A Larrapin Garden

What a July! Temps in 90s…humidity about 90-thousand percent. A four inch rain last week, a five inch rain the other day…  A walk outside means you are drenched in either rain or sweat or both. But things are growing like crazy. Hey! That looks like a watermelon, um, growing up the fence!

Ok, I’d seen the edges of that vine making it’s way up the fence, but I was surprised to see the size of that little growing melon. They are a small variety…crimson sweet I think…but I don’t think the vines will support a full-grown melon hanging in air.

Hmmm. What to do?  Hmmm, how about…

Yes! Finally a use for pantyhose I can get excited about!

I’ll let you know how it turns out. Thanks so much for stopping by Larrapin Garden. I’m a bit behind at posting this month, but I’m going to try my best not to have my usual mid-summer lull!

A Bean Harvest! (14 pound Weenie Dog for scale...)

Today’s a quick and random post! I love my new giant red trug and I love all the beans I picked yesterday! This year we grew Kentucky Wonder Bush Beans and wow are they productive and delicious. We’d been Blue Lake Bush Bean fans for years, but Kentucky may have won out at Larrapin. This harvest was half of a 3 x 20 foot patch…which also has a row of sweet corn down the middle.  still looking fairly puny though…so I’m not sure what I think about that planting method after all. I’ll need to try it with another variety of corn and see if I just picked the wrong horse, er, corn, for this race.

The new garden spot continues to grow rampantly. Everything looked pretty parched in this shot, but it was just before a wonderful drenching rain soaked it all. It will be jungle-ish very soon!  (The purple-rake garden art is a work in progress…please stay tuned..)

Pumpking Seedlings on 6/21

I’d been unable to find pumpkin seedlings at any of my usual gardenstore haunts, so started these from seed. They popped up quick! I’m using a little wooded gadget that makes starter pots from old newspaper. I didn’t like it at first because the cups were so tiny, then I realized you can use wider paper strips to make nice deep cups. Now I love it.

And the pumpkins seem to love it too. These are the same seedlings six days later. The photo is washed out, they actually look very sturdy and green.  I’m preparing a bed for these now and planning a pumpkin/compost pile planting experiment…

In closing this ragged and random post, picture below is the little-known weenie dog weather detector. When Blue—who hates wet grass, being awakened early, late meals or weather below 85 degrees anywhere in his Princedom— stands nervously scanning the sky from the vantage point pictured below…it’s gonna rain. And it did!

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Summer blooms...and water for the creatures...

This week has been so hot I’m filling the water dishes for the creatures every day. The calendar says June, but it feels like mid-July and has for a couple of weeks! Add that to a shoulder injury and the gardening (and blogging/typing too) have been challenging around here. But watching the variety of birds that come to sip at the water and watching garden toads and gorgeous spotted leopard frogs hop away from the dishes as I approach sure makes it worthwhile.

One of the easiest ways to keep water available for all the wild critters is the large pottery dishes meant to go underneath large potted plants. I found the lovely blue ones for just five bucks each up at Ranelli’s produce stand in Tontitown. They are about 20 inches across and about two inches deep. I try to keep a flat stone as a little island in each so the tiniest frogs can safely exit. I’ve seen butterflies alight on these stones too.

The easy part is this: I keep at least one water dish in each major garden area. Since I’m prone to be there at least every other day (these days with a hose already in hand…) it’s easy enough to tilt the dish up with your toe (notice: no shoulder involvement…) then refill, all from a standing position. This keeps the water fresh and eliminates any mosquito troubles. As long as you change the water every 5 days, you’ll not have mosquitos. But the water won’t last 5 days in this heat and neither will your more fragile plant babies…so you’ll be out there anyway!

The five water dishes and the two birdbaths we maintain at all times during the summer have been a huge part of having so many birds, butterflies and beneficial creatures like toads and frogs at Larrapin. Remember Larrapin covers about a half acre, so you may not need so many!

Of course if you have roaming cats you don’t want to lure birds to the ground, so elevated birdbaths, if any, would be safer. Positioning can also help, for example a birdbath at the base of a small tree surrounded by low grass, with no shrubs or hiding areas for several yards, would be safer. We have to use this technique in the winter for birdbaths and feeders, not because of cats but because of roadrunners who will stalk birds when they are really, really hungry…

Go get some planter dishes at your favorite garden store! Chicken Holler in Farmington has an oversized heavy-duty plastic one for about 8 bucks that acts like a mini-pond (It requires a safe-exit rock, surface slightly above water level). I love them. Mine last 3-5 years (when I remember to put them up in the winter…) Here’s to a good, soft, lingering rain sometime very soon…and healthy shoulders!

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Calvin's specialty: Nutrient Dense Produce

Calvin Bey is Fayetteville’s resident guru on organic, biointensive gardening for nutrient-dense produce. I’ve had the privilege of taking his class and continuing to be mentored by this amazing gardener. Today I’m sharing some pics from his open-garden day back in mid-May. Harmony Garden was also featured in the FGNS Through The Garden Gate Tour last week.

Biointensive beds at Harmony Gardens with soaker hoses

This backyard garden covers around 2500 square feet with wide mounded raised beds and spacious walkways. Calvin and Doris harvest 3000 pounds-plus of organic produce that tests extremely high on the ‘brix-meter’ (a way of measuring nutrition in food). In a later post, I’m going to talk about nutrient-density/brix, etc, but today I just wanted you to get a preview of this amazing garden.

Blueberries are tricky here in the hot Ozarks compared to my previous home near Asheville, NC…but as you can see, Calvin is managing. They get gallons and gallons off a handful of bushes. I had the delight of a gift of some of these blueberries — which were easily and by far the tastiest I have *ever* tasted. This brix stuff rocks… Oh, and involves a lot of rock-dust and special ground rock too… more later on that.

Calvin speaking at Open Garden Day, May 2010

Calvin is passionate about sharing the knowledge he’s accumulated through decades of gardening and detailed experimenting with garden methods and amendments.

Biointensive beds at Harmony Gardens

There were dozens of visitors on open garden day, and dozens more on tour day that took a look at this amazing garden. More later on all this!

Tags: biointensive, inspiration, Other Gardens

Daylilies & Milkweed at Larrapin...please ignore that bit of unplucked ragweed! haha!

Tomorrow, Saturday June 12th from 10-3 is the Omni Center’s Peace Garden Tour! I’m looking so forward to having the chance to visit some of these gardens. I particularly enjoy this tour for the gardens that range from elegant to quirky to down-home, all named for the wish for peace. And what is more peaceful (and hopeful) than a garden….

You can get a tour map and instructions from the Omni Center website at www.omnicenter.org to find your way around this delightful self-guided tour that raises funds for peacework here in NWA. I’m particularly excited about seeing my friend Dwain’s garden for the first time! The gardens are very centrally located in Fayetteville for easy getting around — plus each garden has a ‘bonus feature’ of some kind. Fun!  PLUS, each tour participant will be eligible for a free e-book on edible landscaping that I have in the works right now!

Some past posts here at Larrapin Garden blog have featured peace gardens. You can check out Ed’s Woodland Garden, the Julia Ward Howe peace garden, and the late Nancy Maier’s lovely garden — which will be featured this year too courtesy of her partner Marshall.  Don’t miss it! Tix are available at the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market the morning of the tour also at the Omni table. Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by Larrapin Garden! You can Subscribe to A Larrapin Garden Blog by Email here or via the right-column of the blog at www.larrapin.us . Or, if you do Facebook, you can get our posts by “liking” our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/larrapin.garden.