Bees in the Garden

This bee is gathering nectar from a cucumber flower.    Bees love curcurbits - the cukes and squash.

Do bees really make a difference in your veg garden?  

Yes.   Absolutely!    Our yields have been much better since we started keeping bees. We noticed this in the squash and cucumbers and the berries.   Bees have made a huge difference in both the quantity and quality of the garden. 

Cucumber Tower

It's not really a tower, just vines climbing up some strong twine to the top of a trellis that goes over the center path of the veg garden.

It's happy and covered in bloom.  In the mornings, this thing is full of bees and really noisy.  

This particular variety is De Bourbonne, which are bred to stay small.   Assuming that you go out every day to measure and pick them.  And assuming they don't get lost in all the leaves.  It's easy to miss them and it only takes a day for them to get not small.

Not small as in big.  Really big.

Bottom line:   I like this variety a lot and will be doing them again.

Cucumbers!

I planted two types of cukes in the garden this year from seed I got from Baker Creek.

The smaller ones are De Bourbonne - they were bred for gherkin sized pickles.  They have little bristles on them that are seriously poke-y.  Weird.  But not hard to wash off.

The longer ones are Telegraph.  They are long and smooth and gorgeous.

They both make great pickles and are great for eating fresh.  I recommend them and will be using them again.

One of the questions I had about the bees this year was whether they'd live up to their reputation as curcurbit pollinators.   They totally did!    We have loads more cukes [and squash] than ever before.   I'll be making a lot of pickles.

Recipe coming soon.

Cukes

Very soon, these will be pickles.