Bunny Berries for a Bountiful Garden

Springtime Bunnies and Flowers!

We discovered the best fertilizer for our gardens when we had a 50 acre hobby farm between 1979-1986 near Flemington, Missouri.   Our farm had a milk cow, chickens, bee hives, and rabbits for livestock.  Mostly we had rabbits…lots of rabbits!  And with rabbits came lots of rabbit manure for the garden.  We had a bountiful garden then and still do today as we continue to use this wonderful natural, organic fertilizer.  When we moved into town, we brought a pickup load with us!

Because rabbit manure is a "cold" manure, it can be added directly to the soil before or after planting unlike "hot" fertilizers such as cow or chicken manure which would burn the plants unless it was composted for several months before application.  The rabbit's digestive system does most of the work so it's droppings are broke down more readily into the minerals needed immediately by the plants.  I think RABBIT... I think PRODUCTION!

Finding a source for rabbit manure can be a challenge since we no longer raise them ourselves.  One year we found a source on Craig's List!  We have had a good source the past few years and hope they continue raising rabbits.  Since these bunny berries are only available in limited supply, finding a source and keeping it to yourself is like finding a good morel mushroom area.  If you told others about it, it likely won't be there for you because too many people would deplete the source.

We buy it by the pickup load and that holds about three loader scopes which we paid $35/scope.  We have three gardens that get the bulk of it and that's about two wheel barrow loads per garden with some left over for various other landscape areas.

 This photo shows our three gardens on the first full day of Spring after a pickup load of rabbit manure had been worked in six days before planting radishes, lettuce, spinach, leeks, beets, and cilantro.   The greenery in the photo is last Fall's late planting of spinach which just had time to emerge a few leaves and then winter's cold came.  It is amazing that they stopped growing and went dormant and are now growing again!  It was an unusually harsh winter and this super-food stayed alive!  Could it have been because of last year's super rabbit manure?

There's something very magical about rabbits…just follow the White Rabbit to Wonderland!  You might just pick up a few things along the way that will make you grow.

Plant Sale and Garden Preparation

Spring is just around the corner and Hickory County Master Gardeners are ready.  The gardens have been plowed at The McCarty Senior Center and planting plans are in process as soon as the weather warms up.  Many vegetables will be grown again for use in the daily meal menus for local seniors.  These vegetables include:  lettuce, radish, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, green peppers, hot peppers, and squash.  Giant pumpkins will be a new challenge this year to be used as decoration in the fall.   The landscape will also be adorned with lovely plants and colorful flowers.

A couple days ago, the flowering plant plugs were delivered.  Today the greenhouse is filled up with potted plant plugs that will be nurtured to be ready for sale April 29th and May 3rd.  These plants include:  Begonias, Calibrachea, Geraniums, Gerbera Daisies, Sweet Potato Vines, New Guinea Impatiens, Lantana, Snapdragons, Sunpatiens, Torinia, Vinca, Blanket Flower, and assorted Herbs and Vegetable plants.  This is our main fund raiser and I am very happy to be an active volunteer since 2012 and even happier that my husband is also a newly trained Master Gardener this year!  Gardening has always been one of the best things we love to do together and now we can do more and be around other people that enjoy growing as we do.  Intuition is valued in gardening as knowledge, training, experience, and nature awareness all come together as we do service for our community.

Several additional gardens have been added for 2014

Plant plugs arrive in very neat trays and are carefully removed to be planted in prepared pots

Trays of pots are filled with potting soil

The soil filled pot trays are then sprayed with water to be ready for planting

An efficient assembly line forms as volunteers prepare the pots along the wood benches

Plant pots are labeled and sorted

The greenhouse is filled to capacity and now they are ready to grow!

Master Gardeners have done a good job filling the greenhouse in 3 hours working together.

Caves and Karst and Camraderie

Natural Bridge - Ha Ha Tonka State Park, Missouri

Ha Ha Tonka State Park is only about 30 minutes from where I live so it is the park visited most often by our family.  We first heard about it shortly after we moved to Missouri in 1978, the year the land and the castle remains were purchased by the State of Missouri.  It is the first outing each year as cabin fever sets in and we just have to get outside and hike.  It was the most frequented field trip while the children were in school and I always went along as homeroom mother as well as leader for events with girl and boy scouts and also church youth groups.  My husband and I continue  enjoying the park long after the children left home.  We are always discovering new things and are fortunate to have such a rich environment so close to home.  

