You Shouldn't Be Able to Wear Pants in the Summer

I don't like to bring myself into this... but last week when my roommate and I roamed the apartment closing windows, putting box-fans away, packing up t-shirts and unpacking flannel-lined winter jeans, he said from inside a maroon tuke and scarf, "You shouldn't be able to wear pants in the summer." And he was right!  I mean what is this!?  Furthermore, I'm not a fan of the "interrobang".  I'm just at a loss.  As he spoke, little clouds of water vapor crept past his chattering teeth, confused about the early arrival of winter. 

Two weeks ago the heat and humidity were so oppressive that gardening became arduous, and I'm not begging for that to come back, but the tomatoes are wondering why the lettuce is still around.  Some of them have begun to ripen, and we are grateful, but compared to last year (a drought year) we are far behind in tomatoness.

Kafka put it best, "Coal all spent; the bucket empty; the shovel useless; the stove breathing out cold; the room freezing; the leaves outside the window rigid, covered with rime; the sky a silver shield against anyone who looks for help from it. I must have coal; I cannot freeze to death; behind me is the pitiless stove, before me the pitiless sky, so I must ride out between them and on my journey seek aid from the coal-dealer. But he has already grown deaf to ordinary appeals; I must prove irrefutable to him that I have not a single grain of coal left, and that he means to me the very sun in the firmament. I must approach like a beggar who, with the death-rattle already in his throat, insists on dying on the doorstep, and to whom the grand people's cook accordingly decides to give the dregs of the coffee-pot; just so must the coal-dealer, filled with rage, but acknowledging the command, "Thou shall not kill," fling a shovelful of coal into my bucket."  But of course fish peppers don't care any more about the coal dealer than the coal dealer does about the narrator.

What we need are history majors, anthropology majors, people with family cultures rooted in agriculture, anyone who knows of a dance, ritual, ceremony, OSHA-safe activity that can be used to implore the sun to linger a little longer so that we can finally call this thing a summer.

The sunny faces and plants in these pictures might contradict me and lead you to believe that I am exaggerating, but I assure you... it's not been summer yet and I'm wearing the pants to prove it.

Orange fruited tomatoes ripening.

These guys are labeled as "Orange Banana" but they are red... and globular... so I'm not sure.

A volunteer Sunflower is the first to start opening this season!

Go get'm

Fish peppers.  A beautiful variegated hot pepper.

The arugula is just now beginning to set out flowers and the flavor is becoming harsher.

Alan harvests the first Cabbage of the season.

What a beaut!

Thanks to Chicago cares and our independent volunteers for the hard work.

And a smattering of prairie flowers livens up the hugelkultur mound.

We’re starting to plant!

Thanks once again to our friend Kirsten Akre, who runs three organic greenhouses for the Chicago Park District, Ginkgo has been able to get a headstart on seed-sowing this year. This was a great help for the 2009 season: we were able to take strong, happy plants to the garden once the danger of frost had passed (which in Chicago is, surprisingly, mid-May) instead of just beginning to sow seeds directly in the ground then. And, of course, despite having had a mild week, it was sleeting and snowing on our first Saturday in the greenhouse.

Nonetheless, we started by planting our ever-popular greens:

• Georgia (southern) collards
• Rhubarb swiss chard (red)
• Red Russian kale
• Dwarf Siberian kale
• Dinosaur kale [not planted in 2009]
• Winningstadt cabbage
• Utah celery [not planted in 2009]

And we also planted some herbs:

• Cilantro
• Sweet basil (some labeled Genovese and some not)
• Dark purple opal basil
• Tarragon
• Italian dark green parsley

Kirsten and her volunteers had already started trays and trays of seeds in anticipation of Kilbourn Park’s annual organic plant sale (May 15-16). It was very inspiring to see how well her plants were already doing.

Our (volunteer) workers' day

We had a beautiful warm spring day on Saturday May 2 to welcome a willing crew of volunteers from Chicago Cares (Thanks, Stephanie -- the brownies were especially good) and the neighborhood for our very own May Day celebration. With such good weather we managed to make progress on a wide range of tasks throughout the garden.

On the cultivation front, we planted all the greens that have been growing at Kilbourn Greenhouse for the last seven weeks (collards, kale, cabbage and chard). We also trained the raspberry canes in arches over their new wire supports, which should make picking a little easier. The smaller variety of seed potatoes (La Ratte fingerlings) had sprouted well, so we planted these in our newly built potato bed, and with many left over we also filled a bunch of containers and the bath tub (that will be an interesting experiment!).

In the dodecagonal bed, we sowed the last remaining outer portion with turnips. The temperature in this bed measured 59F, so we decided to hold off another week on sowing pole beans or snow peas as these seem to prefer 60F and above.

We also made progress on a couple of long-planned infrastructure projects. Alan and some Chicago Cares folks shifted the huge rock pile to the south-east corner of the garden and laid a new patio area, surrounded by a low stone bench on two sides. The idea is to use this shady, unproductive area as a place to work in the heat of the summer on such tasks as weighing and packing produce. We're hoping we can also create a pergola for some more vines.



A separate crew attacked the flaking paint on the benches in the demonstration garden next to the street. The idea here is to coat these with a soy-based sealer, rather than repaint them. But first we need to remove a lot of green paint. Lots of elbow grease was translated into clear progress on these. There's still a little work to do, but the improvement is obvious.



We also had a chance to talk to a local contractor about options for fixing the drainage problems in our delivery and loading area, perhaps by diverting the runoff into a rain garden in the area previously occupied by the rock pile. It's clear that we'll need to raise the area by the gate substantially. The contractor gave us some useful ideas about permeable drainage layers and pavers that we could use in this area. We're hoping to get a quote within the week, so that we can put together a budget and apply for a grant. Undoubtedly, doing this properly is going to cost some money.

The last of our bulbs are still brightening the front garden.





In our herb beds, chives, thyme, sage and mint are all coming back strongly.

A week's a long time for a Brassica seedling

A visit to Kilbourn Greenhouse to water our seed trays on Saturday 3/21 showed that many of the greens have already sprouted, just seven days after sowing. Almost every collard seed has become a sprout, along with most of the dwarf Siberian kale (but none of the red Russian kale), and a smattering of Winningstadt cabbage and rhubarb Swiss chard (but none of the rainbow chard).


Kirsten now has three huge arrays of grow lights in place, suspended from pulleys and hooked up to AC. Underneath, a massed phalanx of herb seedlings are reaching for their ersatz sun.