on 30-06-2023 17:44
🌼 🐝 🦋🐛🐞🕸
April to June
April my Red Mason Bees start to emerge after a long long time in their silk cocoon. I put them out when it's about 14C . They pollinate all the fruit trees, apples pears plums they come and go to their home tubes where they lay an egg with pollen and nectar place a mud plug in between each until they reach the end of the tube and on they go until June.
This year a dear little bee also used the tubes. They do a similar thing in July, hoped to see more but one tube very welcome.
I took a photo of the tubes and Spot the odd one out!
All these bees only do good no harm to any one and they are so special. Our friend the leaf cutter bee moved in and I couldn't be more thrilled.
They pollinate the summer flowers and vegetable flowers.
I have started a new crop of vegetables this year
Tomatoes Runner beans and cucumber
cucumber flower
Beans just starting to crop now
Tomato flowers.
Growing these gives me so much joy. Growing these from seeds is so interesting and neighbour's swapping different varieties they have grown too. A new one to me is a Tomato from a neighbour that is a chocolate colour!
on 04-07-2023 11:15
on 04-07-2023 11:15
Such a lot of dedication to your bees @TallTrees. Most people only glimpse the roses missing big circles from their leaves. Only a few get to see where they go 😂
I'm never impressed with the quality of supermarket garlic so I didn't think it would grow very well. Organic Gardening Catalogue do some good bundles in Jan/Feb so I grabbed my garlic, shallot, onion sets, and potatoes from there.
I did plant some supermarket potatoes in one pot to see how they got on. Definitely not as vigorous as the Charlottes and Pink Fir Apple potatoes I planted but they're green and growing. Time will tell if they come out well. The hot weather last year caused quite a bit of blight on my tubers but thankfully most of them were easily taken care of with the peeler before going into the boiling pot! This year it's been cool so everything is very lush out there in the garden now.
on 04-07-2023 13:01
on 04-07-2023 13:01