Seedlings growing under lights

I started some seeds today in my “plant work room” and I thought you might be interested.  I start seeds in regular plastic nursery trays that I get from a local greenhouse – and that I save from store-bought plants.  I do recycle my plant containers from year to year -  If you reuse containers like this you really should wash them thoroughly in a weak bleach solution and dry them in the sun before storing them away for reuse.  Or so I’ve heard – I might try that some day.

just planted flat

This year I’m planting in commercial soil mix, because I just don’t have any compost that is ready right now to make into home made potting soil.  Anyway, fill your containers with soil and plant your seeds at the  recommended depth.  Most of what I planted today is in the cabbage family, and needs to be about 1/2 inch deep.  I just use a finger to poke holes about that deep, drop 2-3 seeds into each one and then sprinkle with more soil to cover.  I’m using pretty small divisions – 72 plants per tray – because I plan to plant out these cold season plants under row covers or in the greenhouse as soon as they are big enough to handle.  If I thought that I would have to hold them for a while I would probably start them in larger divisions to begin with.

BTW, I am also test germinating some seeds that I saved last year – by planting 10 seeds per container to see how many come up.  Assuming that some of them germinate I can just multiply the number of seedlings by 10 to get the success rate as a percentage.  Other than using 10 seeds per container they are done exactly the same way as everything else.

Using a spray bottle to water the planted trays gives good control.

I’ve found that the least messy way for me to water trays is by misting with a spray bottle – every other method that I’ve used results in muddy water running everywhere and only a little soaking in.  Check soil moisture every day until you’re sure that it has stabilized where you want it – moist, but not dripping wet.

Note that you need to label your trays – I use recycled pieces of plastic mini blinds.

A plastic seed starting chamber like this is very handy, but not absolutely required. You will have to remove it soon after your plants emerge, but until then it helps to keep the soil evenly moist and the air warm and humid. If you don't have one of these just lay a sheet of plastic right on top until you see plants starting to emerge.

Then cover with one of these plastic domes if you have one.  If you don’t have one of these you can simply drape a piece of saran wrap over the tray, but if you do that you will have to remove it as soon as you see plants emerging from the soil.  The cover holds the moisture in so that you shouldn’t have to water again until it’s removed.

My simple grow light setup uses regular 4' shop lights and bulbs - not expensive "grow" lights.

I use plain old 40 watt flourescent shop lights to start my plants indoors and it works great.  As you can see the fixtures are just sitting on top of props that I have made out of one by six scraps, but you can use whatever you have.  You want the lights to be as close to the plant trays as is practical or your plants will grow tall and leggy.   Now that compact florescent lights are widely available you could also use those in any lamp fixture that you have.  You can easily get CFLs which are equivalent to  a 100 watt incandescent light  – should be great for a smaller operation.

Last year I built a very simple bottom heat system which has made a tremendous improvement in my success rate for starting all kinds of seeds.   If you don’t have bottom heat, then try to keep the soil as warm as possible 24 hours a day.  On top of a refrigerator or an upright freezer is a good place or on a shelf right over your water heater or a heat appliance.  The regular average room temperature of your house is probably not warm enough for best results.  The lights also won’t really work to keep the soil warm because they won’t be on 24 hours a day.  If you look at this planting soil temperature chart you will see that most plants want the soil temp to be around 80 degrees Fahrenheit for best germination.  If at all possible use some form of bottom heat.

A simple analog light timer is all y0u need for starting your own plants, but you need one that is big enough to handle the load of all of the lights that you are going to plug into it.

For good results you must have a timer to control your lights.  Erratic lighting or 24 hour day lengths will be bad for many plants.  Be sure that you use a timer which is rated high enough for the total wattage of lights that you will be using.   Set the on period to correspond with or extend the  actual  daylight hours – in other words don’t try to have your plants day and night be opposite of the real day and night otherwise ambient light will interrupt their sleep just like it would yours.  I set mine to go on at sunrise and off at about 8 PM.  I currently have the day length set for about 13 1/2 hours, but when I start planting tomatoes and peppers in a few weeks I will increase that to about 16 hours of light per day.

Once I start this process every winter I love to get out in the plant room to visit and check on my plants.  The warm moist air and the smell of clean soil and growing things along with the sun light coming through the windows really takes the edge off of winter for me.  That and a cup of coffee is a great way to start the day.   Round up some seeds and soil, and see if it doesn’t lift your spirits as well.

