Sad news was seeing the end of our urban bees.

Jub I Lee as Will I Am would have it said has left us with mixed feelings. Positive encouragement that by the age of 86 we too may be able to stand for over 4 hours in the cold and rain, then go to a late night party and follow it up next day looking fresh as a daisy when off to the formal lunch and yet a tinge of anger at the news reports of the £12million spent on the pageant when jobless and apprentice staff were left without shelter or dignity having been bussed in from Bristol to perform the role of stewards for no pay at all in the desperate hope that they might be employed for further abusive behaviour during the forthcoming Olympics...angry indeed that this government continues to feather its own nest and that of its fat cat chums at the expense of the hard working Brits.  Ok Ok stepping down now and just lugging the soapbox into the garage for rest of the day...so what did we get up to over the Jubilee extended break?

We continued our foray into freegle-land and picked up a stock of unwanted flooring planks and put them to good use making new raised beds as well as renewing some older edging.

Sad news was seeing the end of our urban bees.  We have had a hive in the garden of our semi for 3 years now and had great success with honey production as well as gaining hours of insight into bee behaviours by having constant sight of them which most beekeepers would not have as they generally have an apiary of allotment site which is not right outside their back door.  However our ethos at streetgrowers is founded in responsible growing and food production and the essence of responsible must apply to all impacts we have on the environment.  2 years ago the bees swarmed onto the rose arch in the middle of our garden, from where we gathered them into a box and passed them onto another beekeeper who has happily homed them in an allotment in Beckenham.  We re-queened the colony and they continued a happy healthy honey producing time whilst giving us high pollination rates on all our fruit and veg.  Last week the crazy spring weather caused a high number of colonies to swarm and one of those was ours again. There was as far as we could see no rhyme or reason to them swarming, we had only inspected them 2 days before and there was no sign of anything other than a happy queen and busy colony growth and production of stores, yet they went for it at 2pm on the sunniest Sunday afternoon when most of the adjoining gardens were bursting with families including children having BBQs and summer get togethers.  We smoked as hard as possible as soon as we saw them start to swirl above the hive and with the lack of wind and surprisingly without a single neighbour noticing a thing they bunched onto the top branches of a pear tree in our next door neighbours garden...currently an unused garden.  With a swift call to a beekeeper friend or two we had a swarm catcher with a very long pole on the way and imminent disaster was averted.  But it could have been so different had they chosen to bunch on the safety net of the trampoline in the graden 2 doors down, or on the apple tree of the garden backing onto us where the couple were enjoying drinks on their patio with a group of friends...

So have we been over cautious in letting them go, given we have not received a single complaint about their presence? Well I think responsible growing has to include making tough decisions for yourself and not waiting to have decisions forced upon you.  The remains of the colony have headed up to Harlow to enjoy a more rural existence and we will place our pollination fortunes in the hairy legs of the bees homed at the Woodlands trust farm 200 yards up the road.

This weeks growing update:
We have planted out our runner beans and constructed the A-frame for them to grow up, potted on the rest of the tomatos for outdoor growing into larger pots, planted out the cauliflowers and cucumbers as well as butternut and pumpkin plants which are all at 2nd leaf stage.
We have spotted our first grapes and will be taking care to support their branches as they grow, and keep the birds off them, maybe we might take in a viticulture course soon too...hmmm.

Secret news on the lychee plants is we seem to have managed to germinate 4 out of the 9 stones, no photos yet as they are still very shy.

Finally headlines from the coop: Midnight has been sitting on 2 eggs and seems to be taking the job very seriously indeed whilst the cockerel, Dr Horacio and other hen, Lady are keeping a close eye on her and becoming very protective even when we offer her food and water so we wait til they are wandering the garden first.