ARCHIVAL: This post has been re-dated from 2016 in order to position it closer in the blog to Mason Bee Information
ARCHIVAL: This post has been re-dated from 2016 in order to position it closer in the blog to Mason Bee Information
Selling mason bees and reed tubes today proved to be very successful. I had registered for a table selling mason bees cocoons and Phragmites reed-stem tubes at the Victoria Seedy Saturday.
My schedule for attending upcoming Seedy Saturdays is as follows, also you can follow the links to their websites for more details.
February 27: Sooke Seedy Saturday
March 6: Nanaimo Seedy Sunday.
March 12: North Vancouver Seedy Saturday
April 2: Surrey Seedy Saturday
I produced the poster below to identify my location at the seedy Saurdays. A big thankyou to all who were willing to get engaged with raising mason bees and I encourage all those who buy my bees and tubes to give me feedback on their experience with raising them.
In the last week I have been removing old diseased apple trees from the orchard, as we plan to plant new rootstock and better varieties.. Heres how the tractor helped in that operation
Well not much of a harvest yet this year but my two trees planted over 10 years ago have finally produced some cones..2 each!! They fell off near the beginning of September and now I am keeping them in a warm place until they ripen. The cones exude sap so its best to wear disposable gloves when handling. The key to transplanting Pinenuts is that you must scatter soil and needles from the ground around another pine… any variety, around the base of the new tree in order to inoculate the soil with the mycorrhiza necessary for growth.
There are many websites available with information on how to grow and harvest the nuts.
Apparently the real challenge comes in having to crack the hard casing of each seed in order to yield the nut inside which is prized for eating.
While we were away, high winds brought a power outage for a day and this casualty: A very old Bosc Pear tree fell over. Today I sawed off the branches and hauled them with the tractor up to the pile for chipping and turning into compost. Some of the 4inch sized branches I have saved for future mushroom logs.
Picked the Kiwi fruit today to move in to the refrigerator so they will last through the winter.
In the spring I purchased one cranberry plant from a local nursery and kept it in the greenhouse over the summer.
It sprouted runners which I embedded in soil in smaller pots around the mother plant. I ended up with 13 pots with multiple new plants per pot.
By the end of September, the mother plant had produced 3 berries and many extra plants.
I dug a small depression above my pond waterfalls, and lined it with old underlay and liner from the previous spillway of the pond.
I made the floor level by flooding it with water and then cutting down the high spots underneath.
The tractor bucket filled the depression with fertile soil and peat moss.
The finished bog planted for next year’s cranberry crop. (Theoretically!) An embedded 5cm drain pipe which will allow overflow to the pond will prevent the soil eroding from the structure.
FOLLOWUP FULL DISCLOSURE: over winter, the rabbits ate them all down so this effort was a failure!!
