds with more moisture than they've had in the shipping box for the last few days.

P4: Pruning plastic, planting potatoes

We're approaching the last frost date and I took a bit of a look at the weather map and decided to chance it. Up came the rest of the plastic that had been warming the beds for the potatoes, pumpkin, and melons.
I put out the french fingerling potatoes from Seed Savers that arrived a few days ago. They've been resting under the grow light to get them to sprout at the eyes before going in the ground. I could have done this about two weeks ago but they only shipped on May 1. I'll save some for my own seed stock next year and try to give them a head start by going in April.
The giant pumpkin has been in the ground for about five days but under the cold frame where it appears to be thriving. In fact the automatic opener arm has slipped a couple of times and its gotten a bit wilted when the top didn't open as it should. A little air, some water, and that Dill's Atlantic Giant bounces right back to looking good. If I were going for a world record, that stress would be a no-no but 1500 lbs is probably out of my range anyway.
I put in two varieties of melons, Earlisweet Hybrid and a couple of Athenas. Managing all the vine growth is going to be a challenge this year but I'll figure out something.
Oh, I almost forgot, I was outside today harvesting the worm compost and applying as a side dressing when UPS pulled up with an order of Ancho/Poblano peppers for transplanting that I had forgotten I had ordered. They never even got inside the house as I took them straight to the garden and put them out.