Wednesday of Few Words…
Kale & Collard Seedlings
It’s been a busy week! The homemade seed-starting shelf has been well used, plus a few brave sugar-snap pea, spinach and kale seedlings are already out in the garden. The cute baby kale and collards above are just waiting to get a bit bigger and for it to stop raining long enough to get them in the ground. Strawberries went into the ‘row of shame’ this week, more about that later…
I previewed a lovely, lovely movie for Dig In! Fayetteville’s 1st Food & Farming Filmfest coming up on Saturday, March 19th. “Ingredients” is a celebration of fresh, local, organic food and the creative farmers and chefs who bring it to us in the most delicious fashion! I made the mistake of watching the film on an empty stomach and had a lot of trouble with drooling and stomach growling! It’s really inspiring and beautiful on many levels… Highly recommend! And I love envisioning how supporting our local farmers and restaurants who make the extra effort to use local products will create an even more vibrant foodie community in Fayetteville! You can check out the preview here:
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.
Weeding is More FUN with Chickens!
Weeding With Hen Friends
Yesterday afternoon I was pulling some weeds out of a few garden beds that I didn’t cover with chopped leaves or cover crop last fall. The cover-cropped and leaf covered beds are beautifully weed free and will be easy to plant when I’m ready.
Easy is a good thing since I’ve been happily buried in preparing for Dig In! Fayetteville’s First Food & Farming Filmfest. I’m working with two wonderful local farm gals to bring foodie and locavore films to NWA. These films have been popular and won many awards in film festivals around the country. Several will be shown for the first time in Arkansas. The films are selected to inspire and empower us all—in a positive and encouraging way—to go local and organic. You can read about what we’ll be watching and watch film trailers here at OzarksAlive.org.
But back out in the garden… The uncovered beds have weeds, mostly henbit and chickweed. Note that foreshadowing… I actually don’t mind pulling the clumps up. In the soft raised-beds it’s very easy to do AND it’s so much darned fun using the weeds in the manner explored in the video below! But I also know that those exposed beds were also exposed to rain and weather, which compacts the soil….and those exposed, uncovered beds are much less kind the to soil microorganisms which make veggies grow so much better. So winter cover crops are my new best friend now that I’ve seen the incredibly crumbly soil underneath them.
When I do have weeds, this video shows what I do with them. I also chat a bit about chickens in your garden. Enjoy!
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. A special shout-out of gratitude to NWAMotherlode.com and OzarksUnbound for helping us spread the word about the Dig In! Filmfest!
Seed Starting Update…
Ready to go into individual pots!
I’ll be potting up babies today! Meanwhile, if the weather’s dry today…may try some spinach, onion starts and sugar snap pea seeds directly in the garden….
Next time: the sweet potato experiment…
If you are reading this from Northwest Arkansas and surrounds, be sure to check out our upcoming Food & Farming Filmfest on March 19th!
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Are you planting anything yet? Leave a comment and tell all!
Hundred-Year Snow
We’ve had a bit more of snow since I last posted. Here it was 16-18″ with twice that in the drifts. WOW. I’ve never had snow fall into calf-height wellies! It’s apparently a ‘hundred year snow’ in these parts. (I’m concerned that might refer to how long it’s going to take to melt! But with temps forcasted in the 60’s this weekend…that should do the trick, albeit with a little weather whiplash thrown in!) That’s my car above, clearly not going anywhere soon. To give you a comparision, the picture below is Herald the metal rooster in last week’s snow:
And the one below is THIS week’s snow!
Below is the Larrapin veggies patch in last week’s snow:
And below is this week’s snow:
And finally, below you can see the blue chairs in last week’s snow:
And below, Ada lounging in front of them this week. Ada loves snow, all snow. It’s great to lay in, play in, hide things in and find things there too! She is delighted to have gotten to see a hundred year snow, especially in dog years.
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Thanks for stopping by the woods on a snowy evening!
Those two pretty days, back in January
New garden bed, freshly plowed, rocks removed.
The last couple days of January were lovely and after the past two weeks of snow, I’m thinking back to them very fondly. So here’s what I did on my two days. I tilled up the spot that will be two new garden beds in the veggie patch. Tilling is my only alternative to having my knees replaced from the shoveling in such rocky ground. Above, the rocks have been removed already. Then you have a lot of rocks to put somewhere.
Make a wire tube, and fill them with rocks for a cool column..
So I’ve started making rock columns like Ozark farmers of old, the ones you see at the corners of garden spots and fields around here. (Does anyone know what these stone filled columns are called in the Ozarks?) They are actually handy. You can build tables on top, or use them as the base for a garden planter. When you have this many rocks in your soil, you figure out variousways to use them. But one of my new year’s resolutions was to have more fun making garden ‘art.’ I’m not talking fine art, I’m talking fun art.
The concrete chicken (thanks Jane!)
So you take a concrete chicken, and add it to your stone column. Oh, and I built the column on top of a stump, which I’d previously decorated with a broken rake, painted purple of course…
Voila! Garden Art!
And there you have it. I’m going to add a few more objects, and call her “Our Lady of Larrapin.” That’s what I did with my two pretty days at the end of January.
—A Larrapin Garden www.larrapin.us
Posts most wednesdays & weekends. Don’t miss any—you can subscribe by Email here. You can also get bonus links and recipes by “liking” our Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Tell me about your favorite garden art!
