Beekeeping Tasks by Season

Beekeeping tasks can be divided by season. Checking on your bees frequently is a good idea, but can be overdone: you don't want to disrupt their hive building and daily activities too much.

Spring Tasks

Spring is definitely the time to get new bees and start a hive! Read up in late winter on beekeeping, plan your hive, buy or build it, and start going to those local beekeeping clubs.

Start a new hive.

Feed the bees if necessary.

Harvest honey from an established hive: when flowers are blooming, harvest any honeycomb not used over the winter.

Complete any needed miscellaneous tasks: take care of any health issues, and do anything else needed: requeen, add room, etc.

Summer Tasks

During the summer your bees will basically take care of themselves - you just check up on them and head off any problems before they balloon into big issues.

Enjoy watching the bees as they work: building comb and brooding comb, bringing nectar back to the hive, etc.

Make sure combs are hanging straight if you're using foundationless or top bar methods.

Harvest honey.

Autumn Tasks

Now it's peak honey collection time, and also time for making sure your bees are prepared for winter.

Harvest honey, but make sure to leave enough for the bees for food for winter.

Reduce the hive entrance, put on mouseguards, ensure adequate ventilation. Complete any treatments for diseases and pests.

Winter Tasks

Before winter, you'll help your bee colony get settled and snug for the long cold spell ahead.

Cover the hive with a jacket - you can use a heavy-duty plastic bag lined with a strip of R19 insulation. Staple along the bottom of the hive. Or use black tar paper.

Make sure all treatments are complete.

Happy New Year

Romaniafarms wishes you a Merry Christmas

Protect Your Chickens From Predators

There's nothing worse than having your chickens or other poultry attacked by a predator - and it seems that nearly every wild creature, and many domestic ones, can appreciate a delicious chicken dinner. So, how do you protect your flock so you don't have to worry about losing hens to raccoons, dogs, weasels, hawks, and more?

Potential Poultry Predators
If you're new to raising chickens, you might not even be aware of just what predators are around. Or you may think that since you live in the surburbs or within city limits, you don't have to worry about predators. But domestic animals can be chicken killers, too.
So, who are you worried about?
Here are the most common chicken predators:

neighborhood dogs
chicken hawks
weasels/ermine/minks
foxes
raccoons
coyotes
feral and domestic cats
bobcats
owls
snakes (chicks)
rats
fisher cats
Some predators, like snakes and rats, are only likely to eat baby chicks or half-grown pullets, not full-grown birds. Others, such as skunks, will just eat chicken eggs, leaving the hens alone.

Coop Security
There are some simple steps you can take to protect your precious hens from predation. The first order of business is to have a secure coop with a door that shuts securely at night. Some other tips:

Dig a trench 12 inches deep around the entire coop and bury hardware cloth there. This will prevent digging predators.

Elevate the coop off the ground to help prevent mice, rats and weasels from getting into the coop.

Inspect the bottom of the coop and patch any holes where predators could gain entry.

Put lights around the coop at night; motion-sensor lights work well.

Keep your compost pile far away from the coop and don't allow food scraps to linger - clean up any food scraps that the chickens don't eat before nightfall.

Keep the area around the coop mowed and clear - an open field without cover is a deterrent to predators.

If you have serious problems with hawks and owls, consider covering the chicken run with hawk netting.

Poultry Protectors

There are other ways to protect poultry and some of them will work for any animal on the farm. Dogs are great protectors of the small farm or homestead, and will keep everything from sheep to cattle to baby chicks safe from marauding predators - usually including other dogs.

Still, there's a catch: some dogs just love to chase and tease chickens. They will often kill them without even realizing or intending it. If you get a livestock guardian puppy, be sure to supervise its interactions with your chickens when it is young, and deliver a correction any time it gives chase to your feathered farm animals.

If you're not up for getting a dog, guinea fowl are also great guardians of the flock. They will chase off everything from the mailman to coyotes - but beware, their protection comes with a noisy price. Guineas are not quiet animals, and you can't just train them to pipe down like you can with (some) dogs. Still, they have an added benefit: they'll eat every bug you can imagine that might plague the garden and barnyard, from ticks to flies.

TomTato: 'mutant' plant that grows tomatoes and potatoes unleashed

A bizarre plant which produces both tomatoes and potatoes, providing a 'veg plot in a pot', has been launched in the UK.

The ‘TomTato’ can grow more than 500 sweet cherry tomatoes above ground, while beneath the soil it produces white potatoes that are suitable for boiling, roasting or turning into chips.

