The Bumbling Bee Homestead

10/21/2022

While I might not be the best at flower arrangements, I had to get the last of my silver leaf sunflowers inside before we lose them to the frost.

09/07/2022

Amaranth is one of the plants that I will never get tired of staring at in my garden.

08/01/2022

Someone pointed out that my scallop squashes look like ghosts so now I am required to draw eyes on all of them (with nontoxic crayola markers of course).

07/27/2022

If anybody wants to know how we’re doing: we are struggle bussing.

07/25/2022

Well we just experienced a first here on the homestead: the dishwasher started overflowing in the middle of a canning session. It was a little difficult to clean up the gallons of water while I had a pot of boiling sugar water on the stove 😅

Anybody else have any fun canning stories??

07/25/2022

What’s your LEAST favorite garden chore?

Mine is absolutely picking green beans.

07/24/2022

Making and canning 2 batches of strawberry jam sounds like fun until you realize it involves 14 cups of sugar…

07/22/2022

Is it really the first canning session of the season if you don’t run around yelling about missing equipment after you’ve already started everything?

07/20/2022

What’s your current favorite garden chore?

Right now, mine is being the captain of the Frog Rescue Team every morning. They somehow end up inside my rain barrel every morning (despite the lid being on), so I make sure to check before watering each day.

07/17/2022

It is officially the start of the season where there is always a bowl of ripe tomatoes on the counter.

P.S. Somebody might want to check on me in 2-3 weeks and see how I feel about my decision to grow 4 cherry tomato plants (in addition to my 5 production tomato plants).

07/15/2022

There’s nothing quite as exciting as the first ripe tomatoes of the year.

(And as a bonus, they are cherry tomatoes, so they can be enjoyed without the guilt of wasting a processing tomato.)

07/12/2022

This year I decided to try string trellising for some of my tomatoes. After last night’s storm, one of my biggest fears about this method happened.

There are two common methods of string trellising: single line and double line. With a single line, you usually use clips or tie tape to support a plant that has been pruned down to a single stem. The line is secured by tying it to a support up top.

For double lined trellising, you tie one end of the string to the base of your plant, toss the line over an overhead support, and secure the other end of the string with a stake in the ground. With this method, you can wrap the string around the stem of the plant as it grows, and it offers two different lines to use as support. I opted for this method since I usually let my plants have two main stalks instead of one.

But apparently my plants got too heavy and it completely pulled the stake out of the ground. I came outside this morning to find my Ukrainian Purple tomato plant entirely flopped over. Luckily the stem didn’t split or fold over too bad, so it should live. But needless to say, I’ll be shifting all of my plants to a single line style ASAP.

07/06/2022

I think I’m finally getting this whole carrot growing thing down. The plan for next year is to prepare a small bed with more sandy, loose soil so maybe my carrots won’t look like they’re going to get up and walk away from me…

07/05/2022

While I might not be ready for a farmstand yet, there are so many options in the Greater Lansing Area. If you haven't done so before, I highly recommend checking out Swallowtail Farm out in Mason!

Today’s farmstand update. Blooms, beets, bread, cukes, summer squash, scallions, salad mix, & delicious kohlrabi,

FYI sorry but today’s sungolds are all claimed. We expect to have more on Thursday.

06/24/2022

It has been kitten chaos at the homestead for the past few weeks. We transported a mom cat and her 4 kittens from Kentucky at the beginning of June, so it’s been a full house with the two dogs and single cat who already lived here. We are keeping one of the babies for ourselves, but would love help in finding loving families for momma and her 3 babies. If anybody is interested, or you know anybody who might be, send them our way!

06/22/2022

What do you do when you get too impatient and want to check how big your potatoes have grown?

You make the tiniest batch of potato wedges known to man.

06/21/2022

It feels like this gardening season has consisted only of putting out back to back fires.

Whether it be the fact that things are randomly dying in my tower gardens, small animals are eating the bark of my new apple trees and leaves of my strawberries, or the absolutely insane amounts of insects that are eating every one of my plants, I cannot seem to catch a break. This is the kind of gardening year that would make many people want to quit.

Instead, I’m choosing to look at it like a series of lessons. It might involve copious amounts of swear words every morning when I assess the damage. But at least I’ll be more prepared to handle them in the future.

06/12/2022

Recently I learned about an awesome new website called lemonGRAFT. This service is aimed at connecting neighbors with local farms to purchase food or plants in a more streamlined way.

Since I am the only grower in the area currently, I’m functioning as both a Grower and a Host. In the future, I’m hoping for the homestead to become a place where farmers can drop off their produce for buyers to pick up.

I’ll let y’all know when my listings are updated after plants get bigger and produce starts ripening!

06/04/2022

Nothing is ever quite as perfect as the first radish harvest of the season 🌱

06/01/2022

I wasn’t expecting to post another installment of ‘I have no explanation for what happened here but I guess I’m not going to question it’ so soon. But I can guarantee that I did not plant this dill here. Nor do I have any clue how it got here.

The second photo shows where last years failed dill died before it even flowered.

06/01/2022

The conversation about food supply and cost of living is getting loud. Every day, there are endless headlines of panic and anger (rightfully so). I want to be a voice in this conversation. A voice of reason and encouragement. I want to be a teacher, a helper, a provider, and a friend. It's easy and very natural to feel alarmed about what is going on in the world. But alarm is not a reason for panic. An alarm is a signal that it is time to get up and get moving. It is encouragement.

I want to help show people that no place is too small to start growing some of your own food. I want to teach people how to preserve what you can get from the grocery store when it goes on sale. For those who want to grow their own gardens, I want to be a resource they can turn to with their questions. For others who want homegrown produce but don't have the time, energy or knowledge to commit, I want to be the person they call for help with weeding, pruning, harvesting, and preserving. In the near future, I'd like to start selling seedlings and opening up slots for CSA boxes. In the long term, there are dreams of opening full sized nursery, maybe a seed shop, and teaching classes.

My vision for the Bumbling Bee Homestead is for it to become a classroom. It will become a place for people from all walks of life to come learn, experiment, and find community. For a while, I've been afraid to put that dream in motion for fear of failure.

If I've learned anything over the past several years of gardening, it is that the best time to plant things and get them rooted was last year. The second best time is right now.

Welcome to the homestead, my friends

05/30/2022

I will never get over the constant tiny doses of joy I get from the garden, such as the first glimpse of radishes for the season.

05/28/2022

On today’s episode of ‘I have no explanation for why this happened but I guess I’m not going to question it’:

A tiny nasturtium seedling popped up. This is a brand new bed this year, so there was no chance for volunteer plants. But I won’t complain about more nasturtiums!

05/20/2022

On my evening garden walk, I noticed a couple of my brassicas had some holes in their leaves. After the absolute decimation of my basil plants this morning, I have a feeling I have a serious slug problem this year. So everything got a nice coating of anti-slug powder (diatomaceous earth) before bed. Hopefully after the lawn gets mowed tomorrow, things will settle down.

05/16/2022

Ladies and gentlefolks, we have our first strawberry blossom of the year!

04/14/2022

I noticed that my gutters were leaking in a weird spot during a storm yesterday afternoon. On a whim, I decided to put a bucket underneath to see how bad it was. This was after about 30 minutes… I think I have some work to do.

04/13/2022

About 20 minutes and a little elbow grease seemed to make up for my neglect at the end of the season last year.
Luckily zucchini and other squash will be going into this bed, so whatever weeds I missed are going to have to really fight to keep up.

04/12/2022

04/12/2022

There’s nothing quite like a freshly amended garden bed in the early morning sunshine.

03/10/2021