Garden Update 7/12

We've gotten three tiny eggs in the last three days, so just one hen is laying still.  The top two eggs in this photo are ours, the larger egg is from the store.  We need to make sure our hens are getting more greens, the yolks should be much darker than the store bought egg.

The nesting boxes that my Mister built.  We worried they'd be too high, and that we should put in a ladder, but before we got that far, we found an egg in the center box.  It's amazing to me that the chickens knew where to lay the egg even though the nesting box had only appeared in the coop the day before we got our first egg.  

It had been awhile since my Mister checked on the bees, so he thought it would be a good thing to do before we went on our camping trip....

This one looks good.  The bees are capping the honey.

This one doesn't look so good.  We had the follower board blocking the last third of the hive or so.  The bees filled up all their available space and got into the back area, where they started to make some comb that crossed several top bars.  My Mister had to cut those combs off, then he moved the follower board, opening up the entire hive, so hopefully the bees rebuild straight.  They weren't too happy with what he was doing, and he got stung once on the leg.  He came in and got some long pants on (maybe a duh thing right there...) and was fine.  He left the comb he cut off in a bucket outside the hive so the bees could gather the honey in it and move it back inside.  

We set up the automatic watering system in the big garden.  No more watering by hand!

One of the zucchini plants in the raised bed garden is blossoming.  I bet we come home from our camping trip to some zucchini.

I found this weird mushroom.  The big parts were in a ring around a smaller center part, like a flower.  We didn't eat it.

Cherry tomato.

Paste tomatoes.

Bees were on the onion flowers.  I think I'm supposed to knock the stocks over so that the bulb gets bigger, but it's hard to when the bees are enjoying the flowers so much.  I wonder what onion honey tastes like...

It's hard to see from this picture, but there was a lady bug on the artichoke plant.  I noticed aphid-looking bugs the other day, and sprayed them off with the hose, so I was glad to see the lady bug.  Hopefully her friends are around and they're taking care of the aphids.  The good things that come when you don't use pesticides...  Which reminds me.  When I was a kid, my parents hired a neighbor boy to come do some yard work for them.  As a joke, he used round up to kill a big Y in the field (his family were all BYU fans, my family were UofU fans).  For the parade, we had most of that family sitting next to us, and they joked about using round up to put another Y in the field.  My comment was that if they could find an organic way to put the Y in the field, they could go for it.  I just didn't want to cause problems for the bees and ladybugs and all the other beneficial insects that help us maintain our garden.