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Letter From The Editor

This month we have been very busy buying and planting annuals, harvesting yarrow, helping to start a community garden at our church, hosting garden tours, and learning the importance of backyard beekeeping.

As I mentioned in our last newsletter, beekeeping is our latest adventure, and with just about a month of experience under our belts, I wanted to share our adventure with you and perhaps entice you to help us carry the torch of backyard beekeeping by purchasing your own bees.

We hope you enjoy this issue!

You may have thought of raising bees yourself, as we did years ago, and wondered where on earth to start. I must say from experience that it's more fun and very helpful to enlist the help of a friend or relative before you begin. We actually had both. With the help of our good friends Mike and Judy Felts and Alfred's uncle (all who had experience with beekeeping) we were able to get six beehives set up on our property.

After buying and putting together the beehive kits and ordering the bees and queen bee...we now have about 75,000 to 100,000 bees per hive...that's about 600,000 bees!

Did I mention that they will make more bees every 21 days inside their "brood boxes"? Incredible.

To be quiet honest, this freaked me out a bit at first but so far I barely even notice them. I have learned that they particularly like herbs and wildflowers and I did see lots of them on our Six Hills Giant mint plant and our chive blossoms this morning.

If you want bees, or if you would like to help our native bees, consider building a wildflower garden patch just for them. To be successful, your patch must be in full sunlight.

Bees just don't seem to want to go to the shade for their food.

A seed packet with a wildflower mixture is a good way to start. The flowers are a useful source of nectar and pollen for the bees and many of the annuals and perennials normally found in gardens just don't have enough nectar. If you want to start your own beekeeping adventure, read more about it here and find some good resources, including videos, to help you learn more about it.

Beginning beekeeping can be expensive. Here is a fellow who has a better, cheaper way of doing things. A more natural way for healthier, happier bees.

Click Here to check out the Barefoot Beekeeper

The recent National Gardening Association online newsletter reports that there's a new kid on the block for those of us who love the Knock- Out rose. Continuous blooming, self-cleaning, and disease resistant, this new bright yellow selection is called Sunny Knock Out Rose.

More compact (tag says 3 to 4 feet) than the Red Knock Out which usually grows to about six feet and requires aggressive pruning in late winter to keep it in check. Order rose bushes. Several beautiful species here.

I know it's rained a lot this fall, but you and I both know that won't last forever. We have a few drought resistant annuals that we plant every year that cuts down our water bill significantly.

Check out our favorite drought tolerant annuals here if you missed it last month.

Full sun garden area? Check out our favorites for full sun areas. You may be surprised at some of the plants listed.

If your like me and you love to have beautiful, colorful bouquets of flowers in your home, see which annuals we recommend growing for a cutting garden here.

• prune spring-flowering shrubs
• finish planting annual flowers
• put out hummingbird feeders
• divide daffodils, do not cut off the old leaves
• finish planting and fertilize veggies
• plant more herbs for the bees in your neighborhood

Nature Hills Nursery has a large selection of live plants that bees love. Also gardening tools and edible plants.

Be sure to check out there ergonomically designed hand tools that make gardening as pain free as possible. Even learn the history of gazing balls!

Find all kinds of eco products that are cool, hip, and green. Items like clothing and gardening stuff, as well as pet and baby products.

Visit our blog for the latest updates to our web site. We have added many more pages this month.

Happy Memorial Day Week-End!

Julia and Alfred Stewart
We would love to hear from you! Let us know what you think by emailing us your comments and questions