Bad video of a gorgeous bird! (Pileated Woodpecker)

Posted on Jan 5, 2011

Hi all! I’m still without internet at home per the prior post…but the local coffeeshop is getting quite used to me working here…even when I’m actually working rather than playing with the garden blog! (Thank you, Perk on Wedington…)

I took this choppy, grainy video at super-zoom out a window. Then tried iMovie for the first time and got that weird “My First Project” frame. But being over my head tech-wise is nothing new for me.

So here is our big, beautiful Pileated woodpecker going to town on what must be a delicious spot in a knotty oak tree.  Enjoy it…he sure was!

—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. We’re even on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Thanks for stopping by—leave a comment and share what birds are in your backyard this holiday season!

Counting Chickens

Posted on Oct 13, 2010

Fall is settling in.  The leaves are changing and the chickens are molting. Most of them look ragged and rough, some half-bald. It’s an embarrassing time to have your friends see your chickens for the first time! Hopefully their feathers will be grown in by the end of the month when we expect guests…  These pics are from when they have their regular feathers.

It’s a motley bunch of chickens but we love them. Except for Hell-Kevin the white guinea, who is available, free, with free  local delivery, to anybody who would take him off our hands. Don’t be fooled by his charming demeanor.  He has been so vicious to the hens (and even to Handsome, who outweighs him by about 3X but nonetheless succumbs to Hell-Kevin’s wrath) that we had to put him out of the chicken pasture and coop. He free-ranges on the property now, looking for things to beat up, when he isn’t outside the fence yelling at the chickens. We’re kinda rooting for ‘natural causes’ but no such luck yet.

I love the Buckeyes more than ever and plan to raise more. (If you don’t know about Buckeye Chickens you can read about them here at the ALBC website—one of my favorite organizations to support… )

Then there’s our old girls: Little Bit the one bantam and Old Yella who could be six or seven and still lays an ENORMOUS egg every few weeks. It’s so big the top won’t close on egg carton. Chickens lay regularly their first two years, then laying dwindles down quickly. Old Yella has a solid black sister (not pictured) who does the same. These chickens were from my original batch when we bought the place five years ago now, they were purchased as at-least second-year adults from the Centerton poultry auction—a rural and cross-cultural experience you should experience at least once!

We’d been wondering just how old chickens can live to be and I thought it was seven or eight till I read about R. Creasy’s Mr. X who was FIFTEEN!!  Most chickens, lets just say, live much, much shorter lives. Even seven is not the fate of most real country chickens….but they all have a good, good life at Larrapin, and the length is almost always MUCH longer than found in nature.  Most wild birds don’t make it thorough their second winter…the common lifespan in nature can be startlingly short!  Farm chickens are luckier, but still, a Chicken’s list of ‘natural causes’ includes about everything on four legs, two legs, crockpots & freezers, two wings, colds, health issues and the mysterious DFO (a descriptive but distinctly unofficial radio code from Mendy’s policing days for “done fell out”) where the cause is unknown…but a chicken is down for good.   For the record, Mr. X was a pet and came in the house every night to a pet-carrier!  But our old gals are going strong for now and in chicken-universe, now is what counts!

Finally, there’s the one chicken who causes no problems whatsoever: Herald the metal chicken, yard art we were lucky enough to find down at Daisy’s and Olive’s vintage shop in Prairie Grove, Arkansas. He is well-behaved and good looking year round. We should all be so lucky!

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Edibles that tolerate some shade

Posted on Apr 14, 2010

Today’s post is on edibles that can tolerate some shade. It’s a question that comes up in nearly every garden class I teach: What can I grow to eat if I have shade? There’s a surprising number of traditional veggies and herbs that can tolerate some shade. Notice I said “some.” If you are talking about dense, dark shade, these aren’t going to work either and I refer you to those serious ‘shade gardening’ books… But if you are talking some good morning sun, or dappled shade, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, so read on….

Meanwhile, I teach my last garden class of the year at the botanical garden tomorrow (Thursday) evening. I’m excited as always to meet new veggie gardeners but also excited to have the rest of the summer to dig in my own garden! The class is “Organic Veggies for Beginners” and has been great fun to teach.

