"Five Apple Farm: Growing It Larrapin"
Geek adventures with honey bees, gardens & more on a Blue Ridge homestead
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!
Seed Starting!
Shelves + Lights = Seed Starting Machine!
On Sunday, February 13th the seed starting bug HIT me. I cleaned the clutter that had accumulated on the seed starting shelf I made last year (funky, but it works great!) and got going! First I wanted to add some protection since the shelf is now living in a semi-heated workshop space and had a roll of silver bubble wrap available. With the heat of the lights and the seed-starting mat, should be warm enough on cold nights. The silver bubble wrap (foil insulation from Lowe’s) also works to reflect the light, which is good.
With reflector-insulation and a plastic drape...
Finished up with a drape of leftover yellow plastic tablecloth. The whole workshop kind of glows screaming lemon now, but Ada the farmdog has shown no ill effects from sharing her sleeping space with this contraption…
Starter trays
That tray on the right is hard to find but really handy. I think I got this one from Johnny’s. It gives you about twenty narrow “furrows” to start seeds. Once they pop up, I transplant to individual cups. That was I can start a *lot* of varieties in a small space. I have only one small seed-starting mat (like a heating pad for plants) and this fits on top of it. The bottom heat makes things sprout really, really fast but once the cool-weather seedlings are up, they will grow happily with no additional heat other than the lights…
Heat-mat shown on lower shelf...
This pic shows how many trays I can get going on just two lit shelves. The seed-start tray will be on the heat mat (for a few days) then the seedlings will be spread out in individual cups in the regular trays. Each shelf has two sets of lights, so I can line up the trays side to side and get four on a shelf…
Kale at 72 hours!!
The heat mat makes a real difference. Check out the kale that poked up in 48hrs and was as above in 72hrs!
Closer to the lights...
Once the seedlings start to pop up, I remove the mat and use a spare tray to put them all very close to the lights. This is another thing that makes a BIG difference: having the lights only a couple inches above the leaves. Your seedlings will be stocky and dark green this way, rather than pale and spindly. (This is why the lights are on chains to raise/lower when the seedlings are bigger.)
I’ll check back and show the results in a few days!
—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. What seeds are you starting indoors?
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!
Seed Exchanges: Some info to get you started
Snow, Snow, More Snow at Larrapin...
It’s the time of year I start to see announcements of community seed exchanges. One is planned for Fayetteville coming up later this month. (See end of post for details.) There are few things more fun for a gardener to do during winter than to get to explore a new seed stash. Especially when the weather has looked like the photo above for days and days! (Other than attend DIG IN! Fayetteville’s first food & farming filmfest that is!)
Seed exchanges can range from large scale community free for alls to invitation-only swaps for specialty plant geeks! But there are a few things to keep in mind during seed exchanges—or even when you are shopping seed catalogs—that will greatly increase your chances at success with the seeds you bring home.
You know you can’t save seed from grocery produce, but not everyone understands this.
At a seed exchange, it’s vital to know the person who is sharing the seeds. There are many well-intentioned folks who will save seeds from a particularly good melon or tomato from the store. “But I got it from the co-op…it was organic,” someone once told me. Most produce, even at the crunchiest co-op, are from hybrids unless they are explicitly labeled “heirloom” or similar. This includes much of the produce at farmers’ markets too. Market growers—including totally organic growers—often need the reliability, production and disease resistance that hybrids provide. Even “heirloom” produce from a store is unlikely to produce true to type (i.e. like the parent plant) because if it was grown for produce (vs. seed production) then it’s likely there were open-pollinated varieties nearby and in all likelihood they cross-pollinated! (And thus have created a hybrid, but with unknown attributes…)
Similarly, if you save seed from a great plant you bought as a seedling at most stores, it was likely a hybrid and there’s no point in saving seeds. The exception would be an heirloom (open-pollinated) seedling you bought, then followed plant isolation guidelines to keep the seed pure.
Heirloom and Open-Pollinated seeds may not produce as abundantly or reliably as hybrids.
I’ve seen folks avoid hybrids (usually labeled F1) in the seed catalogs as if they were kryptonite. Right now heirlooms (old-fashioned, open-pollinated varieties from which you can save seed to plant the next year if you follow basic seed-saving rules) are so popular that many folks forget why hybrids were developed in the first place: to accentuate certain aspects of the plant or to overcome weaknesses.
