We are working to sell them. The 4 lambs that were just born that are rams will be sold, and then we'll have to wait until next spring where hopefully we'll have 40-60 lambs to be sold. They'll either be sold at meat auctions, people buying them processed, or we'll have them processed and sell the cuts to people or in stores.
Never posted in this thread but I have some scorpion pepper and Carolina reaper plants that are starting to produce. Here’s a pic of the scorpion pepper Also just made some hot sauce with 18 habaneros that I just picked.
Extracted honey this weekend, ended up with about 7 gallons split between light and dark honey. These are samples of all the honey I've gotten since 2015. The newest ones are on the right.
How many hives do you have and how much honey do you get in a year? I’ve been thinking about getting into beekeeping for a while.
The different colors are from both hives I extracted from. It's due to whatever plant the bees went to. The darker honey is probably mostly from blackberry and the lighter is I believe a mixture of clover and tulip poplar. The lighter honey is sweeter, somewhat similar to the clover honey you would buy at the store, but richer in flavor. The darker honey has a stronger flavor than the light honey, but it's hard to describe really.
I had a lot of losses during the winter due to a parasite, but I have 11 hives right now, that are pretty much all new. So far this year I've gotten 7 gallons. Had 17 gallons last year. I'm moving my hives to the mountains here soon to hopefully get sourwood honey. I hope to get another 10-15 gallons later this year. When I have hives that survive the winter strong and don't swarm, I would expect to get 5-10 gallons per hive, obviously that depends on the weather too. This year with the long cold spring and the heavy rains really hurt honey production.
I describe the darker honey as slightly spicy. It’s not actually spicy but it triggers the same taste buds if that makes sense.
I stopped by a nursery near work on Friday and they had a bunch of superhots that I’d never seen sold as plants before, so naturally I picked up a Carolina reaper and Trinidad scorpion.
Put some hives on a trailer and took them up to the mountains to get some sourwood honey. Put an electric rope fence up around the trailer to hopefully keep bears away.
Squash and jalapeños are coming in really good so far. Two tomatoe plants have cut worms that are tearing them apart. Any recommendations on a spray to get rid of them? The okra has been getting chewed up by Japanese beetles but I think I’ve gotten rid of those.
Opposite here. Okra is going gang busters and tomatoes are doing fairly well, but my squash is done. Got root rot then what survived got hit by aphids. Will harvest a couple of eggplants in a few days which will be a first for me so I’m excited.
Wife wanted a garden, so back in April we built a raised bed and planted strawberries, spinach, onion, garlic, tomatoes, potatoes, and jalapeños. I just now stumbled upon this thread and spent the majority of the day reading from page 1. I’ve many questions, which I will ask in the next couple of days. First question i need to ask is if it is too late to plant a blueberry bush. I’m located in east/ne Oklahoma if that matters.
It's not too late, you just won't get much of anything off of it. It will take a year or two until you are getting more than a handful of berries from it. You'll need to water it steady to keep it alive with the summer heat.
Making pickles tomorrow for bloody Mary’s, gonna throw one in. Might die but it’ll be good to know I died from something I grew from seed
Dug up my potatoes on Monday. My jalepenos which I thought didn’t take from seed ended up popping up a month or so ago. I moved one of the plants to a stand alone pot. It hasn’t died yet. My strawberry plants have produced a couple of small pieces of fruit.
After pulling all of the potatoes on Monday last week, I put in some pumpkin and watermelon seeds. Those seeds sprouted super fast. I ate this little strawberry. It was really good. Several more coming in soon. Any pointers on how to get them bigger or will that just happen over the years?
For the honey guys, I’m really considering buying the flow hive. Www.honeyflow.com How much honey should I ballpark expect and what do I do with all of it? Sell it? Give it away as gifts? If I’m selling it, how much does honey typically go for? Will my bees fly away and never come back? If so, how often does that happen? How much do bees typically cost?
I'm going to assume you are in the south, so you probably need less honey for the bees over winter with. If the hive is strong, and it's a good year, I've gotten at least 5 gallons from first year hives. You can do whatever you want with the honey, eat it, sell it, give it away, leave it for the bees. If selling it, you'll need to google your state's requirements for labelling and maybe get your label approved. I think user -Asshole- bought a flow hive and can give you his opinion on it. The first few pages of this thread have discussion on it. Easiest selling it is in pints and quarts. Generally, pints are sold for $8-10 and quarts $16-20. As far as flying away, there are two different things. There is swarming, where the hive gets crowded and they decide to force the queen out and 1/3-1/2 of the bees will leave with her and the old hive will raise a new one. This is how they reproduce. The other thing would be absconding, which they will do due to high parasite load, so if you get bees you will need to research how to treat for mites and make sure you do it. Package bees (a bunch of random bees and an unrelated queen) run $100-120 depending on where you are. I recommend finding a nuc, which is 5 frames of brood and bees with a laying queen. That will run you $150-175, but in my opinion is worth it. This price obviously doesn't include the cost of equipment such as the boxes, suit, smoker, hive tool, etc.