Here at Larrapin, the new veggie spot is slowing happening, one row-bed at a time. We’re planting each bed as we go, so that is fun to see a young garden slowly creep up the slope…Pictures of this slow progess to come. The pictures above: a tribute to the early spring bloomers, now beginning to fade into the green-green stage of spring. Pictured are forsythia, redbud and flowering pear blooms here at Larrapin.

OK, here’s a list I share in class of veggies, herbs and fruit that can tolerate some shade. Some of these I’ve never tried to grow (or might not recognize at the farmers market) but you may love them. Try them out and see what happens! Remember, nearly all will still require a few good hours of at-least morning sun, or most of the day in dappled-shade to produce. But it’s worth a try. I’ve been surprised at how many plants that traditionally need full-sun, that seem happy, even relieved, to get afternoon shade in the brutal mid-summer Arkansas sun!

Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit that tolerate some shade (Information from the lovely book: Designing the New Kitchen Garden: An American Potager Handbook by Jennifer  Bartley at www.timberpress.com)

Vegetables:

Arugula, Beets

Burdock, Cabbage, Carrots, Leaf celery, Chicory,

Chinese cabbage, Collards, Mache,

Cresses, Endive, Escarole, Fennel,

Jerusalem artichoke, Kale, Kohlrabi, Leeks,

Lettuce, Malabar spinach, Mallow, Mizuna, Mustard greens,

Nettles, New zealand spinach, Pak choi,

Perpetual beets, Radishes, Sorrel, Spinach, Swiss Chard,Turnips

Herbs:

Angelica, Anise hyssop, Borage, Chervil, Chives, Ginger,

Goldenseal, Hyssop, Lovage, Lemon balm, Marjoram,

Mints, Parsley, Perilla, Rosemary, Salad burnet,

Savory, Tarragon, thyme

Fruits:

Blueberry, Currant, Elderberry,

Paw paw, Rhubarb, Serviceberry,

Strawberry, Mulberry Trees

Edible Flowers:

Calendula, Johnny jump ups, Nasturtium,

Pansies, Sunflower, violets

Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden! If you enjoy this post, please share it with your friends!

Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, NC to speak

Posted on Mar 19, 2010

There’s a wonderful local garden event tomorrow that I nearly forgot to post since I’m unable to attend. Dash out and check out:

Tony Avent of Plant Delights Nursery in Raleigh, NC to speak to Flower, Garden, & Nature Society on Saturday, March 20 at 10:00 am, at NTI in Springdale

Tony Avent, the owner of Plant Delights Nursery near Raleigh, North Carolina, will speak to the Flower Garden and Nature Society of NW Arkansas on Saturday, March 20, at 10:00 am, in the student center at the Northwest Technical Institute in Springdale, 709 South Old Missouri Road (just south of the Springdale rodeo grounds, on Hwy. 265). Please arrive early for best seating.

Tony is internationally known and renowned in horticultural circles as a plant hunter and plantsman. He has personally traveled to Mexico, China, Korea, Argentina, South Africa, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam in search of new and rare plants to offer at Plant Delights, as well as finding great new introductions of North American native plants in no fewer than 43 plant-hunting expeditions closer to home. He has written numerous magazine, newspaper, and Internet articles, and for the last eight years has been a contributing editor to Horticulturemagazine. He has also appeared on many television shows, including multiple appearances onMartha Stewart Living.

Gardeners who love new and unusual plants, as well as  interesting and sometimes hilarious prose, eagerly await the Plant Delights catalogs each year. Who could resist a description of Baptisias, our native false indigos, as “redneck lupines”? Plant Delights has also become a choice destination for plant lovers to visit during the “Open House” weekends each year, to admire the lovely showcase and trial gardens, which have a wider variety of plants than most full-fledged botanical gardens.

Tony will speak on “Exploration to Exploitation: How Plants Make Their Way From the Wild to Market”.

