Holey Cow!

So we arrived at the garden Wednesday night to find a giant hole on the north side of the lot. We need to figure out how to resolve this. Hopefully it's temporary, but in the meantime it's interesting to see what's below the garden.

sonnet

A morning fair, a blue sky clear of cloud;
A riot of tomatoes, multihued.
The appled branches full of promise bowed;
The garden beds with heady scents imbued.
The collard plants put forth new tender leaves—
Survivors of the doily-making pest
And trumpet vines meander through the eaves
While we with scale the bounty manifest.
         The day’s work done, yet still we lingered late:
         For summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

The Garden Since Last Time

 A lot has happened in the garden since the last blog post!  Because I've let the photos pile up there is too much to talk about and all I can give you are a mess of pictures and the broad strokes of what we've been up to.  I'm lumping the pictures by theme, not by week, so don't be jarred by continuity errors. 

Look at all those delicious peppers!

 

Holy Smokes! Eggplants too!

And I thought I heard you say something about the best looking carrots ever picked.

 

While we're talking about carrots let's not forget that a couple of our volunteers helped to sift compost and top off the bath tub for our up and coming crop of squeaky clean organic claw-foot carrots.

 

In other under-earth news, we pulled half of the potato bed.  The plants were not doing so hot on the end of the bed, so we pulled them to make room for radishes and broccoli.

Look at those potatoes!  And one cannot ask for a better excuse to kick off a series of photos where people are holding vegetables out in front of themselves!

  

Oooooh, Tomatoes.  You're breaking my heart!

We know that you're thinking, "Your volunteers need to start flossing before biting into apples." Well, regardless of the validity of that statement, it's off topic.  Remember those russeted mystery apples growing between the dodecahedron and the raspberry bed?  Well, they are pink. On the inside. Yup.  Wrap your mind around that.

 

We also had some adventures with weeding.  For one thing, we found a weed that was turning into an established tree ensnared in a plastic 6-pack holder.  So remember to clip those rings folks!  It's not just Seagulls anymore.

 

This happened.

We also found this.  So far we have only seen one in the garden and the picture isn't clear enough to give it a confident ID, but after a brief e-mail exchange with a beetle expert at UIC, we think there is a good chance that it's a Red-Headed Cardinal Beetle. 

Also found during weeding, a Lilliputian albino pig farm with county fair sized tomatoes. (relatively)

And as you know from following the blog, we had a potluck cookout.  It was amazing.  

And look at all those amazing volunteers!  Thanks to everyone of them.  Keep coming back to Ginkgo and keep coming back to the blog!

Relax Okra... we'll talk about you when you start producing.

 

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