A Larrapin Garden’s Going To Market!
You know how there are some things you really, really want to do in life. Having a farmers market booth has always been like that to me. I have some great news, A Larrapin Garden is going to be a part of the newest farmer’s market in Fayetteville. I’m so pleased to share this announcement:
There is a new and unique farmer’s market getting set to start in Fayetteville. Green Fork Farmers Market will open every Wednesday from 4-7pm in the breezeway of Nightbird Books on Dickson Street starting May 9th. You can drop by and select from naturally-grown, handmade and local items. Some of the products that will be available this year include beef, chicken, pork, eggs, honey, microgreens, vegetables, herbs, herbal products, plants, and baked goods.
What makes Green Fork Farmers Market a first in the Fayetteville area is you can also select and reserve your order online for pickup at the market. The other first is the focus on all naturally-grown products.
The online system adds convenience for you if you need to know ahead what’s available and just drop by to pick up your order on the way home from a long day. On the other hand, you can also drop by to chat with your foodie friends and favorite farmers a bit, see what the growers have available on their tables, stop by Nightbird Books for a good read, and get a cup of coffee, glass of wine, beer, and delectable food from BHKKafe.
The website (link below) tells more about this special market and how it works. Please visit and click the “Sign In” tab at the upper right to register as a customer. That way you’ll get the Saturday evening email that lets you know what is available that week and that online ordering is open. You have till Monday midnight to get your pre-order reserved.
Green Fork Farmers Market will have a special sneak-peek market on Thursday, May 3rd at the Walton Art’s Center kickoff of Artosphere before Michael Pollan’s talk that night. (Parking at the WAC parking lot will be free that evening with a donation of nuts or peanut butter.) Visit anytime from 4-7 in front of the Walton Art’s Center. Music from 3 Penny Acre too!
Sign up — before Saturday at 3 p.m. to get the sneak-peak market email — but sign up soon to be a part of Green Fork Farmers Market:
http://greenforkfarmersmarket.locallygrown.net/welcome
It’s free to sign up and no obligation to purchase. Can’t wait to see you there!
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Another great thing about fall planting
Larrapin Potager Snapshot: April 1, 2012
In Northwest Arkansas, like many areas of the South, their are really two distinct garden seasons: Spring/Early Summer & Fall. In between there’s a stretch of heat in late July to late August that not a lot is going on except hunkering down and hanging on till cooler weather comes back. This year we’ve had the earliest Spring many folks have ever seen, which can make a farmgirl feel way behind, even though it’s still, technically, a couple weeks before the last frost date. Luckily, the stuff I planted last fall makes the garden feel full and well underway, despite the nagging question of unpredictable Spring weather and how behind schedule I may/may not be.
Spring weather always creates a challenge for me and the super early spring of 2012 adds another layer of guessing. Is it going to stay so warm that it’s way past the best planting times for cool spring crops? Hard to tell. Some springtimes will turn cool and rainy, so things like spinach, kale, beets, and other cool-season crops will go and go. Meanwhile, if you have jumped the gun and put out the heat lovers like tomatoes, beans and squash, they sit there and look cold, miserable and begin to molder, etc. On the other hand, if it stays mostly warm and sunny, then you have the *chance* for amazing early crops. It’s all a kind of gamble. In fact, I think gardening is an excellent cure for those tempted to gamble because every planting you are rolling the dice on about ten different variables. It drives me crazy, but I love it!
One garden gambling technique we call “the landing party.” If you ever watched the old original Star Trek like I did as a kid, you couldn’t help but notice when the crew was going to ‘beam down’ to a new planet there were always a couple anonymous cast members that accompanied the higher ranking crew. Usually fresh faced and blonde guys. They also usually didn’t come back. Landing party. So around here, I’ll sometimes put out a too-early test run of a crop to see what happens, while holding back transplants on the light table to replace them if they turn out to be…yikes, landing party! Buy hey, Captain Kirk always won out one way or another! 🙂
Flowers on the Larrapin Kale
I’ve found Fall planting is often more reliable than Spring. Fall planted spinach, kale, multiplier onions, garlic have amazed me with their steady-on growth. Especially when we didn’t have much of a winter at all..check out the fall-planted kale—which we ate all winter— flowering like mad! In this case it’s great because that’s a special seed-saving patch and lucky for me the bees are giving it tons of attention. With fall planting you have that wonderful green, full-looking garden…even if you are way behind on getting much early-spring stuff in the ground! I love all that color. And in the event you need more color, you can always use a cute saki bottle on top of bamboo as a little marker for a new grape…a marker that also keeps you from poking your eye out on the bamboo!
Saki bottle as plant marker
How is your garden going?
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Yarden Walkabout March 7, 2012
I thought I’d walk around and see what is blooming today. The flowering quince is “Crimson & Gold” and it just gets lovelier when the green leaves come out.
The daffodils are going strong…
Lovely sedum rosettes: peeping up.
Dandelion! I love these little yellow flowers and can’t believe people poison them. They are so important to bees who are out looking for nectar and pollen to raise up the baby bees this time of year. I can’t have enough dandelions!
Pretty little henbit (above), which along with deadnettle (below) are more important early flowers for foraging honeybees. Larrapin bees seem to prefer the deadnettle….