In 2013, we became involved with the Lake of the Ozarks Watershed Alliance (LOWA) which organized kayak events and I have mentioned in other articles in this blog.  Ha Ha Tonka State Park is the place we meet.  A couple of friends that I met from LOWA are in my Master Naturalist class that started a few weeks ago and goes until May.  We will do community service projects of our choice to keep learning and giving back to the community.  Most of all, I love that I have found a large group(s) of people that inspire and motivate me in my passion.  I am discovering as I get to know more and more people that most also hike, bicycle, fly-fish, kayak and garden like I do!  There are several other Master Gardeners like me as  well.  I was pleasantly surprised to find some of my classmates are from places I have lived before like Iowa where we know many of the same people and a couple from where I grew up in Northern Virginia.  It amazes me that so many professional as well as retired people from many areas come together here with so much in common.

On this Saturday, my Master Naturalist class had a Field Day as we  learned about Caves and Karst at the previous Monday's class.  Some of the interesting things I remember is that Ha Ha Tonka is the best park in the state with the biggest variety of caves (14) and early rock formations that can be seen in any of the seven large sinkholes.  Winter is a great time to view as the leaves are off the trees and the rocks and land formations are most visible and easily accessed. 140 square miles comprise the watershed that supply the Spring.  The Spring is one of the water sources for The Lake of the Ozarks.  It produces 60 million gallons of water per day.  Some divers checked it out a few years ago and measured the depth at 70' until it levels out flat about the size of a football field underground.  This is a newer cave and is in formation as a spring is a cave in the making.  Check out the website Ha Ha Tonka State Park  for more information about the caves, karst, and castle history.

Sinkholes are shallow, bowl-shaped depressions ranging from a few feet to more than 3000 feet.  Limestone and dolomite ridges and layers can been seen very well on the walls of a sinkhole.  Sinkholes are Karst-created.  Karst results when underlying bedrock has been dissolved away - a type of terrain or geological landscape.  Karst groundwater is an incredible natural resource.  The quality of the groundwater is dependent upon how we use the land and how well we protect the quality of groundwater recharge.  "Whatever goes down, comes up - up through a cave, a spring or a well."

Park Naturalist stands between the old Water Tower and the edge of the largest sinkhole pictured above.  

The Master Naturalist Class hikes along one of the largest Sinkholes called The Coliseum.

Here I am with a classmate on the other side of the sinkhole.  Previous photo with the Park Naturalist was taken where the wood fence is located in front of the Old Water Tower.  That's how BIG this sinkhole is!

View as our group descends above the Spring.  See the Castle remains on top of the ridge in the upper right corner?

The Spring is the dark green/blue water under the rock ledge.  It is 70' deep and produces 60 million gallons of water per day.  Dye-tests show 120 square mile area drains water to this site. 

View along walkway approach to Spring.  The average water temperature is always 56-58 degrees.  Today the water is warmer than the air.  There is always green plant growth in the shallow waters and it never freezes close to the Spring.  

This is the largest cave on the park.  When the park was first bought by the state in 1978, there were 20,000 bats counted by infrared cameras coming out at dusk.  Today the population is 120,000.  This can be attributed to gating the entrances to keep out predators and the shoot allows the bats to come and go naturally.  In early June, at dusk, anyone can come and sit on the steps/walkway nearby and wait for the many thousands of bats to come out.  This is a major location for reproduction.  

A Cave is a natural opening in the ground and is a geological feature; cannot have a cave without water.  The average temperature of caves in Missouri is 56 degrees with over 80% humidity.  Missouri is known as The Cave State because of the large number of caves; at least 6200.  Tennessee exceeds our count with 9000, but people are discovering about 100 more caves each year in Missouri.  Cave fish can live 60-70 years because there's no predators and they don't move around much so as to not expend energy; not much to eat.  There are 13-16 different species of bats.  People are no longer allowed to enter caves without special permits because White-Nose Syndrome is a fungus hurting the bat populations.  It doesn't affect people but people brought it here from Europe.  It is increasingly hurting bat populations and there is no cure.  Hopefully, a vaccine will be discovered for the bats.  The gray bat doesn't seem to be affected.

I've been to Ha Ha Tonka countless times since we moved to Missouri in 1978.  There is always something news to learn and see.  Just when I think I have seen it all, I see it again with new people and new perspectives and knowledge.  It is a great place to share experiences, knowledge and enjoy the camaraderie of new friends.