Many of us are returning to heirlooms to capture amazing flavors that, for example, are too delicate to ship. But hybrids are not some scary GMO thing. If you have say, a tomato that is wonderfully tasty but takes many months to bear, a grower might cross it with another tomato that bears early, hoping to combine the two desirable qualities. This is something you can do in your own backyard. We’re not talking crossing that tomato with a…fish, which is the level that GMO manipulation can stoop too.
Hybrids are not bad things, they just don’t produce true to type if you save the seed. So, while that does open them up to economic control such as that hybrid being “owned” by a seed producer (including the truly unsavory types, like Monsanto, who is also hard at work on particularly noxious GMOs) but hybrids are not scary. Sometimes they are very useful for specific purposes. For example, if you are growing a tomato in a northern climate, you may want the earliness some hybrids produce rather than the heirlooms, which tend to require a longer season.
Open-Pollinated Seeds may have cross pollinated and not turn out true to type if they were not isolated for seed production.
It is pretty astounding how much space is required to isolate wind or insect pollinated vegetables, like beets or squash. For beets it’s five miles and for squash it’s a half a mile! So that means, if you are growing one type of squash to save seed, and you are sure there are no other gardens within a half mile that are growing squash, then when you save the seed, they will grow true to type. The other option is an amazing dance between you and the squash that involves taping the flower shut after you’ve hand pollinated it, then monitoring to make sure bees don’t chew through the bloom to undo your work!
So before you use valuable space in your garden to grow out some free seeds you picked up at a seed exchange, find out if the seeds are going to be what you hope by talking to the gardener sharing them! Maybe the seeds were extra from a seed pack they bought. Maybe they carefully save seeds every year using isolation techniques. Maybe those seeds have been in their family for years. Or maybe not. Find out before you spend a season hoping for a cool veggies, only to be disappointed.
How on earth, you may wonder, did our grandparents manage to save seed that grew true year to year? From the older gardeners in my family, they tended to pick one type of bean, or one type of pea, and grow it year after year in the family garden…which used to be a lot farther away from neighboring gardens! But you don’t have to settle for one variety in your isolated valley or holler! Seed saving is an amazing art and skill, one well worth learning. In an upcoming post, I’ll tell you about some seed saving techniques I’ve just recently learned. In the meantime, here are some seed saving links to get you started, here, here and here.
My Seed Stash...
WHAT: Fayetteville Community Seed Swap
WHEN: Sunday, February 20, 1:00-4:00pm
WHERE: Fayetteville Senior Activity and Wellness Center, 945 S. College Avenue
—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. Do you save seeds from your garden?
Flicker Feeding Frenzy!
Flicker at Larrapin (This one poking in the ground...)
I got to see an amazing site the other day. A group of five or more flickers in a feeding frenzy! The picture above, unfortunately, is not from that event, but it’s a snapshot I had of one of our local batch of flickers. This is how I most often see them, poking around on the ground under the blackjack oak, the pine trees or the magnolias, foraging for I’m-not-sure-what. (Oh! just read up at the flicker link above and turns out they eat mostly ants and beetles…so that explains the digging…)
The amazing group I got to see was chowing down on the seedheads of smooth sumac, a little tree that often grows along roadsides and fencelines around here. (See images below.) Most folks consider them kind of weedy, even invasive in places although they are a prairie native. But I have a whole new respect for them now after seeing that whole group of flickers flapping and fluttering on top of the little trees devouring the reddish seed heads! I watched for a long while as they would alight on the tips of the thin branches, then flap and flap to stay upright while the branch bent under the weight of the large birds, all while eating at top speed. Fall off. Fly up. Repeat. It was a lovely and unforgettable sight.
Smooth Sumac Via Google Images
Once again, I’m reminded that, to amend the cliche, one man’s trash may be one bird’s treasure. In a wildlife garden, if the birds love it, the gardener probably loves it too, um, with the possible exceptions of poison ivy and poke weed…
I remember living in Western North Carolina and the utility crews would come through every few years and cut down a large stand of sumac growing under the power lines. I always thought a little tree ID would go a long way with those folks, because what better to have under power lines than a plant that never gets higher than about ten feet and often shades/crowds out species that will grow taller? I’d never cared about the sumac-whackings till early one spring when I watched a large group of bluebirds, no doubt hungry at winter’s end, happily eating the seedheads…
So I’m happy we have a small stand of smooth sumac growing at the top of the property and a few along the northern border too, because the birds sure are enjoying it. And I sure am enjoying the birds.
—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. What winter birds are in your backyard now?
