Farm Blog, Winter 2014/15
January 1, 2014 - March 20, 2015
March 17
Planted Fedco seeds for vegetable garden in peat pots in the sunroom. 18 pots of each kind were planted. Included were: Fordhook Giant Swiss Chard, Red Russian Kale, White Egg Turnip, Donkey Spinach, Arugula, Nero di Tuscana Lacinato Kale, Early Wonder Tall Top Beet, Fiesta Broccoli OG/hybrid, Vates Collards, Piracicaba Non-heading Broccoli, Fun Jen Chinese Cabbage, Shuko Pac Choi/hybrid, Cracoviensis Lettuce OG.
March 15
Cleaned around lavender plants and put on Yum Yum. Watered well. Put Yum Yum on fruit trees in orchard. Watered vegetable garden and herb garden. The two hives of bees are coming out every day now. Some Apricot - Prunus armeniaca trees are blooming in town, but none of my fruit trees are coming out of bud. My bees are getting some pollen and maybe some nectar from my Jasmine, "Hardy Winter" - Jasminum nudiflorum, Crocus, yellow - Crocus spp. and Crocus, purple - Crocus spp. and Hyancinth, white - Hyacinthus orientalis "alba". Nothing else is blooming except the Forsythia - Forsythia suspensa and the bees are not attracted to it .
February 21
Checked bees. Old hive needed sugar water added, split had plenty of sugar water and comb honey left from last time. Planted 2 bunches of onions yesterday- one white sweet and one red sweet. Purchased 12 2cu ft bags of Back to Earth Composted Cotton Burr. Put on vegetable garden and turned under.
February 13
Bees bringing in yellow pollen from somewhere. Usually the only thing blooming in Eldorado this early is the Siberian Elm - Ulmus pumila, but the ones around the house are not yet in bloom.
February 9
Checked my three hives of bees and found one to be dead (the split from my oldest hive) and two to be doing fine (the old hive and the split from the neighbor across the street). I put in 2c 1/1 sugar water into each and will check them again later in the month.
January
January in northern New Mexico is always a cold, windy month. This year January was exceptionally dry. There were a couple of good snows in December, but not in January. I had to soak the fruit trees, lavender garden, pond garden and the flower garden on a warm day (50 degrees) once during the month. I also completed cleaning the dead plant material from the spring growth.
Some of the bees continued to come out on warm days (above 50 degrees), but otherwise there was little activity. The ground is still pretty frozen, so it cannot be worked at all.