For the holidays 2011, I decided to finally move the blog over to its own domain: www.larrapin.us. Please visit and bookmark! Better yet, please re-subscribe so that you’ll get the posts by email. I hope you will re-subscribe because there will be exciting new soon about the 2012 Dig In! Food and Farming Festival here in Fayetteville. Plus, we’re going to be building a new banty-tractor and a hoophouse here over the winter!  To get the new email subscription:  It’s a two step process, first click the link above. Then enter your email and the letters shown and click the “subscribe” button.  Step two is to check your email box and click that long “confirm” link that you really want to the get post in one neat weekly email. Then you’re in! Welcome back! And visit the new blog at www.larrapin.us.

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.

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

This year I only grew the small, super sweet potatoes I got at the co-op. Mendy nearly cooked them several times before I got them safely to the potting table…  They are ‘Japanese’ type sweet potatoes and my knowledge pretty much ends there. There were two kinds, orange and yellow fleshed with the names Jewel and Garnet.

With some help from farmer friend Cheri, I managed to grow my own slips and have been eating many dishes with the golden fleshed (Garnet) super-sweet potatoes for weeks now. They are like candy, no kidding.  So far, it’s the Garnets that have produced. Back in this post, I was trying to root them by cutting the potato in half and propping them up on toothpicks like I’d seen online. It did work, but was a mess, many rotted,  and it was hard to change the water, which gets scummy often, at least till the roots start keeping it clear

Farmer Cheri told me her mom just laid the whole potato on its side in a pie pan with a little water. Works like a charm and produces a lot more slips that way since they come mostly from the ends of the potato. Thanks Cheri & her Mom! You do have to keep an eye on the shallow water because the mama sweet potato drinks quite a bit… You have to start early in the year too as the slips are slow to form. I was rooting potato by the last days of February in order to have the slips ready to go a few weeks after last frost. Don’t bother trying to plant early as these guys do *nothing* till it heats up and can’t handle even a touch of frost.

I’d always heard that you want to plant your sweet potatoes on the poorest soil you have. Otherwise, on rich soil, they’ll be all vine, no root. And that’s TRUE! Of course I had to try this out with a batch on the thinnest, palest (most newly dug and unamended) bed in the garden. While it’s wasn’t a large harvest, we harvested a nice batch. The ones I planted nearby on a two year old, fairly good bed had lush vines that nearly took over the adjoining beds…but no taters. I’ve let them stay to see if they’ll produce late, so this week will tell the tale since they have to be out of the ground before being touched by frost (or else they’ll rot more quickly in storage, so I’ve read…) So sweet potatoes are a nice crop to break in a new piece of ground.

The flower above is from the rich bed, so I don’t know if they will produced full sized roots…these are pretty small potatoes anyway…nothing like the monstrous Beauregards we grew last year. For 2012, I’ll be doing both varieties because the Beauregards, which are the usual big orange-fleshed variety, last the whole winter in storage and produce a HUGE amount of food from one garden bed. When we dug them in 2010 we joked about ‘birthing the babies’ they were so huge.  I’m not sure about the sweet Japanese ones as regards storage, we’ll see. Their amazing taste, however, has put them on my ‘must grow’ list!  Be ready for first frost NWA!  (Not like me in this post, out digging in the night with a headlamp! )

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

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…

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

Oh I love our Farmers Market. It’s one of reasons we picked Fayetteville over other nearby towns—though six years later, most of those other towns have farmers markets of their own. Bravo farmers. And Bravo folks who support those farmers in growing REAL food.    Only a few more left for the year then we’ll be heading over to the WINTER market!

If you are in Fayetteville and do Facebook, you can keep up with our Farmers Market by “liking” their facebook page here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fayetteville-Arkansas-Farmers-Market/372790109508

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter at http://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

There are summers so hot they take a petal or two off your life span. This summer was one of those for me. Two months of unrelenting hundred-plus degree days included a few that read 109 in my backyard which set a new personal record on the highest number I’ve ever actually seen on a thermometer in the shade.

