What is Happening with Spring in Northwest Arkansas??
I’ve waited and waited for the perfect day to FINALLY plant my darling baby tomatoes but I’m not sure that even today — May 11th — is the right day. I’ve heard it’s going down to 35 tonight! What’s with these spring temps? (Nevermind the floods, thunderstorms, windstorms and tornadoes in the region lately…) I feel a bit silly complaining about such minor inconveniences when the news around the state and region is so frequently dire, as in the last round of tornadoes yesterday in Missouri and other parts of Arkansas.
The pic above is from back in late March, when I was busy planting the broccoli plants that are, despite all aforementioned weather issues, now sporting beautiful sprigs of eating-size broccoli heads. This wheelbarrow is a farm family member. It was a gift from the artist Peg and the poet Genie many years ago in North Carolina. That’s duct tape strengthening one handle. The tire is the new never-flat kind — which are completely worth the expense, I will add. The old gray wheelbarrow is even more than she used to be! Thanks Peg and Genie!
Read MoreLarrapin gets certified!
Guinea fowl problems notwithstanding, Larrapin got certified as Backyard Wildlife Habitat this Spring.
It’s a fun program through the National Wildlife Federation that helps you evaluate your site for wildlife-friendly plants, practices and features such as food, shelter, nectar, water, etc. As of last year, we’ve focused on adding trees and shrubs that attract wildlife, maintaining consistent and varied bird feeding stations, sticking to organic practices, letting part (ok, most) of the lawn grow longer, providing water basins and bird baths around the place…. and so on. And WOW, has it paid off!
This year we’ve seen more birds and critters than ever. The birds have been amazing: summer tanagers, indigo buntings, grosbeaks, every woodpecker listed for our area, finches, robins, you name it. We’ve added about a half-dozen to our list of species sighted at Larrapin.
We’re just getting started on this edible landscaping idea. (Larrapin Garden extends that theme to edible to many birds and critters in addition to ourselves…) It’s amazing. I’ve combined my study of wildlife gardening with a new interest in permaculture principles and my head is just about to explode with new ideas and plans for Larrapin.
Read MoreGuineas Under House Arrest
Before we got the guineas, I read up as to whether they would harm the garden and several references gave them good marks, compared to chickens, anyway. I should have thought carefully about that comparision!
The chickens, previously free range, are now pastured-poulty in the large pen built for emus by the previous owner. If allowed to roam they head directly (at a great rate of speed and with great determination) to the deep mulch I’ve carefully built in my garden and around the trees we’ve planted. They scratch like heck to get at all the lovely earthworms and buggies under that deep blanket, leaving nothing but scattered mulch and scratch holes. In the pen they went.
But oh, the guineas were supposed to be focused on bug-eating, particularly ticks, and only lightly muss the garden, if at all. Wrong. I should have entered “guineas are eating my garden” into the search engines as I did recently to find the scads of entries. Turns out they like new, small shoots (peas are their favorites, according to my recent eyewitness research) and their other favorites are RIPE TOMATOES.
I immediately knew the guineas were going in the pen. Not only do I kind of specialize in heirloom tomatoes in my garden, but my neighbor is the tomato king of our hilltop. This will never work. In fact, most of those entries online were complaints about neighbors’ guineas and how to control them. (Like the homestead squirrel control ideas online, “eat them” comes up often…) I do not want to be the kind of neighbors we once had at another home, in fact I had a kind of spasm just thinking we might be like them. So it was time for a guinea rodeo in the chicken house come nightfall.
Guineas can fly very well, but the 6ft poultry pasture fence would keep them in if I clipped their wingfeathers. Which I did, after dark I grabbed them one by one with a crocheted throw (sorry) that my dog sleeps on. It was the perfect weight and texture to grab a chicken sized bird who nonetheless fights likes the dickens and will peck and claw and squawk at ear-splitting range during the process…. Wing feathers were trimmed without bloodshed, theirs or mine.
So I’ve bought the time, till the feathers grow out, of whether to keep them to let them out strategically in the evening (they don’t go so far just before dusk – unlike their distant wanderings in the daylight) to nibble on bugs or just take them to the poultry auction when their feathers grow out… (Guineas fetch up to $7 each around here due to their tick and bug and grasshopper eating talents on farms and homesteads…for those who don’t have unfenced gardens or good neighbors with unfenced gardens I guess…)
Unlike the chickens, who still do their job of laying eggs, breaking up tough oak leaves for mulching, and donating great fertilizer for heating up my compost pile even while they are in their pasture — the guineas main job is out on the grounds and they aren’t much use in the pen. Hmmm. Will have to ponder all this….
Next poultry experiment for garden-friendly bug control for 2009: DUCKS!
Read MoreMy bucket farm
While this picture was about two weeks ago and a tremendous amount of greening and growing has taken place since then, we still had a late frost here at Larrapin two nights ago. You’d never know it from the sunny 70 degrees we had yesterday… It was very light, but it was the fourth or fifth time this month I had to haul out all the buckets on the premises and cover stuff in the garden. This bed is cabbage and broccoli, which probably would have been just fine, but they are so pretty I didn’t want to take a chance. Some of my potatoes got zapped and are just now, slowly, regrowing. (I forgot to cover those, since my mind was on my pet plants…) The night before this picture was taken, I noticed my neighbor, a great gardener, had every bucket on his place in use, so our road could have been named Bucket Farm Drive…
Read MoreAustin Trip: Natural Gardener Nursery
One of the great highlights of the trip to Austin was the visit to Natural Gardener Nursery. Wow! If I lived in Austin, I’d be there all the time, checking out the huge assortment of plants and taking in the creative loveliness of the place. Here’s the compost brewing house:
Out back is a huge field of poppies. That water catch system gave me tank envy…
Then I ran across this interesting sign, but saw no one in the pasture….
Till I walked around back and met this charmer….
I had a pet donkey as a child and have had a weakness for those big ears ever since. At Natural Gardener, the pair of donkeys have a small pasture that is artfully sloped for rain catch and is dotted with little shade trees and the occasional flower. One of the pair had just finished a satisfying dust bath…
Now how could you resist a face like this?
Meanwhile, back in the display gardens, there were wonderful touches like this swing:
If I’d had a million bucks, I’d have hired a U-haul and carried home lots of colorful pots like these:
Alas, the visit went far too fast and it was time to go back. This wonderful arch leads the way back to parking lot. What a great place! Thanks Austin, for being that kind of gardening town!
