Bees

Bees love aromatic herbs like anise hyssop.

Bees are the whirling spirit of the garden, moving in mysterious circles, lifting away the scent and essence of each flower drop by drop and transporting it to be transformed into clear amber bliss. 

Bees have been in big trouble lately, plagued with mites, colony collapse disorder and pesticide poisoning. Though it's not politically correct to say so, I also have to question whether some of the large-scale commercial beekeeping operations don't also contribute to a weakening of their bee populations. Keeping millions of bees in warehouses and tractor trailers, feeding the, (gmo?) sugar water, and traveling with them over huge areas must be disorienting to a species which has a highly-honed sense of direction and communication, I would think. 

I opt for honey from local, smaller beekeeping operations, and plant many things to help attract the bees to my garden. It's delightful and meditative to sit and spend a summer afternoon watching them buzz contentedly around sunflowers, anise hyssop, oregano blooms, borage, echinacea, and the drifts of white clover that I seed through my (what passes for) little patch of lawn.  (For the record, I hate lawn -- but I can't plant anything substantial over the leach field.) 

I try not to use anything in the way of pesticides; when I do, it's hot pepper wax spray, and I do my earnest best to direct it right to the greens and stems where it's needed (usually on cabbage and other brassicas in bad cabbage looper years, and also on vining squash stem bases for borers), avoiding flowers. That way the spirit of the garden will continue to bless my patch of earth with buzzing and abundance. 

Saving Seed

Saving peas for next year's garden.

 If gardening is the most revolutionary act you can do at home, then saving seed must be the radical fringe of the revolution. Needless to say,I am a dedicated seed-saver and have been working slowly but steadily to improve my seed-saving savvy from year to year. 

Slow and steady seems to be my watchword with all food production. Each year I add one or two new wild foods or mushrooms to my plate, a few more square feet of garden area and a few more garden crops, and now one or two new kinds of seed to save.

I have long saved flower seeds, particularly marigolds, calendulas, nasturtiums, and lots of perennials. I also nudge along a bunch of self-seeding annuals, preparing the soil around them and then helping the seed ponds make it safely to lightly-covered fertile ground. 

 My vegetable seed saving started with beans, of course. I say 'of course' because they are really easy, and beans don't tend to cross-pollinate. Nothing fancy about it, just let some pods stay on the vines or bushes and dry out. Ditto with scarlet runner beans.

But for some reason I never saved over peas, until this year. Maybe it's because I buy very large packets of peas to plant and they last several years. But this year I saved the three best kinds of peas (one snap variety, two fresh eating types) and am looking forward to seeing how they do next year. 

Butterflies love kale flowers.

Kale seedpods are delicate.

I've been saving over kale seed for many years. Kale blooms and goes to seed in its second year. What I do each year is just leave the kale in the garden in the fall, pick leaves as late into the year as I can (they stay green under the snow for a while), and then in the spring, I watch to see which plants come back earliest and most vigorously. The others I pull -- either to the compost bin if they didn't come back, or after pulling off the young leaves to eat if they made a slow showing. Then I let the most energetic ones grow and go to seed.

Butterflies love the yellow spikes of kale flowers. You can keep pulling leaves off to eat (green smoothies, yum) all through the summer season. When the stalks of seed pods turn dry and brown, cut off the stalk, then roll the pods on a plate and sort out the tiny round seeds. The dried pods are very delicate and will pop open at the slightest touch, so handle them gently -- but don't worry, one kale plant produces enough seed to sow far more than my entire garden! 

Do pull your seeds from multiple plants, however, to maintain genetic diversity in your garden kales. 

I'm pondering learning to save over one more type of seed this year, and I'm voting for my Boothby Blonde (OP) cucumbers. Any other ideas for an easy save?