My humble plant work room. Really just a small well insulated room on the side of my garage with 4 windows, and a concrete floor that I don't have to worry about getting dirty. The light bench is sitting on top of 5 steel barrels full of water for thermal mass which help to moderate the temperature. You can see the rope light that powers my bottom heat there at the lower right. On the far end of the bench I have just enough counter space to pot things up. I love it.

Queen Bees – The heart and soul of a honey bee colony is the Queen.  Every hive has just one (with few exceptions) and if she is healthy, good natured, and productive she will pass those traits on to all of her daughters – the worker bees – and all will be good.

A bee keeper needs new queens to replace failing older queens, and to establish new hives and grow their operations.  If a hive becomes queenless for very long it’s production and health will suffer, and eventually the colony will die.  Hives with old queens are more likely to “swarm” – an event where the hive splits itself and half of the bees flying off to make honey for their selves instead of for the bee keeper. So replacing old queens with new ones every year is also a way of preventing swarms.

Queen Rearing – Most bee keepers order new queens by mail (when they are available) for about $20 each plus shipping.  Others raise (or allow the bees to raise) their own queens one at a time like nature does.  These videos are of what is called queen “rearing” – producing viable queens in batches.

At a value of $20.00 each the ability to rear even small batches of queens could make a big difference in the economics of a small apiary. Being able to have queens when you need them instead of having to wait for one to come through the mail, and having some control over genetics are also factors in favor of learning this craft.

Wax cell cups for raising queens

In the first video very young (probably one day old or less) worker larva are being removed from a frame of brood comb and placed into wax cups using a wire grafting tool.  BTW, all workers are female.  The larva are very small – about the size of a comma.  Wax cups roughly the size of a small thimble  are either manufactured or are home made by dipping a wet wooden peg into liquid wax.

1) Grafting larva into cups

In the next video, the grafted queen cups which have been mounted with hot wax onto cork shaped pegs that fit into a special frame are being placed into a “cell starter” hive.  A cell starter is a regular hive with the queen removed that has a very high population density of bees – especially young “nurse” bees – and plenty of food stores – honey, and pollen.  Probably the bee keeper removed hive body boxes from the  starter hive to crowd the bees together.  The high density of nurse bees and food will assure that the grafted larva will be fed plenty of “royal jelly” which is produced by the nurse bees.  The queenless state of the hive will motivate the workers to raise new queens just like they would in nature if something happened to the old queen.

Worker bees are raised in comb cells just like honey comb which are horizontally oriented while queens are raised in cells that hang down vertically.  Apiarists have learned that some of the  worker larva that are the right age placed into a queenless hive  in cells that are vertically oriented like queen cells, will be raised as queens – which is what all of this manipulation is about.  The only differences that make a worker larva become a queen is the diet of royal jelly that they are fed as larva and the shape of the cell that they grow in.  In a few days the cells can be removed from the cell starter hive, and either another batch started, or the queen can be replaced, and the starter hive can be returned to work making honey.

2)Installing grafted queen cups into a cell starter hive

In the next video the bee keeper is collecting nurse bees that he will use to make up “mating nucs”  for the newly hatched queens.  Nurse bees have never been out of their home hive, and won’t try to fly back to it once the Nucleus hives are set up.  Also the nurse bees – after being without a queen and her pheromones for a few hours – will be very accepting of a new queen.   If a queen is introduced into a hive that already has a queen she will usually be killed.  The young nurse bees will also be the right age to produce wax comb in the empty mating nuc.

If you carry a box full of bees away from it’s colony all of the mature field bees will quickly return to the home hive, but the nurse bees will not readily abandon brood comb which contains baby bees.  So the bee keeper has  separated brood comb covered with nurse bees a short distance from their hive(s) and allowed the field bees to leave.  Once he is finished with this operation I imagine the brood will be returned to it’s home.  I think he is spraying them with sugar or honey water to keep them calm.

3) Collecting Nurse Bees for Mating Nucs

In the next video the nurse bees are being measured into the empty mating nucleus hives.  It looks to me like he is measuring about a cup of bees into each one – 1700 bees more or less.

4) Ladling nurse bees into mating nucs

In the next video the newly hatched virgin queens are being marked for identification to prepare them for going into the mating nucleus hives. Queens can be labeled with tiny numbered stickers – or simply with a dot of color which indicates the year of her birth.  Either way she will be marked for life, and a marked queen is a lot easier to find in a hive full of bees.

