Bee Class, and Order

So I ordered a bee package, that’s 3 lbs of bees (10,000 of them), and 1 Italian queen, to be picked up at my teacher’s place on 26 April. I admit I am a bit freaked out about it. It’s not like anything I’ve ever done. But that shouldn’t stop me, right?!

Yesterday at bee class our teacher told us about the operation in Georgia where he picks up his bee packages (700 of them). They “shake bees” into the packages all day long, 400 of them a day. Amazing.

I’ve been looking at “installing a bee package” videos on YouTube. I most like Rick’s video. I will be watching this video and all others I can find on the subject every day until 26 April, so the way to do it will be grafted on my brain. (I do the same with pottery: I watch videos of people throwing on the wheel in all their many ways. It helps.) I also have a couple of local beekeepers whom I can call on to come and help me on the day if I feel too nervous.

I suggested to the teachers at Amie’s preschool that I could bring my bee package over to the school right after pickup, to show the kids. 10,000 little living buzzing creatures in a box (well-contained, of course!): what a show!

Now I need to order the equipment, clothing, tools, and medications. I need to find a good place to put the hive on the property – it’s really not self-evident to me. When the boxes arrive, I need to paint them, place them, and build a windbreak and whatever else necessary around it.

Eat Real Food Challenge

I stopped reckoning our food consumption for the Riot a long time ago: the Riot way of calculating our food consumption and production was never clear to me. And so, though the growing and storing and preparing of food are almost constantly on my mind, I haven’t kept track, which made me feel at a loss. The challenge over at Not Dabblng in Normal is a great occasion to take stock.

For me the issues are

  1. processing (preservatives, food coloring, pesticides, and simply the amount of steps from field to fork)
  2. packaging (especially plastics and styrofoam)
  3. food miles

(+) I’ll first discuss those points we’re already making progress on and are improving as we go. (+/-) Then there are the points that we still need to get started on, that need work but that can be done. (-) Then the ones we can’t do much about in either the near future, or ever.

Lastly, why are we doing this? Three words: health, resilience, thrift.

  1. + EGGS: We’re eating a lot of eggs (4-5 eggs, each, a week), which we buy locally at our Winter’s Farmers Market or through my raw milk buying club. The cartons are being reused by the farmers, and I’m keeping some for when we have chickens ourselves. I still hope to have those chickens soon.
  2. + SWEETENER: Hopefully we’ll also be getting our bees soon (end of April). The idea is to start using more honey for sweetener than sugar. (We decided, BTW, to go ahead with the bees even if we can’t have honey: for the skill, the pollination, the wax – the potentially poisoned honey will be returned to the hive for winter feeding.)
  3. + VEGETABLES/BEANS: Compared to last year, our vegetable garden will be expanded, in time (we’ll have a Spring season this time), size (double, at least), and yield (thanks to my higher position on the steep learning curve).
  4. + HOME–PROCESSED FOOD: We’re still eating well from our canning pantry: jams, jellies, chutneys, pie filling, apple sauce, peaches in syrup, etc. I can’t wait to start adding more and more variety to that in a few months.
  5. +/- FOOD STORAGE: Tomorrow marks the removal of the asbestos tiles in our basement, which prevented us from installing a root cellar or “cold room”. Then we’ll start drawing up plans and we hope to have a cold room by the end of Summer, when the big harvest comes in.
  6. +/- FRUIT: We will be planting berry bushes, kiwi vines and paw paws this Spring, but it will be a while before we will be able to harvest a good amount.  No room for apples or pears, our staple fruits, but we buy them locally and organic when in season and eat them processed at other times.
  7. +/- FISH: We don’t eat a lot of fish” two or three times a month. To be honest, looking at the selection at the grocery store (Whole Foods), I don’t know what to buy anymore: farmed, wild caught? We’re planning to have a small pond in which we might grow tilapia or some such (haven’t researched it much yet) which we will harvest and freeze for special treats.
  8. +/- MEAT: We also eat very little meat: once a week, if at all. When we do, we buy it at Whole Foods: no antibiotics, etc, and usually quite locally sourced, but still, to be minimized. The allowances from the meat CSAs are too big for us: we’d have to stuff ourselves with meat, by our standards. They’re also pricey. The thing to do here is to keep our meat consumption down and to enjoy only as a special treat the occasional chicken from the backyard.
  9. +/- DRINKS: We don’t drink soda at all and rely mostly on water from the tap, which we filter. We do love a good cup of coffee and tea, or two – especially in winter, when it’s 58F in the house. I am going to experiment with tea plants and maybe, with a good homegrown tea, I could kick the coffee habit. As for juices, what little comes into the house is for Amie, and I hope to make our own come berry time.
  10. +/- BAKING: This is a weakness of mine. I know I can bake a bread and that it doesn’t take a lot of time or hassle. I know that with just a little more effort and dedication I can make perfectly good bread (and cookies, cakes, crackers). But baking just isn’t in my blood. I hope we get to make that Earth Oven: it’ll be a kick in the butt. Imagine how much processed, bagged foods I could ignore at the store if I did this! (As for food miles, see GRAINS).
  11. +/- DAIRY PRODUCTS: There is also, really, no reason why I shouldn’t be making my own yogurt, butter and cheese! As for the raw materials for those:
  12. – MILK: The raw milk is as unprocessed as it gets, and it comes in glass ball jars, so the packaging isn’t a problem. But its has a lot of food miles on it: it comes from 100 miles away. And at its price, $4.50 for half a gallon, we can afford only 1 gallon a week, but we consume about 3 gallons. The rest I buy from Organic Valley at Whole Foods. Nothing much I can do about this, as yet. There are cow shares around that I know of and that would be affordable. But the plastic bottles I will reuse either as hotcaps for early transplants,  or for emergency water storage if I ever get round to that.
  13. – GRAINS/RICE: I have no room in my garden to grow my own grains, let alone rice. Most grains on the market come from over a 100 – probably a 1000 -  miles away. The only thing way I can do, for now, is to buy them dry and in bulk.  I’d love to get a grain mill and buy whole grains, then grind them, but that would be for later and would not solve the issue at hand. I’ll look into ways to eventually replace conventional grains with other sources of carbs and starches.

