Pollen Identification

It was a warm sunny day yesterday and the bees were bringing in lots of pollen. Can anyone help identify where this pollen comes from?

I would guess the pollen is from a tree blossom but not sure. The only trees that seem to be in bloom are the maples.





























I did see my first dandelion flower yesterday, but only one, here it is:

I also saw this crocus flower:

Here is the garlic I spoke of in my last post:

Early Pollen Source

I took a walk this evening just before dark and saw these maple blooms. In my last post I mentioned that I saw the bees bringing in pollen that I believed was from maple. Here is some more evidence. These pictures are from the same tree a few hundred feet from our house.

You can see the stamen (white) and anthers (yellow-brown tips). The pollen is found on the anthers

It is early March and it freezes every night. Yesterday we got a couple of inches of snow. This and the previous snow started as rain then changed to snow. It still accumulates and freezes hard over night. It is not uncommon for us to get very deep spring snows. Still not much gardening to be done.

I did see garlic poking through the soil yesterday to the right of the tomato baskets. So it will soon be time to get the early stuff planted!

First flowers of the year

We were out walking yesterday and spotted our first flowers of the year. After a few minutes of internet searching I discovered the its name. It is Erodium cicutarium, redstem filaree.
Thanks MU see link:University of Missouri Extension

I found several of these plants near our home. This picture was taken on February 22, 2014 in our neighborhood in Boulder County, Colorado. I saw many plants flowering in southern exposed undisturbed (weedy) soil (clay). We are having a normal winter with snow on the ground weekly, either from larger snows (+5 inches) that take several days to melt, or smaller (<2 inches) that melt the following 24 hrs.
I didn't see any honey bees on the flowers, although I did see many bees flying in and out of my hives. The temperature is low, for bees, at about 55F.











I believe this is pollen coming into the hive.

I think this is maple pollen. My wife says she saw bees on a maple tree in our neighborhood. Below is a picture of the flower buds. I didn't see any bees on this tree, nor did I see any open flower buds on this tree but there must be somewhere on the canopy or on other trees.

Here is a link to Wikipedia that I use to help identify individual pollens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollen_source
Spring fever has officially started.

Winter Buzz

Wow, I was dumping some kitchen scraps into the compost pile and noticed some raiding.

They aren't really eating it just messing with the coffee grounds.

They are flying and bringing home what I'm guessing is propolis.

Otherwise they seem to be doing good. Both hives had bees flying in and out. The temperature was in the low 60's.
Its still too early to plant stuff outside but the warm days are a nice change to melt some of the snow.

Cure for Colds

We've all heard that garlic and honey are natural cures. Years ago a friend gave me a jar of honey that contained garlic cloves. The story that went with it was, 'when you feel a cold or sore throat on the way, eat a tablespoon of honey with a clove of garlic'.
So feeling great on a nice warm day, I decided to make a couple of jars of cure for a "rainy day".

Here is my work station. I started peeling the garlic by hand, the red plastic can is my compost pail. Even though its January the skins on the garlic are still cumbersome to remove. I remembered something I read about peeling garlic...

That's where the cardboard box and air compressor come into the picture.
I found it best to break the garlic bulbs into individual cloves. Then blast them with air. Then work the garlic skins by hand. Then go back to the compressed air. Then finally pick at the last bits of garlic peels that remained. I peeled about 6 bulbs this way pretty fast.
I cut the ends of the garlic and split the large cloves in half. The next step was adding honey.

Here's an expert tip: Do this step in the house where its warmer!
It actually wasn't that cold today. The sun was in and out of the clouds. I peeked at the outside of the bee hives. They were busy bringing home what looks like propolis.

This is what the finished product looks like. I'm sure it will keep away vampires and the not-sick people too.

Garden Trellis

My main walk in my garden is next to the fence at the North most end of the garden. The walk is being taken over by my back neighbor's peach tree. My neighbors told me they are okay with me trimming the branches on my side of the fence. Since they are directly North of us, the peach tree naturally grows out direction. The peach tree is planted just a foot or two North of the 5 foot wooden fence.
Here are a few pictures showing the progression of the peach tree's growth this summer. This April we experienced a late deep freeze which killed all the blooms of all the neighborhood fruit trees. Last year this tree (and every other fruit tree) was loaded with fruit. When loaded with fruit the branches hang even lower.

2012

2013

Dec 2013 New Trellis

The back part near the fence supports the peach tree. I built that a couple of weeks ago. The front part, I built yesterday. I found the 2x4x 12's in the cull pile at Lowes.

Here is a sampling of what I hope to grow on the new trellis:

Yard Long bean tee-pee

A grip of Yard Long Beans

Green beans! In 2013, they climbed the amaranth, 2 sisters style!






























Who knows I may even live on the edge and test out the structure with PUMPKINS!

Flower Pictures

We got some seeds this year. Here are some flower pictures from this year's garden.

Danish Flag Poppy

The few flowers that bloomed didn't do too well. As soon as the flowers started to bloom the birds would rip out all the pedals.
If the flowers come back this year we will mulch much better to keep the soil moist. Maybe that will help the more plants get to the flowering stage and out pace the birds.