I am in the process of planning a pollinator’s garden. I want it to be a palace for all of the pollinators. I think it will be a nice addition to the farm. As I am researching flowers to plant Echinacea seems to be one of the favorites. It just so happens a vast variety of the plants that we grow in the greenhouses is great for pollinator gardens. We have a new type of Echinacea that we are growing this year. It is the Green Twister. It is irresistible to butterflies, long-blooming, ultra-colorful, and carefree. The petals are held nearly straight out from the bloom, instead of bent back like many other Coneflowers, giving Green Twister more color on every giant bloom. And there are simply so many blooms. They begin in midsummer and continue into fall! Carefree in any sunny spot, these drought-tolerant plants reach 3½ feet tall, tolerating light shade though best in the blazing heat. Bearing literally hundreds of blooms over its many months of color, Green Twister is a garden workhorse, yet looks so effortless and lush in the sunny bed or border! Echinacea blooms the first year and for many years thereafter, lasting through the worst heat and dry weather summer has to offer. The flowers are also superb in the vase that is if you can tear them away from the butterflies! A natural treasure, I got the information for Green Twister from the Park Seed Website. It is one of the many vendors we purchase seeds from. They are located in SC. We have many types of plants that can be used for a pollinators garden once I started researching it. Here are just a few - Echinacea, Mountain Mint, Nasturtiums, Lavender, Verbena, Zinnias, Bee Balm, Squash Plants, Oregano, Sage and Cilantro. Some of these plants are just as useful for you as they are for the bees so why would you not plant them. I want to add a few of these nice bee houses to the palace. They are Nature's Way Better Gardens Bee House and you can find them at Lowes. They come in teal and lavender I believe. They naturally help improve the health of the plants in your yard. Hollow Bamboo tubes and pre-drilled wood blocks have differing diameter openings, allowing this house to be used by a wider variety of solitary pollinators. Check them out on Lowes.com. I am just in the process of starting to plan so I will let you know how it comes together. Just some thoughts for your own garden. Happy Friday to everyone and Happy Gardening!
1 Comment
We have started a newsletter for the farm. We sent one out in January. We try to keep it short and sweet but send you enough information so you know what's going on around the farm.
We are very excited about the newsletter it is informative, We give items away. Last month it was a t-shirt. We will also have coupons for you to use here at the farm. You will know about processing dates for our meat before others. The only way to get these specialties are to sign up for our newsletter. If you have already signed up for our newsletter we really appreciate you. If you would like to sign up just send us a message with your email address. If you signed up and didn't get our January newsletter please let me know so I can check your email address and make sure we got it correct. There are a lot of great things that are starting to take place here at the farm so sign up today so you will stay in the know. Thanks and Happy Saturday! Hot & Spicy Oregano is a great plant for a garden or a container. It is a perennial. It does good in Zones 5 to 9. The plant will thrive in any soil if you keep it well drained. It doesn't like to stay real wet. It will die if you keep the plant to wet. If you plant the plant in the ground it will die to the ground in the winter. Then in the spring it will re-sprout.
The leaves have a traditional oregano flavor but with a little edge. The hotness is really a mild hot. The more frequently you harvest the leaves the better your plant will grow. It is very easy to snip the branches and throw in a dehydrator to dry for later use. I keep the hot and spicy oregano on hand at all times. It just adds such flavor instead of plan old boring Oregano. If you are looking for a nice container plant with greenery you have found it. It is also an attractant for bees and butterflies. It has tiny pink blooms in late summer. It is also a great companion plant to plant along with broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, cucumber and peppers because the leaves are aromatic and they repel pests. So come see us this spring and spice up your life with some Hot & Spicy Oregano! Happy Sunday morning to you! I just thought I would take a minute before I had to go home and get ready for church to talk to you about our new website. It is louderbranchfarms.com. We are very excited about the new website. It is very informational about us and what we do. If you go to our site and do not see a red tractor on the homepage it is still pulling the old website so try typing it in your address bar.