Riot for Austerity – Month 16

Riot for Austerity fist with Thermometer

Last year’s averages (calculated here) are mentioned as a baseline. I use this calculator.

Gasoline. I can’t wait for the temperatures to go up and the rains to stop so I can bike Amie to school.

9.96 gallons per person (pp) in cars + 10 miles pp on public transport

=  24 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 24.8%)

Electricity. This went up a lot because of the growing lights and heat mat. I’ll measure how much is consumed by the full setup of eight lights, heat mat and fan.

539 KWH (all wind) = 15 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s early average: 18.2% – we only switched to wind in the middle of the year)

Heating Oil and Warm Water. I’m relieved to say this number is finally going down. It’s warming up and we had some good thaw days. We still heat to 58F at night and most of the day. The wood stove goes on around 6 pm and goes till when we go to bed, heating the house to around 64F. I’ll count the second cord of wood we started once it’s finished. Also our warm water is heated with this oil.

50.15 gallons = 81 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 77%)

Trash. We did even better here. I reuse most unrecyclable containers for the seedlings. 90% of our trash is plastic food wrapping, so I watch the packaging of the food we buy, and try to buy mostly in bulk anyway.

3 lbs pp = 2 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 7.3%)

Water. This again crept up. We had four guests over for the holiday week and I also did a lot of washing and rinsing of last year’s plant and seedlings pots. Those seeds and seedlings also need a lot of water…  The lower one’s water consumption, the more these little bits count and jump into the eye. I’ll be happy to see the rain barrels back in use.

494 gallons of water pp = 16 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 16.5%)

Consumer Goods. Most of our purchases were towards the garden this month, so I won’t count them. For the rest we did well again, only splurged a bit at the MFA ($20 for a book and some small toys) and bought two magazine subscriptions.

