Busy Summer -- Garden Disaster

We had a very busy summer, being gone on vacations over three weeks and other weekends as well.  The garden suffered with these massive weeds hiding the grape vines and other garden plots and pests and disease attacking fruit trees.  These weeds cover the Norton vines but other grapes were equally covered.

The Japanese beetles took a heavy toll on the grapes, particularly the Marquette and Foch grapes, which are French/American hybrids and have thinner leaves than the Americans.  These vines though show a little new growth as well trying to overcome the damage.

Here are the rows of Marquette vines that look a bit spindly.  This was after I had cleared away the tall weeds, of course.

The Concord vines suffered less pest damage though they had some.  Very few grapes were on these vines though, perhaps due to the very cold winter.

My older Jon-a-Red tree looked very weak this year and I suspect due to borers in the trunk cutting off its foot supply from the roots.  No apples on this tree though it produced enough for a pie last year for the first time.

This Golden Delicious tree had suffered borer damage several years ago but seemed to have gradually overcome it, but this year looked bad again and I think lost some branches.

This older cherry tree shows some dead branches.  Not sure what caused this--some sort of disease.  I need to get the dead parts cut out.  The smaller trees had a little bit of this effect.  I wonder if the wetter than usual Spring and Summer contributed to the disease in the orchard.

The pear trees are producing only very few pears this year, but the few that are there look pretty good.  These should be ready to pick soon so I should keep an eye on them.

My tomato patch looks sad because I only got a few tomato cages up before they got too large to get into the cages.  With the tomatoes sprawled along the ground, weeding is more difficult, of course.

Even though the tomato plants didn't make it into cages, they are still producing a lot of tomatoes if I can get out and pick them.  Being on the ground, I think they are more prone to damage and rot.

I didn't get my sweet corn patch completely planted this year, and with all the time we were gone I failed to keep it weeded and the raccoons got what corn that grew.

My pumpkin patch is engulfed in weeds that are eight or nine feet tall.  Still, the pumpkin vines are growing among and up these weeds and are producing a few pumpkins.

My pumpkin patch on the left and gourd patch on the right are both covered with weeds but have vines growing through them so I will get something out of them.

Here a few of the Jack-be-Little pumpkins are visible in the gourd patch.

My green pepper plants are barely visible in the grass and weeds growing here.  I should get into these and weed them after I finish with the grapes.

I did get pole beans growing up their supports better than I have had in past years but haven't seen much production off of them yet.  They have suffered pretty heavy damage from Japanese beetles and I am reluctant to spray something directly that we want to eat shortly.

Here you can see the Japanese beetles congregating on the bean plants.

The heavy damage to the plants is more visible from this angle.

Despite neglect, my strawberry bed in the foreground and asparagus bed in the background look fairly good.  Both could use some weeding but are not overpowered by the weeds.

I've had a little more success with the bee hives this summer than I did with the garden.  I did manage to successfully split the far left hive and catch a swarm out of the original hive to end up with three hives as well as a nuc started from the swarm cells in the first hive.  All three have been active, though not much honey production.  My goal this year, though, was to produce bees more than honey.

The north hive (on the right above) had some honey in the middle of the top box but not much nectar around it, like the bees had been feeding on this since the nectar flow stopped.

The third box up had some nearly full frames of honey, looking ready for extracting.

Some of the brood frames looked a little spotty but I think its just because it is partially hatched out.  This is the box with my "old" queen that is in her second summer though.

However this frame has an excellent brood pattern, covered with capped brood, so I think my old queen is OK.

This frame from the same hive shows lots of uncapped brood so I know the old queen is still present and active in this hive.

A frame out of my nuc hive shows plenty of capped and uncapped brood, so this newer queen is also doing well.

This frame is from the middle "split" hive, made from a split in May.  This frame shows lots of capped and uncapped brood.

This frame from the split hive shows lots of capped brood and an abundance of bees.

The top of this frame shows some swarm cells (actually this the bottom of the frame when in the hive).  These cells have larva in them, meaning that the hive is getting ready to throw out a swarm.  This is the hive that has been bearding heavily for the past several weeks that I took as a reaction to the hot humid weather, but perhaps should have been read as a sign of crowding.