I bought 4 different kinds of blueberry bushes. Was going to build my raised beds today. How far apart do I need to plant these? Would a 4’ x 8’ bed be too big/small? The previous raised garden I did, I dug out a few inches to remove the grass and then stabled a weed barrier to the bottom of the box. I don’t really feel like digging again since heat index is 100+ in Oklahoma now every day. Can I put a grass killer down and then put cardboard boxes over it and then put my raised beds over that?
What about digging up grass vs putting grass killer down? Also, do I need to buy a special type of soil?
When I planted mine, I put newspaper down then weed cloth over that. I didnt do a raised bed, but as long as there is a dirt barrier you should be ok. Do you know how long until the weed killer is dormant and can you wait to plant until then? Blueberries like acidic soil. I'd just read this or find your local state extension information. https://hgic.clemson.edu/factsheet/blueberry/
Does anyone plant pumpkins? Now would be the time in my area to plant from seed and have ready for fall. I’m thinking 4-5 plants and have read that ~20sqf per plant is recommended.
How many pumpkins are you looking to get? I don’t think you need to plant that many plants unless you want a lot. I planted a single plant once and just like a lot of viney or squash like plants shit just spreads and chokes other things out unless given its own area. Think I got about 10 pumpkins of varying sizes from one plant by the time it was done snaking it’s way around multiple boxes. Won’t plant again bc what the hell do I need that many pumpkins for and I’d rather use my limited space for other stuff.
My wife wanted watermelons and pumpkins, so after I pulled the potatoes out, I planted seeds. Pumpkins are really starting to take off. 4 of them sprouting and will probably have to remove 3 soon because our bed is way too small. Will prob have to do the same with the watermelons.
I have 5 jalepeno plants. 3 in the main bed with other stuff and I moved two into pots at different times over the past 2-5 weeks. Can’t really see one of the three that are in the main bed because the seed got moved over further than when I planted and it basically right up next to the tomato plants. We had a late very late freeze in April, so nothing sprouted until probably mid-late May. I had thought that they didn’t take at all. Then as I was inspecting the plant closest to the tomatoes, I see this little s.o.b. Hopefully that means my other plants will start producing very soon too.
Extracted honey again this weekend and ended up with around 25 gallons, so about 32 gallons for the year. Got about 7 gallons of sourwood, which is considered one of the best. These are the different types of honey I got this year. Sourwood is the first single one. This picture shows different honey on one frame Was supposed to extract last weekend, but had a issue bringing the bees back from the mountains They didn't appreciate this and with my not having the boots to fully protect my ankles, I was stung over 100 times. Had a lot of swelling and severe pain all last weekend.
There is a big difference in taste. It's different based upon which plant the bees went to. Of those 5 bears, the one on top, the lightest colored one, is probably closest to what you would buy in the store as clover honey. The others have a much more pronounced flavor. One of the frames we were getting honey from even had a fruity flavor to it.
So how do you know what kind it is? Or is it merely based upon looks and taste? Also, I’m guessing that if you want a certain type/flavor, your choice is to either cross your fingers and hope for the best, or put the hive box near whatever plant you want it to use the most?
You can know somewhat by taste. I mainly know it is Sourwood because it is the only thing that blooms in late June/July. I put empty boxes on the hives to ensure that was all I got. For other times, I know generally what produces the most nectar here, mainly blackberry (lighter) and tulip poplar (darker). Other stuff is mixed in so it's all just considered wildflower honey.
Had an unusual swarm call this weekend. On top of a tower in the middle of a zipline course. Had to go through 5 ziplines with the bee suit on before I got to the bees. They had started to build comb under a box on the platform.
Anyone’s garden still going strong? I’ve got one jalapeño plant and one bell pepper plant hanging on and all 5 of my okra are still producing really well. My tomatoes were destroyed by cut worms and my lack of (knowledge) spraying them. Things I’ll do differently next year: Space my plants out more. Level it. Leaving the rows that the tractor created made watering and weeding more difficult than it had to be. Prob not plant squash Bigger cages for the tomatoes Spray my plants.