Admission to the talk is free to FGNS members, and $15 to non-members (membership in the FGNS is also $15, and may be purchased at the door). For more information, call 479-521-9090.

Dirty Movies for Gardeners & Foodies

Posted on Jan 28, 2010

Northwest Arkansas is preparing for another ice storm nearly to the day of the anniversary of the catastrophic ice storm we had in 2009. It’s predicted to be much less severe though, and that’s an anxiety-ridden comfort. Such is our fate I guess now that the rain/ice/snow boundaries of the country have shifted a bit north. I recall with irony my first drive through southern Missouri a few years back thinking, “what on earth happened to so many of their forests with the tops snapped off the trees? Gosh, sure am glad our trees don’t look like that….” Now my backyard and much of the region has looked like that for the last year…

On the comedic side of things, I went to Wal-Mart last evening to add to our stash of emergency candles, like about two billion other locals decided to do at the same time. Nothing like the reaction to a predicted snow/ice event in the South. I love it, being a Southerner. It has kind of a crazy emergency-holiday feel to it. When I lived in places where snow/ice was “normal” I found it such a downer that no one was dashing out to strip the shelves of bread and milk…and emergency candles. (And, um, Beer!) But they were yesterday!!

As I walked toward the store, people pushing huge baskets motioned to the storefront and said things like, “Hope you are ready for that!” and “You’re gonna wish you brought your waitin’ boots!” Clever wordsmith. Somehow, this all puts me in a festive mood. Like the school aged Southern thrill when YOUR school is named on the closures list on the radio just because some road dozens of miles from you has an icy patch. It’s all still a thrill to me. Go figure. 🙂

I had a great time though they were already sold out of emergency candles. The retail maestros had emergency supplies lined up along the center row: deicer, snow shovels, propane, generators…sleds… You would have thought an ice-Katrina was headed our way and life as we knew it could end shortly. Which I guess is always true… But I did pick up a few little camping propane bottles for the cookstove, just in case. Nothing like being without power for seven days this time last year to put a little wintry-mix PTSD in your day, festive mood or not!

But I digress, I’m here to share some of my favorite dirty movies of late: “Fresh,” “Food, Inc.” and “Dirt.” (Yes, Dirt is already a favorite even though I haven’t seen it yet!) Enjoy the links below!

Fresh, The Movie (freshthemovie.com)
I got to see this night before last. It’s both thought provoking and uplifting too as it features interviews with farmers ranging from industrial to conventional to ecological. Calvin Bey moderated our local screening and suggested that we notice the affect (aka the “vibe”) from the various people interviewed. That was a pretty remarkable exercise and sure affirmed the “do what you love” principle of life. A good intro to food issues with a nice balance of hope and portraits of uplifting trends in the midst of our industrialized food system. Don’t miss this film!

Dirt: The Movie
This is the one I haven’t seen yet. But it’s got a lot of my favorite farmers in it AND it celebrates my favorite thing on the farm: soil. (I couldn’t resist the jazzy title of this post, but I have been corrected by teacher-farmers in the past to never confuse the two and never treat your soil ‘like dirt.’ Wise words!)

Food, Inc. (http://www.foodincmovie.com/)

This one is tough. It shows you what’s really at stake when we make food choices. But strong medicine has indeed helped me make better food buying choices because the pain in my wallet to buy what I call “ethical meat”  does not compare to the suffering of the animals in the industrial food system. And I want to lessen my contribution to that system, and that suffering.

So check out some food and sustainable-agriculture films, get educated and get gardening! Nothing like dirty movies the whole family can sit down and watch! Here’s to envisioning a lovely snow instead of ice for NWA. Stay warm! Please leave a comment via the link below and let me know what you think of the movies.

Calvin Bey on Starting a Spring Garden (podcast)

Posted on Jan 23, 2010

Welcome to the first podcast at A Larrapin Garden. Wow, this stuff is fun. If you scroll down to the bottom of this post you’ll see an audio player. Click the arrow and you can listen now, or click the download link to download the file and listen whenever you want. (If you are reading this via an email subscription, I think you’ll have to go to the Larrapin Blog Site to listen.)