$60 = 7 % of the US National Average

(Last year’s yearly average: 27.2%)

Humongous Planting

dscf0906

Over five hours of fairly uninterrupted work I planted:

  1. Anise Hyssop (mint!)
  2. Aster: September Ruby NE
  3. Broccoli Blend 09
  4. Broccoli: Waltham
  5. Brussels Sprouts: Roodnerf
  6. Cabbage: Charming Snow
  7. Cabbage: Earliana
  8. cabbage: red express
  9. Catnip
  10. Chard: Bright Lights
  11. Chard: Fordhook Giant
  12. Charming snow cauliflower
  13. chives: Purlie
  14. Collards: Evenstar
  15. Cornflower: Bachelot Button
  16. eggplant: Applegreen
  17. eggplant: diamond
  18. Hyssop
  19. kale: White Russian
  20. kale: Winterbor
  21. Lavender
  22. leek: King Richard
  23. leek: King Sieg 09
  24. Lemon Balm
  25. Lobelia: Crystal Palace
  26. Lovage
  27. Maltese Cross
  28. Mustard: Early Mizuna Japan 09
  29. Mustard: Mild Kingdom 09
  30. Onion: Clear Dawn
  31. parsley: Gigante d’Italia 09
  32. pepper: hot: Czech Black
  33. pepper: hot: Habanero
  34. pepper: sweet: New Ace (hybrid)
  35. pepper: sweet: peacework
  36. pepper: sweet: purple beauty
  37. pepper: sweet:Valencia Orange 09
  38. Rosemary
  39. sage: Broadleaf
  40. spinach: Giant Winter
  41. Spinach: Longstanding Bloomsdale
  42. spinach: Space
  43. tomato, cherry: Sungold
  44. tomato, cherry:Be my baby
  45. tomato: cherry: husk cherry
  46. tomato: paste Heinz
  47. tomato: slicing: cherokee purple
  48. tomato: slicing: Ida gold
  49. tomato: slicing: pink brandywine
  50. tomato:slicing: Glacier
  51. Wormwood

Of course I am absolutely certain that I caught all the mice in my house and that not one will ever dare to come in for ever here-on-after.

Having that heat mat (for four flats) on that bottom shelf is so handy! I now have room for four more flats, on one shelf. There are a couple of seeds that escaped my attention today (the lettuces!), so probably that shelf will be filled up tomorrow.

We went to our Garden Center’s Winter Fair and of course bought more seeds. This time DH was in on it too (Habanero), as well as Amie. It’s good to spread the guilt obsession pleasure! Amie chose two annual flowers and one packet of Three Sisters seeds – she was very taken by the name, so that’s what she got. She also got to pot up a Marigold seedling and pet a parrot.

Hoophouse Trouble

Well, the hoophouse almost kicked the bucket, again. Yesterday night we experienced 50 miles per hour gusts of wind that got through every crack and gap in the hoop house and almost lifted it up off the ground. Almost. When I woke up this morning after a pretty fitful sleep it was still there, but only just.

Our hoophouse skeleton is made entirely of flexible pvs pipes and rigid pvc connectors, and it is covered with 6 mil landscape fabric, attached to the ribs by pvc clips. It is anchored to the ground by sideways (squeezing) pressure on its base, through galvanized stakes hammered in the ground on one side and the two wooden boxes of the garden beds on the other.  There is one small cable inside that is mainly for correcting the top from leaning over too much, because the whole thing sits on slightly sloping ground.

Our initial door design very quickly proved a bust, and we never even  installed it, so now the entrance is simply a flap of plastic that we clip and unclip as we go in. This is a major gap in the structure. There are also big holes along the covering of the side walls.

When I walked out this morning to set things aright before the big snowstorm – we know how the house, even in its better days, performs under snow loads! – I found that it had jumped all of the anchors but one. It had jumped over all of the stakes and even one garden bed (a foot high!). Only the corner of the other garden bed and the tight  (now too tight) plastic covering held it in shape and in place.

In short, in a place where it gets windy and snowy, I would not recommend going with this simple design, or even this choice of materials. It is simply underbuilt.

We decided to add wooden frames on its short sides. In one of those we can place a more convenient and air tight wooden door, and in the other we can stick a window that can open for cross-ventilation.  We’re also contemplating a low wooden wall all around its base for the now sliding off. We’ll replace the ripped and punctured cover with a more transparent and durable one.

We’ll rebuild it in the Spring, before we move it to its Summer position. The idea is still to have it be mobile, but instead of picking it up in one piece, we’ll make it modular.