Notice at the beginning of the video the queen cells have been placed into small cages.  This was done off video after the queen cells were capped (sealed) by the nurse bees, and before the adult queens emerged from the capped cells.  If they weren’t confined in cages the first queen to emerge would kill all of her sisters before they came out of their cells.

After the queen cells were caged they might have been put into an artificial incubator, or most likely into a “cell finisher” hive which is just a strong normal “queenright” (with queen) hive that keeps the capped cells at the correct temperature and humidity until they hatch.

You will notice that queen bees are not inclined to sting or fly.

5) Marking Virgin Queens

In the next video the marked queens are being dipped into honey water to mask their scent and help the nurse bees to accept her before being  inserted into the prepared mating nucleus hives.

After installing the queen the beekeeper is closing the entrance, and making an entry in his voice memo recorder which I’m sure will be later transcribed into a written record.  Record keeping is an important part of this kind of operation.

The small size of the mating nucs make it possible for such a small number of bees to control the temperature, protect it from invaders, and become a full fledged although small colony.  The sides of these particular nucs are glass which will make it very easy to monitor the progress of the queens.  The top section of the nuc has a space for food (probably sugar candy) so that the little family of bees can get its house in order without worrying about gathering food for a few days.

Any small hive can be used as a mating nucleus, or even a full sized hive, but the nucs in these videos look like they would be perfect for this kind of operation – and would be especially handy if they were to be taken to a remote location for mating.

6) Installing Queens into Mating Nucs

Once the queenright nucs are placed into the apiary and the entrances opened the workers will get busy setting up house, and within a few days the queen will fly out for her mating flight.

On her mating flight the new queen may fly several miles away and hopefully will mate with several strong healthy male “drone” bees, and then return to her little colony.  She will only do this one time in her life, and her body will retain the sperm to fertilize all of the female eggs that she ever lays. Drone eggs are not fertilized oddly enough.

If the queen doesn’t return – she could be eaten by a bird, hornet or other predator, or she could be killed by sudden bad weather – the hive is basically doomed.

The queens that do return will soon start laying eggs, and soon the little colony will outgrow the mating nucs.  The successful queens can easily be evaluated by comparing how much brood they produce, and the best ones will be either sold (for about $20 each in the United States) or used within the apiary for replacing old queens or establishing new hives.

In the next video the worker bees from the nucleus hives seem to be being combined along with one queen to form an artificial swarm for the establishment of a new hive.  A package of honey bees that you can mail order is exactly like this artificial swarm.

7) Reuniting bees from used mating nucs into an artificial swarm

The bee keeper in these videos is obviously extremely experienced and competent, and is demonstrating his own tried and true method for queen rearing. The fact that he is speaking German (I think) really doesn’t matter, because as they say – a picture is worth a thousand words.  If anyone who understands would like to translate a bit in the comments I would very much appreciate it.

BTW, I certainly do not intend to imply that I’m an expert on queen rearing – I’ve never done it yet.  However I intend to give it a try once I build my apiary to the point where I have enough resources – probably next year which will be my third keeping bees.  I am posting this because;  Reader response to the other articles that I’ve done on beekeeping has been quite positive so I think quite a few people find it interesting.   And, producing an article like this  helps me to learn.

I know that it’s long, but I hope you liked it.

Lettuce growing in my cold frame.

When I built my 50 dollar greenhouse over a year ago one of my goals was to be able to have something fresh to eat out of the garden or greenhouse every day of the year.  Well, it’s been about a year now, and  it hasn’t even been very hard to do.

Here is what I’ve learned so far -

Despite what you might have read, lettuce spinach and other salad greens are not really  particularly quick crops.  Sure you can have a pretty little stand of plants in about 6 weeks or so under good conditions, but  in cool weather  they don’t really get productive until they are  almost 3 months old.  Yes you can harvest a few salads out of the thinnings, but the young plants  aren’t going to yield an every day supply unless you can plant a pretty large area.

When it gets cold, growth slows way down.  However, on sunny days the temperature under glass (or plastic) is balmy, and I’ve continued to see steady growth all winter long.  What should be done in the fall is to have a lot of greens grown out as much as possible before it turns so cold that growth slows down.

