Wasps under Control, and Bees Foraging

It’s been a while since my last post about bees, and wasps, but that’s because things have been going well. My last post on the subject, Wasps, Bees, and doing nothing, told about the problems that I was having. That particular hive was not coping well, and so I opened it up, to find a tiny number of bees, with a queen, but no brood, and only on frame that had been filled with comb.  Again, it was a hive that had somehow failed to build up that was struggling.

Polyculture Update

This was supposed to be an Update with pictures, but there seems to be a problem with uploading the images. No idea why, but it’s not temporary. Back to the Polyculture stuff.

The corn is not performing as well as I’d hoped. I’m not sure why that is, but they may be getting too much shade from some adjacent sunflowers, or the crimson and persian clover ground cover may be too competitive. The performance is not uniform, so may be down to seed quality. I’ll try another variety next year. The Crimson clover, Persian clover, and Bladder senna, are all flowering. The Bladder senna has some plants with a pure yellow flower, and some with a really nice bronze/orange tint. The pictures are lovely, but only I can see them….

Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden. Book Review

A while ago I reviewed The Resilient Gardener by Carol Deppe. It’s probably one of the most important books that I’ve read so far. In the book, Carol frequently refers to another book, Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden, particularly when discussing food preservation. Buffalo Bird Woman’s garden is an account of Hidatsa American Indian gardening techniques, as told by a Hidatsa woman, born about 1839. The techniques were told to the author of the book, Gilbert L. Wilson, in the early 1900′s. I found another reference to the book recently, so ordered it, and what a gem of a book it is.

Polyculture Progress

Most of the progress in my new polyculture has been in my thinking, rather than in the ground, but I wanted to record some of my early thoughts, so that I can look back at how it all developed. The rye has continued to develop ears. Rather than cut them off, I’m going to see if they have enough time to produce some viable seed. To hedge my bets, I’ve germinated another batch. This is a later sowing than the standard Bon Fils method, which is sown at Summer Solstice, but may be more appropriate to Rye. I thought that the early development of ears was due to hot dry conditions, but it may simply be that Rye has a shorter growing season than Wheat/spelt, and therefore was acting like a very late Spring sowing, rather than a very early Autumn sowing. I hope to learn more as I go along. The seed has germinated exceptionally well, 100% in fact, which has meant that I have a few more seedlings than I wanted, (Nick take Note), but can find space for them anyway.

Polyculture Experiment Update Early August 2011

Hi all

Mixed news so far, and a few pictures to post, for those of you following my experiments for this year.

The good news is that most of the plants are doing well. The corn is about to flower, as is the persian clover, the bladder senna is growing well, and so is the spelt. Some of the rye has been browsed by small rabbits/voles, but not enough to be serious. The main problem is that the rye seems to be etermined to produce grain this year, and not wait until next Summer.

How Much Land Do I Need to Grow All of My Food?

Hi all

I’ve been looking at the question of how much land we need to grow our own food for some time now, but the question is not an easy one to answer, or find answers to. Whilst thinking about the problem, and during my research, I’ve also thought about how our ancestors lived, although that is obviously from an English perspective. The post doesn’t give a definitive answer to the question, so I’m deliberately not going to put too many tags into it, so that it isn’t accessed by too many people looking for hard facts.