orchard

Beekeeping: Navigating a New Path

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 1 Comment

After helping my dad with his honeybees as a child, and keeping honeybees myself for twenty years, I am done with that chapter of my life. But once a beekeeper, always a beekeeper. The time that I once spent in the apiary I am now devoting to our native bees.

The good: Native bees tend to be non-stinging and are excellent pollinators.

The bad: Native bees don’t produce honey.

The ugly: Native bees are becoming endangered at an alarming rate.

Native bees evolved with native flowers, and do an excellent job pollinating both wildflowers and garden plants. The vast expanse of corn fields and lawns that dominate the landscape provide no place for native bees to live, raise young, or feed. Caring for native bees isn’t as intensive as keeping honeybees, but it still involves a bit of thought and time.

Native wildflowers, including bergamot and grey-headed coneflowers, provide beauty for people and nectar for wildlife.

Tidy gardens can yield nectar and pollen, but lack the crevices and hollow stems native bees need for refuge and rearing their young. If you also want to be a native beekeeper, and already have a native prairie patch planted, consider adding a native pollinator nest box. Depending on your crafting skills and your scrap wood pile, they can be handmade.

There are now also a variety of native bee boxes for sale, as well as removable nest tubes that provide a few key benefits. After the queens fill the tubes during the growing season, you can put them in your freezer until the following spring. This 1) protects the larvae from being eaten by woodpeckers and parasitic wasps; 2) can be timed to release the larvae in the spring to match when you need pollination and 3) prevents bacteria, viruses, and mold from building up in the tubes, as you can inspect and replace them as they need to be replaced.

The tubes that appear filled, above, have young bee larvae developing in them.

Pollinator nest tubes for mason bees should be 5/16″ diameter. Pollinator nest tubes for leaf cutter bees should be 1/4″ diameter. If you are drilling your own holes, drill them 6″ long. Native bees already in your area will move in right away, and as the population expands, you can add more homes in future years.

Bee nest tubes can be made from anything, if you have a drill. Stems can be hollowed out or wooden blocks can be drilled.
Nest boxes can be as unique as your yard, and will support a wide diversity of native bees in your area.

The Best Donut

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

The best donut is a mulch donut. Its the only kind that burns calories instead of making your waist line bigger.

The best filling for the best donut is something native, something edible, or something native and edible.

Aronia melanocarpa, the aronia berry, is perfect. This native shrub is great for native bees, has beautiful white flowers in the spring, attractive red leaves in the fall, and the berries…are edible.

They are incredibly nutritious, very low in sugar and exceptionally astringent. Which makes them a berry with a striking and flavorful first impression, but not necessarily a tasty one. If you can’t get over the mouth-pucker they cause, try baking them in a low sugar oatmeal cookie or throw them in a smoothie with kale and an apple.

What is A Community Supported Forest

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ 1 Comment

A Community Supported Forest is a place in which the people actively and deliberately care for the light, the trees, the soil, and the plants to create a healthy system which provides sustenance in a myriad of ways.

Hazelnut

From wild strawberries and wild ramps (onions) in the summer, to linden blossoms and black raspberries in the summer, to hazelnuts and butternuts in the fall, the food from a well planted and cared for forest provides deliciously diverse and bountiful food.

There are other benefits as well. The wood can be made into walking sticks for hikes and charcoal for drawing. Firewood can be used to create the evening campfire, or boil sap down into maple syrup. Woodchips can be thrown in the smoker for succulent, flavorful meat dishes.

Sumac drupe

Maple syrup and honey can grace the breakfast table. Bluebirds can nest in the tree cavities and catch mosquitoes. It is a beautiful and intricate system, and what comes out of it is, like most things, proportional to what goes into it.

Humans have had a hand in Iowa’s woodlands for as long as Iowa has had woodlands. They have planted, gathered, cut, and burned. And how much of that we do today really determines how fruitful the forest will be for us. Dense stands of trees need to be thinned to improve sunlight. Honeysuckle bushes and other invasive species need to be grubbed out. Missing species need to be planted, fenced from deer, and watered the first few years. Every ten years or so, trees will need to be thinned. Community members support the forest.

Through that process, calories will be burned, muscles will be toned, and friendships will be formed. Knowledge will be learned and shared. Ultimately how productive the forest is for the community is a measure of how well the community cares for its Forest.

Spring in the Orchard Nursery

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

Today, I finished grafting my 50 apple trees for the spring. Last year, I grafted two. Both died. This year, I changed things up a bit: a good left-handed grafting knife and M7 root stock that looked extraordinarily robust. Of course a lot more practice may help.

So what’s going in the nursery? Fresh eating apples (Malus domestica): Ashmead’s Kernel – Atlas – Black Gilliflower – Calville Blanc d’Hiver – Cox’s Orange Pippin – Delistein – Golden Nugget – Golden Precoce – Griffith – Grimes Golden – Hidden Rose – Late Strawberry – Livadiyskoye – Lodi – Northern Spy – Rome Beauty Law – Wealthy – Winter Sweet Paradise – Viking.  Two wild card scions from a friend: a Thomas Jefferson and an Etzel. The first is problematic because Jefferson grew a lot of different varieties of apple trees that are still in existence (and at least one that isn’t). The second is problematic because it isn’t listed anywhere. Odds are good it is a known variety, I just don’t know enough to ID it.

Nothing provides good cross-pollination better than a crab apple (Malus angustafolia). I grafted some Virginia Hewes Crab, a good cider apple which also traces its lineage to Jefferson’s estate, and Young American, which produces large fruits perfect for making jelly.

My absolute favorite variety this year is Kaz 96 08 15, a Malus sieversii. Why? Because it is the apple, a scion wood from one of the apples that started it all in Kazakhstan. I don’t care what it tastes like, though I am quite curious. All Malus domestica – the apples we eat every day, buy from the grocery store, and grow in our orchards – are descendants of the wild Malus sieversii.

Creating an orchard

~ Jean Wiedenheft ~ Leave a comment

When I was nine, my grandfather would let me mow the hayfield with the tractor. He would supervise from the edge of the field, wearing a long-sleeved plaid shirt and straw hat, eating an apple fresh from the tree.

31 years later, I wear long-sleeved plaid shirts and a straw hat to protect me from mosquitos, thorns, ticks, and the sun. I inherited a McCormick Farmall Cub tractor older than I am. The only thing missing was the apple tree.

My friend Craig has been trying to give me a pair of apple trees for about two years now. I have always demurred, because apples need sun, and that’s not something I have a lot of living under the canopy of an oak savanna. But this spring I was watching the cardinals and chickadees in the thicket of mulberries, multiflora rose, and honeysuckle that had grown up under the dead oak tree, and I realized that I do, indeed, have a sun spot.

The oak tree died back in 2000, before we moved onto the land. It is gradually crumbling in place. Woodpeckers are aiding its decomposition, and more small twigs and bark slough off each year. If enough sunlight in the area is allowing the birds to plant  and grow a thriving orchard of invasive trees and shrubs, its enough sunlight for a few more desirable trees as well.

Armed with a chainsaw and a shovel, I started clearing and planting. Since I had no idea what kind of apple tree I wanted (the kind that tastes good?), Craig started me with a lovely variety of heirloom eating apples: a Chestnut Crab, a Yellow Hardin, a Golden Russet, a Ribston Pippin, a Rhode Island Greening, and a Yates.

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