My first Fayetteville gardening teacher, Dr. Calvin Bey of Harmony Gardens, agreed to a chat on getting ready to start gardening this spring. Calvin is an amazing organic and ecological gardener who approaches the process in a systematic, experimental process that befits his background as a scientist. Calvin’s garden is about 2000 square feet, he tells me, and he regularly gets 2000 pounds of produce a year from our NWA growing season that runs from mid-April to late October.

But that 2000 pounds is not “ordinary” organic produce. Calvin’s focus is “nutrient-dense” produce, grown in re-mineralized soil so that the produce will contain the maximum nutrition.

Turns out you can measure the nutritional quality of a vegetable with a special gadget, and of course Calvin has one! But the results can be startling. Even the loveliest-looking, organically grown vegetable can be lacking in the nutrition we all believe is in there. It all depends on the soil.  And don’t get me started on the nutrient content of typical store-bought conventional produce. (Ok, can’t help it: One study I read suggested we’d have to eat about 3-5 times the portions of modern vegetables to really get the vitamins and minerals supposedly contained in one portion. The quality of most commercial-farm soils—which is where the veggies get the nutrition to pass on to us— has diminished to that point.)

Besides human health, other side effects of nutrient-dense produce include increased productivity from the plants as well as increased shelf-life and disease/bug resistance. When you ask Calvin how he handles many common diseases and insect attacks in his garden, he will often shrug and smile. He doesn’t have them!

It all goes back to the soil. Well, doesn’t everything. Literally.

If you are into veggie gardening and willing to expand your mind (and understanding of soil) exponentially, I would heartily encourage you to take one of Calvin’s Saturday classes. He’s offering several of the one-day courses this Spring. (See http://harmonygardens.blogspot.com/ for info and signup.) You’ll learn enough in one class to keep you exploring for the next several years, or lifetimes. Plus, best of all, you get to see Calvin’s lovely garden and smart home. But you’ll see the real treasure when you push back a little mulch and take a look at that soil. (Guests are asked to refrain from the temptation of bringing shovels and buckets!) 🙂

Click the player below to listen to a 23 minute interview with Calvin, or download to listen at your convenience. (10mb mp3 file)

Thanks for stopping by Larrapin! Let me know what you think of the new audio feature!

Book Review: Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway

Posted on Dec 31, 2009

My favorite garden book of the moment—and favorite Xmas gift received this year!— is Gaia’s Garden by Toby Hemenway (2nd edition). I love this book and am SO glad Hemenway did a 2nd edition. I owned the first edition and really like the plant lists, but just didn’t enjoy the text the way I do in this new one. When I would recommend the first book to friends, I must admit I’d say, “The information is great if you can overlook the Western tilt to the plants and the author’s prickly tone..” I’m not sure if I just got used to it or if the text changed that much in tone. But there is lots of new info, the welcome addition of color pictures, and somehow the book seems SO much better overall.

I admit, I’ve a very picky reader of gardening books. OK, I’m prickly too. I like advanced topics, but I still love pictures and illustrations. At the same time, I don’t need to see pretty close-ups of flowers so common in the gardening section of most bookstores. I can see flower close-ups on many wonderful blogs! What I love is systems design.

Systems design sounds so geeky, but for me,  it’s just about seeing the garden, the whole landscape really, holistically.  Once I fell in love with the ideas of permaculture I became less focused on each individual plant and much more interested in the relationships between the plants and groups of plants and trees, and the relationsihips between those groups and the microclimates of my particular site. Not to mention the relationship between the gardeners and the garden landscape. Now that is fascinating!!

I guess it might be the same for interior designers: while you might showcase one piece of furniture, you are  more driven to make the whole room, or house, work together. I moved from apples to orchards in a sense. (But wow, designing landscapes on a systems level—at the one-human & one-shovel level of horsepower— occurs at a glacial pace compared to most gardening I’ve done in the past. I’m learning patience…)

Anyway, this edition of Gaia’s Garden is everything I could wish for in a gardening and/or permaculture book. Bravo Toby Hemenway and Chelsea Green. I was particularly delighted to see photos of permaculture designs that looked beautiful instead of just smart. Beauty is a valuable function too!

