Locally Grown Veggie Starters Ready to be Planted!

This is a perfect time of year to be installing your vegetable starters. Just make sure to water adequately when it's hot to give your plants a chance to get established. This Sunday, June 1st, there's another chance to get your vegetable garden started. Come visit us at the South Side Farmer's Market at the Labor Temple on the corner of Park Street and W. Wingra Drive from 11-3 on Sunday!!!

Many of our return customers have told us about the huge yields that our plants gave them last year and they are looking forward to what this season will bring!

We'll have plenty of veggie starters to help you get you fill your garden with delicious peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, kale, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and more. Other vendors will have early produce and hanging flower baskets.

$3.50 for large plants and $3 for smaller plants and price breaks on 4 plants or more. We hope to see you there!

Come Visit Us at the Market Today!

Come visit us at the South Side Farmer's Market at the Labor Temple on the corner of Park Street and W. Wingra Drive from 11-3 today (Sunday May 25th) !!!

We'll have plenty of veggie starters to help you get you fill your garden with delicious peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, melons, kale, broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and more. Other vendors will have early produce and hanging flower baskets.

$3 for large plants and 2$ for smaller plants. It's a beautiful day for planting. We hope to see you there!

First Market of Season A Success with a Little Help from Our Friends!

Our first market of the season was great! It was nice to see some of our vendor friends once again on such a beautiful day, and to meet new people that stopped by to take a look and to buy some starter plants. We enjoy helping people figure out what they can grow in their garden and giving some tips on plants that might do especially well. If we can help people in the Madison area grow more of their own food, then we've accomplished our goal.

One thing I'm finding is that most people have a space to grow food. Even if it's only a small balcony, there are certain plants that will do well there without much space. Our hybrid cucumbers and better bush tomatoes are a great example. They stay small and compact but produce a lot of fruits. It's great to see people realize that the space that they thought was too small will actually work if they grow the right plants.

The best part of the day was a surprise visit from an old High School friend. He saw my post on facebook and decided to make a stop. And he left with a bunch of plants for his mom and dad to add to their garden! Thanks Andrew!

The other vendors were selling beautiful hanging baskets as well as fresh asparagus and onion scapes. There will be more coming in the next weeks as more and more produce becomes harvestable.

We'll be at the Labor Temple on Park Street from 11-3 on Sundays for the next 5 weeks selling starter plants such as tomato varieties, pepper varieties (hot and bell), cucumbers, brocolli, lettuce, kale, scallions and more. We'll be adding a couple other days of markets as well. Come check us out to say hi or to get your starters!

Resilient Bees

My friend and beekeeping mentor Robert Pierce called me today with excitement in his voice. The bees in his top-bar hive were flying around outside! They made it through the long, cold winter! With the warm weather that we were blessed with today, Robert encouraged me to go check my bees. I had a faint optimism that maybe one of the colonies survived. So when I got home from work I marched over the cold and muddy ground and up through the woods to the farm where my hives are.

There on the far side of the field the hives stood like three strange monoliths. I knew one of the colonies was dead for sure because it had been taken over by hornets in the fall for some reason. The other two were not the strongest colonies so I had left the majority of the honey they produced last summer and fall for them to consume over the winter in hopes that it would give them a chance to survive.

As I got about 100 feet away from the hives, my heart jumped as I clearly could see little dots zooming all around one of the hives! When I approached the hive up close I sensed that they were strong and vigorous, yet eager to find more food. There were bees coming and going, no doubt scouting for pollen and nectar. I was so happy and amazed at the site!

My next step will be to check their honey supplies. If they have a fair amount still, I probably will do nothing more than occasionally check on them. If they are low on honey, I'd like to feed them some syrup that I made with cane sugar and water. There are a number of ways to feed bees syrup.

I also need to clean up the other two hives and see if they are still habitable for a new colony. I suspect that the hive that was overrun with hornets had been weakened by mites earlier and if that's the case, it's not wise to re-use that hive because it can infect the next colony to live there. I'm pretty sure that the third colony perished over the winter but I did see some bees around it - possibly bees from the active hive checking to see if there was any honey in it. If everything looks good in the empty hives, I'd like to invite new colonies into them this spring and also expand to two additional hives as well.

Lord willing, it will be a great year for bees, pollination and honey!