To spend a couple of weeks watching my local temps go consistently higher than Tuscon, Arizona was a sobering reminder that you can do many things right and good in your garden and still get your butt kicked to the ground by a burning sun, skies that refuse to rain, and a tide of bugs who were loving it. Battalions of grasshoppers I’m saying. Even with a most excellent drip-irrigation system, I discovered that beyond a certain temp, even heat loving vegetables will just hunker down and do absolutely nothing beyond staying alive. Of course any farmer would of have told me that you’ll have years like this…

So to be writing this in cool, lovely, perfect October days seems to risk breaking the wall of forgetfulness I’d like to maintain around ‘heat dome 2011.’ The same wall that had me not-posting, not-planting, not-cultivating and therefore not feeling very much myself. It was a poem my friend Ann read that seemed to break the oppressive spell that had lingered in my garden-mind even after the weather finally broke. Here are a few lines:

“I went to sleep in the summer

I dreamed of rain

in the morning the fields were wet

and it was autumn.”

—from “September” by Linda Pastan

And that’s how it felt. I kind of woke up in late September and wandered out to the garden to see what could happen for fall. Put in a few seeds I’d collected (aha! There were good things that happened over the summer after all…more on those in upcoming posts.) from my favorite ‘Larrapin Kale’ and Monstrueux de Viroflay spinach and they popped up quick.

Once I saw those little seedlings, something woke up again and I began to notice things again like the humming sound of bees adoring the basil that is flowering and setting seed.

And there I was awake again, finally! I knew because for the first time in what seemed like many many weeks, I began to find beauty all over the place. Here’s to yet another season, yet another chance to begin again. I love that about gardening.

Pottery water dish in blue back when things were green...

As I wrote in the last post, one of my farm lessons this year is to avoid plastic farm buckets, well, except when it’s hard to replace or it’s what you have already... Still, my commitment to metal, wood, stone, pottery and concrete is growing. As the plastic stuff breaks or cracks (set your watch!) I’m transitioning to metal and concrete to hold water. The plastic wildlife dishes—which I already had and will use till they wear out—are changing to the concrete birdbath tops you can find at Lowe’s. (Like the photo below, from a previous post on providing water to wildlife.)

I’d love to make some my own wildlife bowls from concrete too…<nudge to Liz here>  I would shape them with the very shallow and sloping sides that the bees love on one old birdbath shown below. They love it because even when the water level goes down, they can still reach it from the safety of dry concrete. A bee can drown in just about anything, but with this design they can climb out to safety, unlike a steep or slick side. It’s so popular we call it the bee-beach and we had to add another bath for the birds the bees displaced from that one!  No, the bees do not like birds on their beach and will make that known.

The birds love the rough concrete texture and shallow pool too as it makes for safe footing while bathing. With such a shallow dish, you have to refill often, but that works to eliminate mosquitos since if you ignore it you will have a dry bowl in about 48 hours. Not that you would let it go dry since everything needs water now.  The queue to every bird dish we have is several birds deep on many hot afternoons.

Even with deeper wildlife dishes, as long as you dump and refill every 5 days or so, you’ll never raise any mosquitos since they take 7 days to mature… If you are just starting to provide water for wildlife, remember to have containers at ground level as well as traditional birdbaths. There are many critters that can’t drink from an elevated birdbath…like rabbits, turtles, skinks, lizards, etc.  (But nix all this info if you have free roaming cats—you don’t want to lure wild creatures to their death.)

Keeping fresh, accessible and safe water sources in many areas around Larrapin has increased the bird and wildlife more than any other single thing we’ve done. How do you provide water for wildlife in your garden?

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

No plastic buckets!! That’s my personal version of the infamous “No wire hangers!” Luckily, my verision is usually silent,  to myself at the store, standing among the tempting rows buckets in pretty candy colors. On a farm, a plastic bucket, or plastic anything, is often just trash waiting to happen.

I hated plastic buckets long before my friends Diana & Elizabeth brought my attention to oxidation. Now, like a bad pop song, oxidation— in this case the weakening of plastic by sunlight—is stuck in my head. Don’t let the cowboy hat fool you, Diana takes care of her garden tools like a classic English gardener of yore. There is a paintbrush for specifically for brushing away grass from the mower deck as she demonstrates in the photo below. Oil and sandpaper make wooden tool handles glow. Things are hung in their place. She’s a shero of mine for this.

