Week twentyone - May 20th - May 27th
2006
Thursday 25th May 2006. I made another trip to the, now two, hives in Suffolk to see how many queen cells the original hive had ended up with and to check that the queen in the second hive was laying OK. On inspection in turned out that both hives were full of queen cells and there wasn’t a queen to be found in hive two.
2005
Wednesday 25th May my Costessey bees swarmed into the top of a pear tree The bees in the WBC hive are getting ready to swarm as well and I spent a lot of time trying to find the queen in order to remove her from the hive but no luck. Althouth I did take a couple of frames of honey out.
Weekend of the 21st and 22nd May 2005 I took off the first of the honey this weekend. Planted out courgette plants and sowed Cougette seeds and butternut gourd in the open ground. Continued the battle with the bind weed that is growing a pace now. I am winning under the battle under the big apple tree where I first stared although there were one or two skinny survivors poking their heads through the ground very near the trunk of the tree. I am going to clean the ground around the large tree at the other end of the plot now and make the areas around the base of the tree priority to keep clean of the weed and prevent it getting in amongst tree roots.
Collected up another swarm of bees. Several of my hives are in the process of re-queening so I went through them all today and removed all the queen cells from each hive except one thus preventing the emerging queens from having to fight it out amongst themselves.
2004
May 26th 2004 How wrong can one be - I have found four more pieces of bind weed poking through the surface that had to be dug out.
We are waiting for rain. The weather has been a pattern of warm sunny days and cool nights with the breeze still coming from the north - but no rain now for several weeks. I have planted out the first few cabbages where they are easy to keep watered and awaiting the rain before planting more.
May 24th 2004 At last it seems there is no more greater bindweed growing under the large old apple tree in the 'new' allotment (number 84). It has taken three years to remove it and leaving the ground almost empty in the meantime. I planted three butternut squashes there today - so I will be watching like a hawk and if even one single leaf of the bindweed appears I will digging down to find where it is coming from and removing it at source. It will not be tolerated in this space anymore.
May 21 2004 Removed the queen bee from the WBC hive - click here to read more The weather has been sunny for the last few days but cold at night as the wind is from the north. It is a busy time now as most of the vegetables can still be sown and it's time to start planting out seedling from the greenhouse and seed beds both in the garden and in the allotment.
2002
Monday 27th May 2002
By the evening the rain had stopped and the evening was still, although a little cool. Planted out more lettuce and cauliflower. The 'All Green Bush' courgette sown a week or two ago have germinated and are through so I finished of the packet of seed at the opposite corner of my plot. Replanted the polyanthus from the garden beds. Dug over some of the fallow ground that is harboring the slugs.
Weekend May 25/26th 2002
Cold, windy and, on occasions, wet. Changing the garden around pulling out old spring plants (wallflowers etc.) and putting in new bedding plants. Polyanthus moved to allotment until the Autumn. Hand weeding onions etc. Putting up canes for runner beans (all survived from 14th March sowing onwards) Slugs on the rampage.
2000
Thursday 22nd May Thunder, lightening, hailstones and best of all, rain. Weeded the carrots. Planted out a row of Coz lettuce and finished the rough digging. Now I will concentrate on planting out sprouts, cabbages and caulis.
Where I started the digging the new patch the grass is coming through like a new sown lawn and there is lots of it. There's going to be hard work ahead before it's all eradicated. The Greenshaft peas have not germinated well. I may dig them up and transplant them somewhere else in order that the space can be used for another crop or simply kept hoed for the rest of the year to knock the grass back before digging it again next year. Now that it has rained there is plenty to do both in the garden and the allotment.
1999
May 22nd 1999
Hot weather, with winds from the South, has arrived and the watering can has had to be brought into service on the allotment.
Pruned plum trees.
Plum trees, unlike other fruit trees, need to be pruned in the summer months rather than in the winter. Silverleaf disease can enter via the open wounds that are left after pruning, pruning in the summer, when the plant is in full growth, allows the wounds to heal quicker than in the non growth winter months.
