Homestead Happiness June Week 4

1:09 PM in 4, Aqua, happiness, homestead, june, week

Lots of developments on fruits, vegetables, and wildflowers this week made us happy.

The creeping bellflower, which is kindly filling in our less-maintained areas with purple June/July flowers, is in full bloom.

Its an invasive species, but other than being an aggressive spreader and difficult to eradicate, its not as bad as some invasives.  For example, this patch s a hotspot for bee activity.

The squirrels won round two also, picking 90% of our strawberries while they were still green, even with the quick and dirty strawberry cage in place.  So either the woven wire fencing has too large of holes, or were battling mice instead of squirrels.  (Or were battling jedi squirrels that can pick the strawberries using The Force...we know they exist.)  We made our quick and dirty strawberry cage slightly less quick but even more dirty by covering it with 1/2" hardware cloth.

Weve got an especially delicious-looking strawberry that no squirrel could possibly resist as a test probe.  If it gets picked, our problem is definitely mice.

It looks like we might actually get some raspberries in year two.  Only a handful, but hey!  You gotta start somewhere.

We were thinking we would get skunked on apples, plums, and sour cherries this year since there were only a few flowers on the plums (none on the apples and cherries) and we couldnt find fruit on anything.  But behold!  There are a few plums we had missed.  Were going to have four of them come September.  Quadruplets would normally be very exciting, but its a good thing we made so much jam last year!

Similarly, the Nanking cherries seem to have survived the winter ok and will be ripening soon.  Our likely-bird-planted versions compete with other shrubs and weeds in the shady areas of our yard, so we dont usually get enough of these to do anything with but make a light snack.  But theyre really good, so maybe we should do some plant propagation experiments to give them a chance to reach their full permaculture potential.

Finally, the corn is definitely going to be "knee high by the fourth of July" since its already thigh-high now!  Were currently devising squirrel-deterring plans for when the ears start to ripen.

What made your homestead happy this week?

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Homestead Happiness June Week 1

8:31 PM in 1, Aqua, happiness, homestead, june, week

Summer is really kickin into gear around here, and although the spring was a struggle for garden prep and pollinators, theres some good news from the Lab on both fronts this week.

Our wildflowers (Erysimum, Wallflowers) from a few weeks ago were joined in bloom by some feral roses this week.

We havent seen many bees on either of those, but the wallflowers are being worked by some hover flies.  We think this specimen is Eristalis arbustorum.

Meanwhile, the hawthorn a few feet away has its own ecosystem of insects pollinating it.  Another hover fly (probably a Drone fly), a blue bottle fly, some small feral bee (or small feral bee-imitating hover fly) we couldnt identify, and the honey bees we were hoping to see there.  There were at least two other species that we couldnt get good photos of.  But, in trying to identify these bugs, we learned that the larval stage of many hover flies (although not of these two) eat aphids, and some eat scale and other garden pests.  So, stick around, hover flies, well need you soon! (...and feel free to check out the scale on our Meyer lemon tree; we set it by the driveway for you.)

In the garden, our squash have sprouted!

The kale is also up, although it would have been nice to get this in the ground several weeks ago.

Meanwhile, our tomato plants seem to have largely survived (so far) the bi-daily hail storms weve been getting.  We did have to replace a couple pepper plants in what were referring to as a jalapeno emergency.

Strawberry season is so close we can taste it.

We also got a double-yolked egg from our Red Star hen that broke the 4-oz barrier.  We think there should be an additional category for eggs this large.

What made you happy this week?

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