The author starts with the principles of permaculture, then applies those principles to a home-scaled environment via examples, explanation, illustrations and photos too. The plant lists are better than ever. Quick—name five plants that produce excellent chicken fodder!  Name five plants that will help your fruit trees stay healthier and more pest-freee! Name five plants you could plant instead of the dreaded suburban “foundation shrubs” that would also provide you with fruit! Name five plants that produce something to eat that will also grow in shade! Refer to this book and you can, no problem.

And luckily, these plants are for temperate climates of the States. Since permaculture originated in Australia, a lot of the previous books on the topic were filled with plants I’ll never encounter unless I move to the tropics. This edition (is this my imagination?) also seems to have made the plant lists less focused on the west/southwest and included more midwestern/eastern plants.

This book is the best introduction to in-the-dirt backyard (and front yard) permaculture for U.S. readers available. Thanks Toby! Even if you already own the fist edition like I did, it’s well worth the money to go buy the second edition. You won’t regret it. I’ve been pouring through the pages ever since I got a copy for Christmas. Ok, sure. I had begged for it. But Santa must have thought I’d been good enough to get me a copy!

(Book info: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, Paperback, 9781603580298, 313pp. Be SURE to get the Second Edition–Publication date May 2009)

What are your favorite gardening books? Or do you know links to lovely permaculture designs online? Share them via the “Comment” link below! Thanks as always for dropping by A Larrapin Garden.

Sneet & Snain: The Wintry Mixes

Posted on Dec 31, 2009

Next winter’s warmth

The snow has melted away from the white Christmas we had here in Northwest Arkansas, but we’re still having variations on cold precipitation. Not exactly the dreaded “wintry mix,” as the Noaa weather report often calls for, but yet another of the endless combinations that winter can bring. Back in NC, we made up some new names for the Southern variations on snow. “Snain” was snowy rain. “Sneet” was snow laced with sleet. Glad I’ve got good gardening books to read!

Ada The Farm Dog - 9mos old

Ada loved, loved the snow. She couldn’t figure out who would leave such yummy fluff everywhere. You could run, play with and then eat some!  But for Ada, the world is a toy or a meal. Hey what is that she’s eating??

Oh great. She picked her own collards for a snowy snack. Back in the summer, her favorite U-pick snack was yellow squash and young cantelopes. Only fitting I should get a veggie loving dog! But don’t let her fool you. She’s no vegetarian and so the chickens must be carefully kept in their pasture till she’s a more trustworthy farm dog…

Yum, cold DOES make collards sweeter!

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Woodpeckers are back

Posted on Dec 12, 2009

Once the weather gets cold, the woodpeckers reappear on the suet feeder. With the chilly week we’ve had, it’s rare to look out the kitchen window at the suet feeder and NOT see a woodpecker on it. Above, our adored red-head, the Yellow-Bellied Woodpecker. Occasionally, at the right angle, it’s visible how he got his name.

This tiny Downey Woodpecker has no trouble running off the big guys to get his lunch. They look so small compared to the Yellow-Bellied!

And here’s our 2009 pride and joy: an immature Hairy Woodpecker. It’s so fun to see the young ones figure out the suet feeder. Between them all, they are eating us out of house and home and making homemade suet cakes is on the agenda for the next few days.

Here’s another woodpecker post with pics  over at the old blogger site:

Another juvenile woodpecker: a sapsucker??

Which of your favorite birds are showing up this time of year? Please leave a comment and let me know! (Bloggers just love comments….)  🙂

Susanna: May I borrow your headlamp?

Posted on Dec 9, 2009

When I had the delight of touring my friend Susanna’s garden a while back, she told me one of those stories only another passionate digger can appreciate. Seems that in winter, by the time she got off work and got home to cover the things in the winter beds, it was already pitch dark. So a friend got her a headlamp and they would laugh at the sight of the little headlamp out flickering in the yard as Susanna tended her leafy flock in the darkness….