A Planting We Will Go

A cloudy morning did not stop more planting at Ginkgo on our first Saturday in May. A solid group of new and returning volunteers sprinkled wildflower seeds in the front beds along the sidewalk while Dave, Annie, Susan, and Alan sketched out our morning plans. We will be looking for marigolds, alyssums, sunflowers, and more in the upcoming weeks!

weeding and seeding the flower beds in front

The potatoes and turnips sowed the week before received some TLC next. John planted more alyssum flowers around the potato plants to naturally ward off any Colorado potato beetles. Rounds of watering the seedlings followed. Many thanks to our rain barrel for stepping up while our hose remains out of commission for a few more weeks!

planting pea seeds

Cucumbers, beans, squash, and peas were next on the agenda. First, teams split up to weed and set up trellises for our spindling plants. Through a collaborative group effort, new seeds were sown before any rain could fall.

planting pole bean seeds

planting summer squash seeds in mounds

Cosimo was good at pruning and charged little.

- Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

Our fruit trees were not left neglected this weekend either. Dave climbed up our pear tree with ease to prune vertical branches that will not bear fruit.

Its white blossoms are open and have us crossing our fingers for a bountiful fruit harvest this year from all of our trees!

cucumbers

The harvest for the weekend of July 31, 2010 was the most varied of the season so far: a half dozen beets from the planting that finally germinated; the last of the turnips and wax beans; a slightly reduced yield from our trio of greens (collard, kale, and chard); a vibrant collection of tomatoes; a head of cabbage; and a bouquet garni’s worth of herbs.

We also pulled over 39 pounds of cucumbers. One benefit of donating our produce is that we avoid the usual gardener’s challenge of finding people willing to accept cucumbers. (I imagine that right now, shopping bags stuffed with cucumbers are sitting in the break rooms in offices all over the Midwest, perhaps labeled with sticky notes that unnecessarily state that the cucumbers are “Free!”) We grew two varieties of cucumbers this year: the variety with dark green skin that many of us know; and Armenian cucumbers, which are larger and milder, and resemble squash. Like most cucurbits, Armenian cucumbers tend to hide in their beds and to grow to unwieldy proportions.














We still managed to get everything into a single bike trailer, although the cucumbers were a challenge.



























The day's volunteers. Gingko's Rule of Volunteer Photographs dictates that someone has to hold a pitchfork. This week was Michael's turn.

A beautiful day, a good harvest and some seed saving

Apologies for the lateness of this posting! One blogwriter was ill and others were out of town, so a quick update for Saturday, September 19th....

Harvests continue, though the total was down from last week’s bumper high. If memory serves, the total for the 19th was about 125 pounds. And thanks to the DePaul Oxfam group and the Loyola vegetarians for their help!

A number of volunteers worked hard harvesting the Italian beans, which have continued to produce well:



Check out the eggplant, daikon, radishes and carrots ready for transport:



And we were happy to see a good crop of red peppers:



It seems like the neem oil treatment is helping the cucumbers and zucchini. The cucumber plants don’t look beautiful but they have continued to produce both the more familiar dark green variety and the paler, striated Armenian variety. There was some debate about whether to pull up the plants this week so that a cover crop could be sown, but we decided to give them another week since there were a number of smaller yet-to-be cucumbers still on the vine.

The zucchini look fab, and this blogwriter can vouch for their lovely sweet taste, delicious grilled with a little olive oil and rosemary. (Last week, a rather large specimen was overlooked during harvest and serendipitously ended up in my kitchen.)



Super-volunteer Al was the only one brave enough to continue the seed-saving process. Having fermented in the shed for a week, the cups of saved seeds did not look appealing:



But Al set about washing and then drying them on plates so we’ll have them for next year.

Saturday, August 22 saw a large handful of volunteers enjoy perfect weather for gardening: not too hot, a little breezy, a little sunny, a little cloudy, maybe slightly too cool at times but things warmed up towards the end of the afternoon (and we did have some rather nice coffee and muffins).

And we did have some unusual visitors checking out the Rudbekia (possibly a sweat bee from the Agapostemon genus):



There have been a couple of side effects of Chicago’s unseasonably cool (some would say “comfortable”) and wet summer. One is that our harvests are smaller than usual for this time of year. This week we harvested only about 85 pounds.

We’ve got lots of tomatoes on the vine, but they just aren’t ripening as quickly as they would normally. The same goes for the pattypan squash (the ones that look a bit like yellow flying saucers). But the greens aren't bothered at all.