Woodpeckers O’Plenty: Suet Feeders
Yellow-Bellied Woodpecker
Here at Larrapin we’ve kept suet feeders going every winter and spring for years now. The result is a cornucopia of woodpeckers! Since the feeders are outside the kitchen window, they provide lots of entertainment while doing dishes. Some, like the red-belly woodpecker above, are very bold and can be easily photographed while I lean over the sink.
Pine Creeper...ok, his rump anyway
Others are notoriously difficult to catch on film, like the Pine Creeper above. Not only does he blend with the pine tree bark, he is very, very fast and always in motion. Usually he’s creeping around eating the bits of suet the nuthatch stashes behind the pine bark!
Female Downy Woodpecker, Our darling...
Isn’t she sweet! In this photo above she discovered the suet cage door had been left open and couldn’t believe her luck! Thankfully we latched the feeder before the suet block fell out. If not, at least one of our weiner dogs would have mysteriously gained five pounds overnight and then pooped birdseed for a week!
My special darling, the Carolina Wren
All kinds of birds take turns at the blocks, like the Carolina Wrens.
Some are a bit piggish at the suet...
These guys above just eat and eat! I believe I’ve read that ‘eating like a bird’ translates to eating about half your body weight every day or so…
Pine Creeper
There he is again, the flash that is the Pine Creeper. Quick, snap the picture!! OK, so it’s a little blurry, but he’s blurry even in real life because he’s always moving so fast.
Traffic Jam
Everyone wants the suet block for their own. But sometimes if you are a little junco you have to just jump on a grab a bite because Big Mr. Piggish could be here all day! Nevermind that he’s staring you down…
There are only two woodpeckers that do not show up on the suet blocks: Flickers and Pileated. (Although the Flicker has been seen on the ground under the suet feeder picking up chips that fell down…) Next week I’ll post what I saw a whole family of FIVE flickers happily eating at Larrapin. Some people call it a ‘trash tree’ but after watching the birds’ delight, I never will!
—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/aLarrapinGarden. Geesh, we’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Thanks for stopping by—leave a comment as to what is going on in YOUR winter backyard…
Snow days at Larrapin Garden
The blue chairs in snow
We finally got snow last at Larrapin! Thursday morning dawned with a perfect three inches of crunchy powder on the ground. It was *so* cold I didn’t get out to tromp around as much as usual. But dashed out to snap a few snow pics later that afternoon.
Ada in her element
Ada the farm dog loves, loves snow and appears totally immune to cold. She sprawls in the snow as it it were a fluffly summer yard. In rain, she’ll hide out in the heated workshop where her bed is, but in snow, she’s outside, lounging.
Hibernating Chickens
Then chickens, on the other hand, have just decided to hunker down till spring. They wouldn’t even come outside (at first) to scratch grain (aka “crack” to the hens…). They finally emerged once the temps came up this weekend.
Xmas tree, acting as fig shield...
Underneath the old Christmas tree, the cut back stems of the fig are hopefully cozy and protected. They have a blanket of shredded leaves too.
The sleeping garden...
Underneath that winter sky and layer of snow, there’s a green, green springtime just waiting to appear. And the new/recycled garden bench is ready, as the perfect spot to watch.
As deep winter as it looks, it’s not that long till indoor seed -starting time! This worksheet-calendar over at Organic Gardening magazine looks really handy, and lists some of my favorite veggies. You customized the dates using your spring-frost date.
http://www.organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/seed-starting-chart
And for an online version, here’s a quick and easy calendar for some basic veggies thanks to Skippy’s Vegetable Garden, one of my favorite garden blogs. You’ll find it here:
http://bioarray.us/Skippy’s%20planting%20calendar.html
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. Thanks for stopping by—leave a comment as to what is going on in YOUR winter garden beds!
Some borrowed snow..
We have had a snow deficit here at Larrapin Garden. Actually, it’s a little dry all around. (Universe: I’m wishing for snow or gentle unfrozen rain, not anything with the word *icy* in it or the dreaded ‘wintry mix.’ Just wanted to be clear on that…) As I said last week, several folks have offered to share their snow with us. So pictured above is a loaner from my friend Marianne in Asheville, NC. That’s her sweet little gingko tree in one of their (many) snows this winter.
Maybe there’s been skimpy snow, but the sunsets have tried to make up for it! Nearly every evening we’ve had intensely colored sunsets like the one above.
Meanwhile, my first seed order has arrived from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds! The year has really begun now. Next post I’ll tell you about a few of the packets that are old favorites and others that are new varieties I’m very excited about. Hope to see you here on Wednesday…unless there’s a huge snowstorm and I’m out taking snow pics… 🙂
—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— please leave a comment and tell me if you’ve ordered seeds yet!
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