Wednesdays Begin!

Ginkgo kicked off the first Wednesday night of the season with a stellar group from Moishe House.  Look at everything we got done in a scant 2 hours.  Good work everyone.  Much thanks.

All are invited to come by the garden on Wednesday nights from 6:30pm until it is too dark to garden.  Wednesdays offer all the exciting tasks of the Saturday work day, but tend to focus on meditative tasks like weeding and watering.  Because I got busy and could not turn Ginkgo's rhubarb into a pie for Saturday's volunteers... there will be pie for Wednesday's volunteers.  You know you want it.

Oh... and by the way,  despite the attempts of local rabbits to eat nearly every leaf off of Ginkgo's strawberries, the plants have bounced back and set flowers.  This is going to be a good summer.

Our Figgest Day of the Year!

A lot of exciting things happen at Ginkgo, but perhaps the most spectacular is the annual unearthing of the fig trees.  On May 11th our volunteers set to work digging gingerly and bringing the trees back up into daylight.

For those that are unclear, let's review:

Figs like ours are typically found in the Mediterranean where the winters are mild and no one puts lawn chairs in parking spots that they spent 45 minutes shoveling out.  We insulate our figs against this harsh winter by burying the trees around Halloween.  We wrap the trees, dig a large hole beside each one, dig around the root balls and tip the trees down into the holes while trying to maintain the long, vital, tap root.  Following this, we lay something sturdy (plywood) across the hole and cover it with soil to keep an insulated even temperature in the chamber below ground.  We then dig up the trees in spring, water and wait for delicious fruit.

During this process last fall we had to make a rather drastic cut to the tap root of our larger fig tree in order to bend it into the ground.  There is a lot of anticipation concerning the consequences of that cut, but when we dug it up, there were signs that the tree was going to make it.  Fruit continued to grow, even below ground, and new growth was evident.

The meretricious draw of figs should be enough to lure you to the garden this season, but until they have begun to fruit, our lilacs will drive you wild. 

Archeworking it out

Consider what each soil will bear, and what each refuses - Virgil 

I think this is my first post on the Ginkgo blog (shameful, I know) and will likely not be the last (You have been warned). A few months ago, Ginkgo was contacted by our partner Neighborspace about working with the the alternative design school, Archeworks and all around soil expert Nance Klehm  on a project that would be unique to Ginkgo. As some of you may know, we have been having some erosion issues near the west side of the garden, and we thought that any sort of solution could be beneficial. 

Through the democratic decision of the Ginkgo steering committee, I was chosen to take Nance's soil class (hosted at the Archeworks building) and act as sort of the liaison between Ginkgo and Archeworks. The class lasted a month and focused on the elemental properties of soil, something that might be important for a group that concerns itself with gardening to know.

My barely legible notes

In Bloom

Spring was best described by Kurt Cobain who said, "Sell the kids for food.  Weather changes moods.  Spring is here again." ba da-da-dada-ahem!  While Cobain's words are often unintelligible, the blossoms on our ornamental cherry tree are well pronounced.

Was Saturday the 28th so beautiful because flowers were opening? Was it because we had gorgeous weather?  Maybe it was because we had an excellent and curious crop of volunteers.  Whatever the reason or combination thereof, it felt like spring and it felt good.

Volunteers worked to plant more early season seeds and we transplanted some of our hardier greens (Don't mistake this optimism for naivety.  We're not out of frost danger just yet).  Aside from planting, volunteers including a great group from Chicago Cares, calculated the dimensions of some of our beds so that we can update Ginkgo's site map.  We also began construction on our new compost system by cutting cedar 2x4s left over from the fence.  Another ambitious team helped to transfer finished compost from the existing bins to the beds.  They were able to empty the bin, a task that was impossible even a week ago because the pile was frozen.

The smell of warm dirt mingling with cedar  and cherry blossom might, after all, have been the reason why Saturday was a perfect day in the garden.
 

 

 

 

April 20 2013 - hay ya!

