"Five Apple Farm: Growing It Larrapin"
Geek adventures with honey bees, gardens & more on a Blue Ridge homestead
Beginner beekeeping at Mayland Community College Starts Feb 6, 2014
Interested in learning beekeeping? Class at Mayland coming up taught by Rick Harty: Basic Beekeeping: A Hobby or a Business
Read MoreASAP’s Business of Farming Conference Feb 22, 2014
ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference is a day of learning and networking for those involved in local food and farming. Each year, approximately 250 area farmers, agriculture professionals, and business and marketing specialists attend tailored 90-minute workshops, meet with restaurant and wholesale buyers, tour Warren Wilson’s farm and garden, and celebrate the start of the season.
Read MoreEasy Homemade Seedling Starting Light Table
The light table has turned out to be one of the most important tools for the garden for me. I can get to “gardening” over a month before it’s reasonable to start stuff out in the garden. That is really good for my mental health during that long wait till planting time. Double that now that my mountain frost date is a month later than the past eight years in the Ozarks! Now you see why I went ahead and built the new light table in the basement workshop last night.
Read MorePost from the Past: Building a Light Table to Start Seedlings
- This is a post from February 2011 about how to build a homemade light table to start seedlings. I am about to build a new one for the basement workshop here at the new place. Even in January, I can start things like onion seeds, kale for very early planting under row cover, and grow trays of microgreens to eat now. This is the best tool for getting the gardener through winter! Will post pics of the new one as soon as I get it going! Leigh
- Shelves + Lights = Seed Starting Machine!
[Encore post from 2/2011] 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!
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And if you want to see what great seedlings a table like this can grow, here are some pictures in an April 2011 post with loads of late-season seedlings ready to go in the garden: http://larrapin.us/?p=1342 These tables are great. Most fun you can have with a wire shelf and some shoplights!
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Last post for 2013: Don’t Get Daunted
I just spent some time looking back at old pictures from our first garden in Arkansas. I think of it as Larrapin West. We’d just arrived the autumn before and for Mendy’s birthday party in March, we had a bunch of folks out to help shovel the pile of topsoil I’d purchased, since topsoil didn’t come with the place, into the plank siding of the beds.
Read MoreCertain Gifts: The Bee Trail
There are certain gifts that are a joy every day. The bee trail Mendy made is that kind of gift.
Read MoreGetting to know the land: Lichens
Lichens abound in the wet forests here in Western North Carolina with their amazing silver-grey-green colors on the tree limbs. Today I’m adding “Usnea” to my Land Life List. Usnea is the one on the left in the photo. The Land Life List is the idea of learning the names of everything I can see on the 5 acres that makes up the new homestead. Obviously this is a life-long project!
Read MoreCultivating the Wild Suburbia – Good Blog Read!
From “Cultivating the Wild Suburbia”by Ellen Honeycutt:
Contrary to what you might think, suburbia is a place where we can create habitat. That is my goal in our yard. I create habitat by making conscious decisions such as: plant a diverse mix of regionally native plants; minimize the use of chemicals; create places of habitat by leaving some dead trees, some bare ground, some brush piles; research what I plant to have bloom times throughout the year for pollinator support. [photo via site]
… read the excellent post on the joys of creating backyard habitat in the full post Cultivating the Wild Suburbia from our friends at www.beautifulwildlifegarden.com.
Read MoreGetting to know the land: Light patterns
The wiser part of me knows that it is good that I arrived at Five Apple too late in the season to do much growing. This might be the only thing that will get me to observe first, then dig.
Since we arrived in mid-Autumn—besides having wonderful fall colors on the land —I did have a great opportunity to observe the sunlight/shade patterns on potential garden areas— which will be very similar to the Spring pattern as the sun will be passing through the same angles, just moving the opposite direction. This is handy since the plants that like cooler temps are often grown in both spring and fall.
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