That said, I am glad we made this house. It got us going, we’ll be able to use most of its materials, and it taught us a lot about good (and bad) design.  Also, all the plants inside survived the calamities so far, and I think it won’t be long before we can harvest some lettuce and mache and replace them with new seedlings growing in the basement as we speak.

dscf0872

Caught two more mice. Bought more covers in case there are more mice. Gearing up to do a huge planting over the weekend. Got more seeds too, mostly chard and spinach. How could I possibly have enough of those!

Of Calcium in the Soil and Plants – Part 8

4164147363_b4e204e8ac1

You guessed it: it’s time for another episode in the Calcium in the Soil and Plant series! Take heart: we’re getting close to the end (maybe only one more part to go?). Actually, it took me so long to post on this again because this one took me a long time to figure out. If you want to brush up on the previous parts, check out this page.

~

Part 8. Selective Nutrient (and Water) Uptake by Roots

Nutrients arrive at the root surface in three ways:

  1. The first of these is root interception. As roots grow, they make direct contact with nutrients. This mechanism is less important because roots come into direct contact with only 1-3 percent of the soil volume exploited by the root mass. Mycorrhizae – fungi that form a symbiotic association with plant roots – can increase the surface area that roots can extract nutrients from. Calcium and magnesium, because they are so abundant, are often intercepted by root contact.
  2. The second mechanism is mass flow, wherein plants, sucking up water (through the various pumps and pulls discussed in the previous part), also move the nutrients that are dissolved in it. Especially mobile (free) nutrients are “attracted” in this manner: nitrate-nitrogen, chloride and sulfur, which are never absorbed by the colloid and thus always exist in solution, and calcium and magnesium, which are held only loosely to the colloid. The drier the soil, the less mass flow.
  3. The third mechanism is diffusion, by which ions in the soil spontaneously move from a point of higher concentration to a point of lower concentration (like in osmosis). Diffusion happens in the soil because the immediate root area, once it is depleted, has a lower concentration of the nutrient ions. Immobile nutrients like phosphorus and potassium, which have a low solubility, are strongly held by the colloid, and are only present in small concentrations, reach the root through this mechanism. The soil porosity is important here: smaller pores will block diffusion.

The last two mechanisms are the more significant mechanisms of nutrient uptake. Which one is predominant depends on the nutrients, the amount of water in the soil and the physical conditions (e.g., crumb structure) of the soil which dictates the movement of water through it.

Nutrients (especially immobile ones) then need to be wrested from the colloid by an ion exchange – the cation exchange capacity (CEC) talked about on a soil test. As we saw, the positively charged nutrient cations are held to the negatively charged colloid by a small electro-magnetic bond. When the root hairs release hydrogen ions (H+) and these come into contact with the colloid, they take their places on the colloid, breaking or weakening the colloidal-nutrient bond. The nutrients are knocked free and this makes them more available to be taken up by the root hairs.

Once the nutrient has arrived at the plant root surface and has been made available, the root needs to take it in: the nutrient-ion needs to travel from the root’s exterior to its interior.

As we saw in Part 7, the membranes of the cells making up the epidermis and the endodermis of roots are semi-permeable. This means several things. First, roots allow movement in, but not out, which allows osmosis to take place, by which water is taken up by the plant roots (cf. Part 7). Second, they allow only small solutes in, so they are impermeable to the large molecules of organic solutes (more about that in the next part). Third, some small solutes are allowed in, but others are not: plant roots are selective about their food.

It is the last aspect that interests us here. The uptake of the nutrients (as well as sugars and amino acids) by the roots is selective because of two main features:

  1. First, the root membrane has channels that are ion-selective: one type of channel will let through only phosophorus ions, another fits only calcium ions, or potassium or nitrate, etc. Think of the toddler’s toy: the box with the star and pentagon and circular shaped holes into which only the star and pentagon and circular blocks fit. The root too is constructed like that.
  2. The actual ferrying through these channels is done by ion-selective carriers: so-called coupling proteins that are embedded in the membrane of the root cells and that only react with specific ions, passing them on. Different plants require different amounts of nutrients, and so they will have different types and densities of ion carriers on the surface of their cells. These ion carriers are also most numerous on the surface of root hairs and root tips, which shows that roots are the main conduit for nutrient uptake in plants.

That explains the root’s selection of particular nutrients. Now, how does it select their quantity? How does it say, that’s enough?