While the fence repair project was going on in the garden on April 20, the day's group of volunteers completed a number of other tasks.

While some of us used the large gardening fork to loosen the soil in some raised beds, others rebuilt raised beds that had fallen apart over the winter. The beds are essentially boxes made from heavy beams of plastic wood, secured with long rods of rebar. Rebuilding the beds involves prising the beams from the ground, repositioning them, and knocking them back into the ground. After preparing the raised beds, we planted them with radish and beet.

While the planting was going on, a number of us worked with the many bales of hay that had been laying around all winter. We distributed the intact bales throughout the garden, positioning them at the ends of raised beds or around structures like the bathtub or cherry tree planter. All of the bales were unwieldy; however, some had absorbed enough water over the winter that they were quite difficult to move. A number of bales had self-composted to the point that they were essentially blocks of icy mud. After rearranging the intact bales, we still had piles of leftover hay that we spread throughout the garden.
 
We have discussed how best to use hay bales ever since we received them as a donation last fall. We have many more bales than we need for use in cold frames, and probably more than we need for mulching. Because the bales are small enough to fit in oddly shaped spaces between our raised beds, we may use some of them as small vegetable planters, thereby increasing the available planting area in the garden.

Finally, we reorganized the garden shed. This is not the first time that we will reorganize the shed this year.

rebuilding a raised bed

turning a raised bed

our new reusable metal row labels

all that's missing is a car up on blocks and the strains of a banjo

April 20, 2013 - installing a new fence

A light snow covered the ground in the garden on the morning of April 20. The presence of bluebells was one of the few signs that it was spring. Though cold, it was clear, dry, and sunny. It was a good day for an infrastructure project.

A two-man crew from Advanced Fence and Gate arrived at the garden a little after 9:00 AM and started dismantling the decrepit cedar fence that ran along the southern side of the garden property. Reciprocating saws and electric drills made short work of the demolition.

sawing through the wood fence

John and I took wooden fence panels as they came down and stacked them in the garden. John has plans for new compost bins that will make use of wood that we salvage from the fence.

John takes away a fence panel

salvaging 2X4s from a fence panel

removing the last wooden pole

the new metal fence

the view of the new fence from the alley

wood panels ready for salvage

After removing the fence panels and cutting out the support poles, the crew installed a 6 foot galvanized steel chain-link fence. Installation of the new fence took less time than did the removal of the wooden fence--probably because John and I weren't in the way.

There's still the matter of the leaning gate and the washout at the eastern end of the garden. That will be our next large project.

Self Starters

This early in the season we don't have a water hook-up to the city and thus rely exclusively on our rain barrels.  Until these seemingly endless April showers kicked in, this giant ice block is all we had to work with.  Great if you're looking to make a sculpture of a man-eating sea horse, but not so much for watering sprouts.  Empty your rain barrels before winter folks!  Lesson learned.

Evelyn demonstrates Ginkgo's new wood chipper.

Despite the lack of water, we are chipper (ba-dum-ching) and our self-starting perrenials have launched the season!

On a side note: this photo will probably be the last of our wooden south facing fence... I can't think of a better photo to show why we are getting a new fence.

Take the rhubarb for example.  By their own will-power these weird alien protrusions begin freaking out volunteers  each spring.  While they currently look like sickly crumpled viscera, soon they will look like pie.  And you wonder why we volunteer.

And without any coaxing we are surprised by the half inch purple nub of an asparagus spear.  This perennial won't yield significant harvests for another couple of years, but it is encouraging to see that it survived year one.

And remember those turnips that never grew last year?  They were in the ground waiting for us early this spring.  The one that I took home was too squishy to eat, but that doesn't make their triumph less remarkable.

While we all look forward to tomatoes that a grocery store could not feasibly stock or finger-staining berries that taste better because you left a little skin in the bramble, spring is brought to us by self starters.  While we fill beds with seeds and transplants, the early risers give us something to look at.  And did I mention, there will be pie.

Frost tolerant volunteers plant potatoes.