To be honest, there were only a few volunteers, so we didn’t harvest the potatoes, which is a big job and last week accounted for at least 10 pounds. The potatoes will be fine waiting another week to be dug up. And we are letting some of the green bell peppers stay on their plants so we’ll have red peppers to take up to Vital Bridges for a change. We talk about doing this every year, but somehow in our zeal to harvest we are impatient and pluck the peppers when they are nice-sized but still green.

The cucumbers, however, are doing surprisingly well. We harvested about 24 pounds this week. That long, pale serrated-looking cuke is colloquially called an “Armenian cucumber”. In reality, it is a type of melon. When sliced open it has very few seeds and tastes nicely of cuke, but it is a melon.



Some funny-shaped (but delicious!) heirloom tomatoes ready to go to Vital Bridges:



The other side effect of our unusual summer weather is that the leaves of the squashes and the cukes are covered in powdery mildew. This is a concern because it is affecting not only our summer crops but our winter squashes as well (we’ve got some acorn squash and some pumpkins already coming along nicely and we don’t want to lose them). We’ve had another go at spraying the affected plants with a neem oil solution to try to stop the mildew from spreading. It seems like it may be working.

And there are hints of veggies to come later in the season. Check out the three stages of the acorn squash all on one vine, all right next to one another: flower, early pale squash, later green squash.



And a happy-looking pumpkin:



The plums are looking pretty tempting and should be ripe any day now, but somehow we forgot to take a photo of them. Check back next week for that!

Transporticulture

Saturday afternoon the Active Transportation Alliance brought a whole slew of bicyclers for their annual Veggie Bike and Dine.

Veloship:


Folks were effusive about how great the garden looked – which, although we appreciated the sentiment, surprised us. We thought it looked awfully defoliated since earlier that day we'd harvested another 117.2 pounds for donation! Tomatoes and peppers are definitely coming in, but the big bumper crops were cucumbers and squashes. We also harvested swiss chard, kale, collards, beets, radishes, broad beans, bush beans, potatoes, basil, and handful of daikon.

Reviewing the data:


Late August and early September is the time of year with the biggest harvests! Come by and see how we're doing!

Note: Photos are courtesy and copyright of Arline Welty (top) and Katie Schuering (bottom).

Hundred Pound Summer

Finally Chicago has followed through on its annual promise of summer weather and along with the heat and humidity comes our favorite summertime vegetables. Tomatoes are just starting to ripen, peppers are still green, but the cucumbers, zucchini, pattipan squashes, and broad beans are at full-strength.

Looky here! Liz shows off a couple mean beans:


Of course gardening is not all sunshine and beet greens. The bad news is that we officially gave up the BATTLE OF THE SPUDS against an advancing army of aphids. As an organic garden, we can't use any non-organic pesticides and the ones we had been trying (a mild, biodegradable detergent and neem oil) hadn't been enough to temper their onslaught. C'est la vie, c'est la guerre, c'est la pomme de terre: we tore out half the bed and brought the admittedly handsome spuds up to the foodbank as well.


Digging out potatoes:


Washing potatoes for donation:


Veggies are coming in with such speed, we picked 100.5 pounds of vegetables for donation this Saturday! It's a gratifying thing to pull such a bounty and lug it up to the foodbank we donate to: Vital Bridges' Groceryland. It was a hit!

Dave and Karen at Vital Bridges:


Clients helping themselves to the harvest:


Note: All photos in this post are by Katie Schuering and used with her permission. Thanks Katie!

Berry Bounty

The big news 'round Ginkgo this week was the bumper crop of raspberries. Between the black and red raspberries, we plucked six pounds off our canes (note: this weight doesn't count those berries that might have accidentally wound up in our mouths whilst picking.) Of course, the folks up at the pantry were as pleased as we were proud.

Steering committee member Susan shows off the bounty:


Even though we're still mostly harvesting greens the summer vegetables are growing fast. Sweet potatoes, squashes, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos are all going gang busters. We even pulled an eggplant this week!

After taking care of the harvest (50 lbs!), we got to work on the summertime nitty-gritty. A fantastic group of volunteers from Chicago Cares did a yeoman's job (or yeoperson, rather, and several of 'em) of weeding, watering, cutting, tying, and tending the garden. It was hot out but the volunteers chipped in without complaint.

Good work if you can get it:


This season has been very productive but the insect world has noticed too. Chicago Cares volunteers Sam and David addressed our aphids while the rest of us peeked fearfully at some wasp condominiums going up under the eaves of the shed. Just when we were about to curse their entire subphylum, who should show up on the milkweed but a monarch butterfly caterpillar?

What a charmer:


This tyke and her friends are welcome in our garden. As are you! Come visit Thursday evenings or Saturday mornings to see how we're doing.