Horticultural mail order company Thompson & Morgan, which is selling the plants for £14.99 each, described their new product as a “veg plot in a pot”.

The hybrid plants are not a product of genetic engineering, but are each individually hand-grafted. Like potatoes, tomatoes are members of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), which makes them compatible for grafting.

Grafted potato/tomato plants have been around for decades, including from some small British nurseries, but Thompson & Morgan say this is the first time the plants have been widely produced commercially in the UK.

Top 10 Reasons to Keep a Jersey Cow

1.  Personality.  They don’t know they are cows.  Picture a giant milk giving dog who will lick you from fingertips to armpit if it thinks you have a treat.

2.  Ease of Milking.  I milk goats and a cow.  Amazingly, the cow is easier to milk than any of the goats.

3.  The Milk is Amazing.  Just amazing.  It is so sweet and delicious and unlike anything you will ever find in the grocery store.

4.  Cream:  Jersey cows give amazing quantities of the good stuff.  (Note:  they don’t give as much as Holsteins, but their milk is much richer!)

5.  Fertilizer for the Garden:  The other thing cows produce in quantity is manure.  Luckily it enriches the garden and pasture!

6.  Calves!  So precious!

7.  Save on chicken feed (part 1.)  Chickens love the milk and whey we give them.  Feeding it to our feathered friends is certainly preferable to wasting it!

8.  Save on chicken feed (part 2.)  This one may be a bit much for the non-homesteader to handle, but chickens are huge fans of cow manure.  It sounds gross, but it keeps the pasture clean, because they spread out the cow-pies while searching for loose grains and fly larvae.  This is part of nature’s plan for sanitation!

9.  Butter!  Imagine the butter you can make when you get inches of cream in each jar!  Spectacular!

10.  Cheese!  Cheese making ranges from seriously simple to extremely complex.  Either way, I’m all for a hobby I can eat!

So there you have it!  Equal treatment for the dairy cow.  She may be bigger than you, and that can be intimidating at first, but she’s a great asset to family farms and homesteads!

All About Growing Peppers

Peppers present some of the summer gardens biggest flavors and brightest hues, and these striking fruits are simple to store and have a wealth of delicious uses in the kitchen. Plus, sweet and specialty peppers are among the most expensive produce at the grocery store, so growing peppers of your own can be a money-saving move.

Pepper Types to Try

Sweet bell peppers come in various sizes and colors, and the fruits’ colors change as they mature. They grow best where summers are long and warm.

Specialty sweet peppers include pimentos, frying peppers, and other sizes, shapes and flavors. Small-fruited varieties are among the easiest peppers to grow.

Southwestern chile peppers have complex flavors with varying degrees of heat. Many varieties bear late and all at once, so they can be a challenge to grow in climates with short summers.

Specialty hot peppers range from moderately spicy jalapeños to hotter cayennes to hottest-of-all habaneros. Most are easy to grow.

Ornamental peppers may feature spicy, brightly colored fruits, purple or variegated foliage, or both.


When to Plant Peppers

Start seeds indoors under bright fluorescent lights in early spring, eight to 10 weeks before your last spring frost date. If possible, provide bottom heat to keep the plants’ containers near 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure the seeds stay slightly moist. Seeds should sprout within three weeks. Transfer seedlings to larger containers when they are about six weeks old. Don’t set peppers outside until at least two weeks after your average last frost date, during a period of warm weather.Always harden off seedlings by gradually exposing them to outdoor weather a few hours each day for at least a week before transplanting them outdoors.

How to Plant Peppers

All peppers grow best under warm conditions, but gardeners in cool climates can keep peppers happy by using row covers. Choose a sunny site that has fertile, well-drained soil with a pH between 6.0 and 6.5. Loosen the planting bed to 12 inches deep, and thoroughly mix in a 1-inch layer of mature compost. Dig planting holes 12 inches deep and at least 18 inches apart, and enrich each with a spadeful of additional compost. Partially refill the holes, and situate plants so they are planted slightly deeper than they were in their containers. Water well.

Harvesting and Storing Peppers

You can eat peppers when they are mature yet still green (green peppers), although the flavor and the vitamin content of peppers improve as they ripen to red, yellow or orange. Use pruning shears to snip ripe peppers from the plant, leaving a small stub of stem attached. Bumper crops can be briefly steam-blanched or roasted and then frozen, either whole (for stuffing) or chopped. Peppers are also easy to dry. Dried peppers quickly plump if soaked in hot water, or you can grind them into powders for your spice shelf.