The tiny stars of spring beauty are all over the yard. Now who would want boring grass when you can have all these blooms..even though many folks would call these weeds?
Now here’s a vegetable that grows as well as a weed: volunteer Ragged Jack Kale. We’ve been eating off the patch in the garden all winter. This one is by itself in the upper flower & herb beds.
And unlike the “Flaming Fury” peach, this variety (name is slipping my mind right now!) is a little more hesitant. Which seems wise since it’s still early March!
Thanks for joining me on an early Spring walkabout at Larrapin Garden… May Spring be here to stay.
Read MoreSeeds Arrive from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
It’s that time of the year when I love to open the mailbox because a new shipment of seeds has arrived. From the number of seeds I tend to order, you would think I’m planting up the back 40 acres instead of one veggie plot (and ok, the areas around that fence, various flower beds, the old garden spot that I’m still messing around with, and some new spots I’m itching to plow, etc).
A word of warning: If you—or your spouse—has just started gardening, be aware that this is how it progresses. First there’s a “garden bed” and then, the yard, and then, well…, just remember to stop at your property lines…unless you’ve worked that out with the neighbors…HA!
The first shipment of the year is from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange out of Virginia. First let me say, I’m already in love with these guys I first found at the SSAWG conference this year. Southern Exposure’s catalog is full of words like “heat-loving,” “drought-tolerant” and “cabbage-worm resistant.” That got my attention. They specialize in varieties adapted for the South and even though NW Arkansas is on the upper left edge of the South, last summer’s heat dome got me more interested in heat tolerant plants in a hurry.
Not to mention that Larrapin Garden is now classified as Zone 7, up from Zone 6 when we arrived six years ago… So it’s feeling more Southern than ever before, with a strong dose of Oklahoma thrown in for good measure. So I’m in the market for tough plants that taste great and that’s what Southern Exposure is all about.
Then my shipment arrived promptly, and beautifully packaged. The small seed packets were even bundled together and neatly wrapped in recycled seed-catalog pages. I’ve never opened such a lovely box and it not be Christmas or a birthday. Bravo and you have a new loyal customer!
Some new varieties I’m trying this year are “Big Red Ripper Cowpeas,” and “Green Glaze Collards.” Plus I ordered some buckwheat for a summer cover crop that the bees love. Oh and some hull-less oats to try as a cover crop that I could also feed the chickens. And a new watermelon variety. OH and a tomato named “Mule Team” that I just had to try. And of course I had to sample their variety of purple hull peas… And… well, you get the picture.
Since I’m enamored of seed saving lately I’m choosing mostly open-pollinated varieties and some heirlooms as well. (And wow, can’t wait to tell you about what I’m learning from writer, geneticist and plant breeder Carol Deppe, author of Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties: The Gardener’s and Farmer’s Guide to Plant Breeding and Seed Saving. Deppe is my new SHE-RO!! But back to today’s post…)
There’s so much to tell you but things have been crazy-busy for winter around here because the Dig In! Food & Farming Festival is just around the corner (see below) and lordy it’s almost time to start seeds inside! Plus there’s the puzzle of if I even need to start new kale and spinach seedlings since my garden’s full of both thanks to our nonexistent winter (so far, knocking on wood here.). So I’ll close for today with a roaring recommendation for my new favorite seed company, now alongside old favorites like Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Peaceful Valley Farm Supply.
p.s. If you are looking for spring planting dates for your area, this handy calculator over at Skippy’s Vegetable Garden is a good one.
—A Larrapin Garden. Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Please subscribe to get the posts in one weekly email. You can also get bonus links, giveaways and recipes by “liking” our Facebook page or following on Twitter.
Dig In Food & Farming Festival
Are you in the Northwest Arkansas region? Please join us for the 2nd annual Dig In! on March 2nd & 3rd. It’s going to be great fun with films, an info-fair, free seed swap, and classes on gardening, backyard chickens and more. Please check out the website at www.diginfestival.com for more info and sign up for email updates there. Update: Dig In! tentative schedule to be posted later today!
Read MoreBees in January…er, what?
Wait, it goes beyond blooms because there’s one of the golden girls having a great time with those early blooms!
A flower and a bee: the perfect combination.
While I’m happy to see the bees, this too-warm trickery winter can be treacherous for them. The warm weather lures them out to fly around and burn up too much energy when there’s very little for them to find to eat. Plus, they may start raising young bees too early, only to have bad loss when the weather snaps back to real winter, which is more likely then not. So I hope they will sense somehow, that this warm weather is fickle and not to be trusted….
…unlike Hearld the metal chicken, which can be trusted to keep an eye on things, even a flowering quince blooming a couple of months too early.
—A Larrapin Garden. Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Please subscribe to get the posts in one weekly email. You can also get bonus links, giveaways and recipes by “liking” our Facebook page or following on Twitter.
Dig In Food & Farming Festival
Are you in the Northwest Arkansas region? Please join us for the 2nd annual Dig In! on March 2nd & 3rd. It’s going to be great fun with films, an info-fair, free seed swap, and classes on gardening, backyard chickens and more. Please check out the website at www.diginfestival.com for more info and sign up for email updates there!
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