As for water, its protein carrier is the aquaporin. Aquaporins are embedded in the cell membrane, forming transmembrane pores that conduct just water molecules. They prevent the passage of ions and other solutes by a filter (the ar/R filter) of amino acids that bind only water molecules and let them in (single file), while excluding all other molecules. When there is a lack or an excess of water, a gating mechanism changes the shape of the aquaporin so that it blocks the pore and stops the water flow. These gates can fail and an excessive amount of water can break the gates, as it were, and “drown” a plant.

Nutrients like calcium ions are taken up by different transmembrane protein carriers, which actively transport them, that is, they require energy to do so, because they have to pull in ions against their concentration gradient. For instance, there’s a good chance the root cells already have a higher concentration of calcium than the soil in the root area, but it might still need more. The energy required comes from a part of the cell (called the ATP, a nucleotide). If the plant has enough of a nutrient, it can simply stop drawing on the energy source. Also this mechanism can fail, and an excess of nutrients can lead to a toxic overdose and kill the plant.

So, however well-equipped roots are to select what the plant is in need of, it is still up to us, gardeners, to know how much of what a certain plant in our care needs and how much of it is present in our soil.

~

Next up, nutrients not in mineral but in organic form, and how those can make it into the plants. Yes, the egg shells. Finally!

Of Mice and Bees

kalmia_latifolia

Yesterday evening we had our second beekeeping class, after a two week hiatus due to bad weather predictions (you can parse that either way) and school vacation. Rick brought in a full hive and guided us through the components, discussing their uses, alternatives, advantages and disadvantages, and some beginners’ pitfalls.

The magical moment, for me, was when he pulled a frame out of one of the brood chambers (the boxes at the bottom, where the queen lays her eggs and the hive resides). That frame had on it worker cells, drone cells, and queen cells.

It was passed around and suddenly the bees were in the room with us. Not pictures of them, or stories or scientific theory about them, or the invaluable evidence of Rick’s experience with them. But their actual home.

Up until that point I had been hesitating: should we do it this Spring / should we wait until next Spring? The pressure was on: there are only two to three weeks left of decision time: after that, there will be no more bee packages for sale. But when that frame came out, I knew I could, I should do it.

After seeing all that equipment, I also concluded that I would start out with what is commercially available: plastic frames pre-coated with wax, pre-made hive boxes, purchased bee packages, and conventional medications like mite-treatments and antibiotics.

But I intend, as I go along, to learn the carpentry to put the equipment together myself and to investigate how you propagate queens and nucs in case a hive is lost and bee packages are not available online. The medications will be the most challenging, but I’m keen on learning more natural ways of keeping bees healthy and treating them if they’re sick. All of that is for later… but not too late!

Right now my concern is with the many, many Mountain Laurels (kalmia latifolia) that are on our and our neighbor’s property. That’s a picture of their flower on top. Oh, and not to mention the acre of Rhododendron next door. Both plants (as well as Azaleas) are toxic (though not to bees) and honey made from their flower nectar “has been known” to be poisonous to humans.

I doubt my neighbor would allow me to remove them so I can keep bees! Rick is asking around what I can do about this, if anything. Keep your fingers crossed!

~

And I caught another mouse, but not before it mowed down all my celery seedlings, the only flat not under a dome, because the plants were already quite large. It’s not a good start to the season!

A Gardener’s Spring

4368568608_568e216c95

This time of year I get that lump in my throat. I see my seedlings come up in the basement. I do the rounds of blogs – mostly gardeners, homesteaders – and see their seedlings come up as well. It touches me deeply. It is a reawakening of a childlike feeling of wonder, that, with only the addition of water and light, life comes out of such a tiny seed.

But hold on. Maybe children, I assume, have that feeling of wonder and it comes naturally to them. It fits them. I see that in Amie sometimes. ‘Wo-ow!’ she says, and moves on. For me it is less wonder than awe. There is something menacing in it, something too big. Hence the lump in my throat and sometimes – I admit it – a tear in my eye, at the sight of a seedling. Has my soul shrunk, in adulthood, so it can no longer hold that great capacity of wonder?

If so, I am flexing its boundaries!

I am so lucky to have the opportunity to live here, where I can grow food from the miraculous seed, and watch the awesome wildlife, and feel the great mycorrhizal colony underneath my feet, and untie- undo – my soul.