It’s quite difficult to get those cool season crops to grow productively in Tennessee until late into our rather warm autumns, but once it gets to be jacket weather they do great.  Same thing in the spring – once the nights get warm they fail or go to seed.  So the easy thing to do is to seed dirrectly into a cold frame or green house in September, then seed again every few weeks all winter long and you can have fresh lettuce and spinach from  before Thanksgiving until June.  Last year I had tons of productive growth by late winter/early spring.

You can not only grow, but garden in relative comfort all winter long in a simple greenhouse like my $50 hoop house.

These crops are almost completely freeze proof – especially spinach.  I’ve had temperatures down to 5 degrees with only minor damage to lettuce and none to spinach inside of a frost encrusted cold frame, and even less damage inside of the hoop house for some reason.  It’s easier to keep them growing in cold weather than to keep them from bolting (the elongation associated with going to seed which triggers instant bitterness) in early summer.

One of the beautiful things about cool weather gardening is the absence of insect and weed problems.  There are usually a few of both, but not to the point of being a problem.  Also having productive plants growing in January is really therapeutic to a gardener with cabin fever.

This picture was taken on Nov. 5 - with a little bit of effort (and a cold frame) your garden can be productive almost year around.

I’ve only mentioned cool weather plants in this post, but it’s worth mentioning that in my area most gardens go to the weeds by early August when they don’t have to.  If you want to have a 4 season harvest you have to plan and plant in all 4 seasons as well.  I’ve found that the late summer – early fall is probably the most challenging time because it is hot and dry, and insect pests are at their peak, and it just isn’t very much fun.  Nonetheless with just a little timely effort you can keep your garden productive by planting the right thing at the right time and also yanking out old plants once they stop being productive.

Doesn't that look delicious? Forcing rhubarb results in an earlier, tastier, more tender crop. The container used to force this rhubarb probably should have been taller - note that the tops are curled over. Sure is a pretty color though.

Rhubarb is a perenial plant which grows back from the root crowns every spring.  The large leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are poisonous, but the celery like stems are wonderfully tart and tangy.  Children like to eat them fresh right out of the garden, but nearly everyone likes it used as a fruit in sweet deserts – pies, crumbles, or just stewed with sugar.  My Mom (a marvelous cook of course – thanks Mom!) used to make it into a pie with strawberries.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Don’t worry too much about those poisonous leaves – they apparently taste so nasty that there is not much danger of anyone eating them anyway.

Here in TN I can barely grow rhubarb – although last year was so cool and rainy that it did pretty well.  It really does much better farther north where the weather is normally cooler and wetter.  When I was a kid we lived in Indiana for a few years, and the back yard of the old house we lived in had a marvelous big bed of rhubarb that just took care of itself.

In good conditions rhubarb will pretty much take care of itself. They do like rich soil with lots of organic material and high fertility, and even moisture though.

Forcing rhubarb as in the first picture above is something that I had never heard of until recently, and I’ve never tried it yet – but I will.  Apparently forcing rhubarb is a widespread practice in England – I ran across it on a UK gardening blog that I subscribe to.  I’m afraid that the English are much more sophisticated gardeners on average than most Americans are – they seem to use many techniques that we don’t.  We should try to do better I suppose.

Anyway, from what I can glean forcing rhubarb is very simple to accomplish – as soon as growth is seen  (maybe even before)  cover the crown of a well established plant with a large, rather tall container such as a bucket or trash can.  Optionally insulate around the “forcer” with straw or some other mulch to warm the micro-climate and encourage growth.  In about 8 weeks you should have an early crop of tender juicy tangy rhubarb.

• Don’t try to do this until you have a well established healthy plant to work with – certainly not the first year!
• Don’t force the same plant two years in a row as the process stresses the plant by putting most of the energy into growing the forced stems instead of keeping the rest of the plant strong.

This simple trick will protect your tender seedlings from the intense sun, while still letting in plenty of light, and keeping out the bugs.

You probably already have some of these mesh flat trays - If you don't you can get them for cheap at most nurseries.

Just turn one upside down over your plants.

Then drape a peice of screen cloth over the top - you can buy screen by the foot at any home center.

You can weight down the edges of the screen cloth with boards or you can fold it under the flats.  You can also water right through the screen cloth.  You can even use this trick if you’ve direct seeded.  By the time your plants outgrow the inverted flats they will be big enough to survive the sun without the protection.

Try to pick an overcast day to remove the screen on if possible – otherwise do it in the afternoon when the sun has passed it’s highest intensity.  Remove the mesh tray a day or two later.