Tool maintenance was one of my garden resolutions this year. Thanks to Diana’s influence, and Mendy’s friendly reminders, I don’t blatantly leave my tools out in the rain all season anymore. Keeping tools dry has been an easy resolution since there’s been no rain to speak of during our two and half month bone-dry dustbowl. That was preceded by flooding during which it was too wet to dig anything and the tools were idled (but dry) in the shed.   (Don’t get me started on the weather…)

Last time I visited Diana & Elizabeth’s garden, Elizabeth drew my attention to putting plastic things out of the sun because the oxidation weakens the plastic. The next thing that happens is they end up in the trash bin faster than ever because let’s just say you cannot recycle most of this stuff.

So now I’m also obsessed with oxidation and the plastic I still have is often sitting out in the sun somewhere. Previously, I just hated plastic buckets because they bust at the first sign of ice and crack when it gets any age on it. By age I mean about twenty minutes it seems. No new plastic!

There are exceptions, of course. Like my wonderful heated chicken bucket for winter, which I bought  not knowing then the heaters are available for metal buckets too.  There are also the darned handy 5-gallon buckets from your friend the painter or dry-waller. Recycled and near-indestructible—barring dinner guests backing over them in their car—those still have a part to play on most every farm…  (If you have goats, remove the handles or they will get them stuck on their heads. Take it from me that is far more distressing than comical!)

Oh, and my beloved tree-watering plastic storage bins….I haven’t figured out a reasonable replacement for those yet and they’ve been the key to survival of every fruit tree at Larrapin this year….

As for farm buckets, make mine metal. Next time I buy a watering can, it’s going to be the old fashioned metal kind. Metal farm buckets look nice and blend into the farm landscape without any glaring plastic colors or without looking like you left your mop bucket out in the yard. No worries with oxidation or lack of recycling of plastic. They last years and years (even with the occational ice) without rust or holes and when they do get them, no problem—you have a lovely vintage planter you made yourself instead of having to buy it at that antique store!

And finally, if it’s beyond all use, you can always recycle metal! And while the upfront cost is much more, I can’t help but think it’s pays for itself quickly with long functional use and a use even after it’s not functional to hold water…So I’ll keep saying to mayself when faced with alluring colors: no new plastic buckets!

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden.

I wish the bees would chase the squash-bugs away...

Anyway, butternuts and most winter squash are pretty resistant to borers, but only somewhat resistant to squash bugs. So I’m going to use vertical high trellis combined with a bug-unfriendly* ground cover with the irrigation lines run underneath. I’m planning on weed fabric but my friend richard uses sheet of old tin with great results. (*Squash bugs like to hide in mulch, especially straw. Since finding the squash bugs is critical to eliminating them, deep mulch has become a no-no for this crop.)

Oh how me and the bees love squash...but for different reasons!

Squash on cattle-panel trellis (Online photo: Source Unknown)

For six years now we’ve had a couple of roadrunners (or several, hard to tell them apart) that live around Larrapin. We call him Ricky. Actually we call them all Ricky. Ricky brings little gifts of lizards, small snakes or the occasional field mouse to the front windows on a daily basis. If hunting is poor, a leaf will do as in these pics. The gift is accompanied by a tail wagging dance. Some say it’s for his reflection. But what he likes best is when the weiner dogs bark and yip and generally go nuts on the other side of the glass. He also seems to like us shouting “Hey Ricky!” at him. He wags a lot then.

He’s a handsome bird, and quite the predator. Most years in the middle of summer he goes missing for a couple of months. I assume he’s out there courting and sparking…but one year he stayed around and made this odd “mewing” sound at us from nests sloppily built out of twigs in several trees. We couldn’t figure if they were really nests or just hunting blinds!

This year he was gone from mid-April to late July.  His disappearance was shortly after he lost several tail feathers in the driveway during an apparent roadrunner & hawk? coyote? encounter. We’d seen him after that (with one tailfeather remaining) but only once or twice. Then his usual summer absence stretched much longer than usual and we got worried.

So it is great to see him back around the yard! Welcome home Ricky. Without him, we don’t get to see yard scenes like this video from a few years back (if you can ignore the incessant barking on the video…mute your volume) when Ricky decides to torture the weiner dogs face to face instead of through the front window:

Roadrunner Courting Dachshunds – Go Figure!

Who is the wildlife friend you look forward to seeing in your garden?

—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 atwww.facebook.com/larrapin.garden. We’re even on Twitter athttp://twitter.com/LarrapinGarden. Thanks for stopping by!