It has a greenhouse section and it lists all of the plants that we carry with a description and picture of the plant. It will vary to some degree but that is what we carry most of the time. We may end up with additional plants that are not on the list. My favorite new section is the online store. We are only doing pick ups here at the farm on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-8 pm. Come March 28th we will be open 6 days a week from 9 am - 6 pm. This will include the greenhouses and a small store here on the farm. The store will be carrying our products so it will be seasonal. We hope to process our first round of chickens by the end of March. If you are a member of our newsletter you will find out processing dates first hand. So if you are not a member and you are interested please email us your information and we will get you on the mailing list. The blog is a new feature for us. If there is something particular that you would like us to talk on please send us your ideas. We would love to hear from you. Happy Sunday and many Blessings! My husband loves a white chicken. He has always had a few white leghorns.I have never been real crazy about the looks of a white leghorn. I like big healthy chickens. We were looking for a new chicken last year that would help with our egg production. Of course Mike was suggesting White Leghorns. I didn't want that breed so I started researching chickens. We have had many breeds of chickens during our 31 years together. As a matter of fact there is probably not to many that we haven't tried.
I started by going to all of the hatcheries that I use online and seeing what they had. I was not satisfied with anything that I was seeing but then I found them. My next new type of chicken that I would absolutely fall in love with. The chicken is a cross between the Black Australorp rooster and a White Leghorn hen. Little did I know that this cross had been around since the early 1900's. They are a white chicken with random black feathers.They are excellent layers throughout the year. Their eggs are a large off white/cream colored. They are considered a heavy breed. Their disposition is calmer than the Leghorns. They are supposed to have good reflexes for predator avoidance but they are white and can be easily seen. We put our chickens up at night just for their own safety. We do let them free range during the day. My chickens have just started laying and I must say that I am covered in eggs. It is true that they are a great egg layer. They have a good feed to egg ratio. If you love to sit around and just watch your chickens scratch around the yard you will not be disappointed. I love my white Austra's.. Hey there!
We would like to take a minute to Thank You for stopping by. On our first blog we would just like to take the opportunity to tell you about ourselves. Here at Louderbranch Farms we are always busy doing something! Louderbranch Farms is a family owned and operated business located at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Walhalla, SC.. Mike, Rhonda, Derrick and Audrey came up with the plan to make this a family business. We are a very diversified operation . We grow and raise both annual and some perennial herb, flower and vegetable plants. We started with one greenhouse and it has quickly grown into 3 greenhouses that are 100 ft long and the 4th is being built for this upcoming 2020 season. We do retail and wholesale of our plants. Our greenhouse season runs from April 1 through June 1 for summer and then we also have a fall season for flowers and vegetable plants. I wish that was what the season entailed for us but we are actually seeding the little plants already. We start in October planning the next season. Unless you have a green house business you may think that is not hard work but the planning phase is much worse than the growing season. We get everything planned out and the seed orders in. Then by January we go to work planting little seeds so you will have a great selection of plants to choose from when you come by to visit us at the greenhouses. There is not a lot of time that we are not actually doing something inside of those houses. We are in the process of giving the greenhouses a new look. What used to be the back of the greenhouses is now the front. This will give us more available parking. We are also giving it a Garden Center vibe. We are very excited to see what you all think about it. We also raise pastured beef, chicken, duck, pork and turkey. We do allow our poultry to free range during the day but they are put up at night to protect them from the coyotes, foxes and hawks that love to hang around the farm. For more about our animals check out our page on the website concerning them. We do have the meat for sale on our website when it is available. We have honey bees here on the farm. So we do have honey for sale on occasions. We have to be very careful with what we do here on the farm because the bees will take it back to their hives with them. We do not want that. We do make some hand made products such as Rhonda Lynne's "Ole Fashion Lard Soap". We make the lard ourselves right here on the farm. If you are ever curious on how to make lard we have a Youtube video on it so go and check it out. I have another soap idea in the works. We also make other bath products that we will have for sale. The goal of LBF is to provide a good clean quality product that is grown, raised or made by us for ourselves and the surrounding community. We believe that it is very important to know your farmer and to know your food but it is equally important for us as farmers to know our customers. We hope you enjoyed learning a little about us. Stop back by and visit our blog again. I hope your day is blessed! |
AuthorThe voice behind the blog will be Mike & Rhonda Loudermilk. Life at Louderbranch Farms is very far from simple. It is very complicated at times. We would love to live a slower paced life but that is just not possible for what we are trying to accomplish. We both work full time jobs for others plus have our own business. We spend most of our time working. That is what we do! We love gardening, caring for our animals and making handmade bath products such as Rhonda Lynne's Ole Fashioned Soap. Archives
March 2022
Categories |