Stuff I Learned Gardening Last Year: Seeds & Bees
When you garden, it’s a sobering fact that you only have so many practice runs (gardening seasons) in a lifetime. A musician might get to practice a particular song hundreds of time to get it right. Unless you are remarkably long lived, gardeners my age might only have 20 or 30 more times to get really good at it and that’s if you happen to get really lucky in life too! Things like summer-heat-domes, spring floods, or a season off with a bum shoulder can be a real setback. So I’ve found that doing a lot of different things in the garden—things that cover different seasons, or add to the garden in different ways, mean a lot.
As have mentioned in posts past, I paid more attention to seed saving in 2011 than ever before. The photo above shows seeds of New Zealand Spinach collected just before our first killing frost. The top ones were already dry and hard when I collected them. They look like the seeds in packets I’ve bought. The green seeds have since dried out, but I’m not sure if that affects germination. I’ll find out this Spring I hope.
One great thing about seed saving over time is that you end up selecting for plants suited to your very particular setting. This is what makes heirloom seeds so special. You also get to see natural variations in the seeds you grow out like the Larrapin Kale I’m working on. Below is another photo of this gorgeous leaf that appeared among the grown out seeds I saved. Around it you can see the more typical “Ragged Jack” leaves.
Next year I plan to let only these particular wide-leaf plants go to seed, then collect seed again to see if I can get a kale that consistently shows this leaf. A garden is nothing if not an experiment! And who will be helping me cross pollinate those lovely plants — why the bees of course! I cannot even describe how much joy having beehives at Larrapin has been. Words fail me, but the determination to become adept at beekeeping, is securely on my bucket list…
I’d love to hear your comments. You can click here to comment and share your garden news.
—A Larrapin Garden ~ Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—please subscribe by Email here to get the posts in one weekly email. You can also get bonus links, giveaways and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.
Read MoreNew Home! www.larrapin.us & Chix Holiday
For the holidays 2011, I decided to finally move the blog over to its own domain: www.larrapin.us. So here we are! Gradually I’ll figure out how to link to all the material over at the old blog. I plan on staying settled here, so please bookmark or better yet, please re-subscribe so that you’ll get the posts by email. It’s a two step process, click and enter your email and the letters shown, then click “subscribe.” Step two is to check your email box and click that long “confirm” link that you really want to the get the now once-weekly posts.
Meanwhile, for the holidays I let the chickens ramble on the cover crop in the garden for snacks and greens. They were supervised, lest they devour the kale and spinach under the frost protection or scratch too deeply in the garlic and multiplier onions. They did pretty good with only one or two stern “move-alongs.” Mostly I cut or pull up greens out of the cover crop to toss into this area. But it was a holiday…
Despite being Christmas, it was warm enough that the bees came out to stretch their legs and buzz around a bit. The gardener was delighted to sit on the bench in the sun and dream of next year’s garden, while the chickens happily munched and explored. Happy holidays to all of you!
—A Larrapin Garden ~ with a new home at www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—please subscribe by Email here to get the posts in one new weekly email.
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Happy Accident in the Weedy Pasture…
Sometimes, things get away from you before you can weedeat! Take this tiny pasture which has thin rocky soil and gets half shady in the fall. I’ve had no luck in growing anything I wanted to grow in it. I intended to knock back the weeds all summer, which at the time were about knee-high, with generic-looking green stalks. (Let me note here, that we never needed a weedeater when we had goats!)
Then the brush got chest high and I dreaded the nightmare weedeating job and put it off longer because now it would involve the gasoline weedeater vs. the lightweight electric. But it was funny to let the chickens run around in their own personal chicken maze, completely invisible once they entered, and scratch around to their hearts’ content. And by then it was far too large for even a herd of biddies to hurt.. Finally, it got so close to first frost that I decided to let winter take it all down….sigh of relief.
But before that happened, everything bloomed. WOW! I’m not sure what these little white aster-like weeds are (anyone?) but the flowers cover the pasture now. And I have never seen so many pollinators in one place at one time! There have been native bees, butterflies, flower flies, and of course the Larrapin honeybees have been all over it. Meanwhile, all kinds of songbirds are hanging around the perimeter have a feast on all the various bugs. (Stay away from the bees you guys!)
You can stand in the middle of it be surrounded by a lively buzz and every flower, I mean every one, has somebody enjoying it. Amazing! My bee mentor told me how much-loved this wildflower is (as one of the last nectar sources of the year) because light frosts actually make the plant produce more nectar.
I’m so very glad I procrastinated this time. Now I have a whole different outlook on this particular “weed.” While I’m a farmer at heart, at the same time, I love what nature does to the land when the farmer steps back a bit and let’s the real master-gardener show me how it’s done! Hope you all are enjoying this beautiful Ozark fall.
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Read MoreBiggest Hornworm Ever?
Look at the size of this guy and what an amazing pattern. He was happily munching on a privet bush. So we let him keep on munching…
Read MoreLooking for more posts?
I’ve just moved a few posts over to my new blog home here. If you want to read more, check out our former home at www.ozarksalive.org/larrapin
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