Transplants Begin!

I arrived at the garden on Saturday morning to find these beauties inside the fence.  Such a lovely treat.  These kale, collards, broccoli and tomatoes are the first transplants that Ginkgo has planted this season.

 

A special shout out is in order for the awesome team from the Palmer House Hilton.  These transplant gurus snapped to work by divvying up the labor.  One person to place the plants evenly on the soil, one to dig a hole, one to loosen the roots and pop the transplant in.  I've never seen such a coordinated effort at Ginkgo and I tried to assure them that we weren't task masters, but the team indicated that tight deadlines were their specialty.  Hard working, efficient, and you couldn't ask for a friendlier bunch.  Thanks and thanks!

We missed Chris on round 1 of the group photo, but his efforts shouldn't go unmentioned.  Before embarking on back to back trips around the country to split sides with his improv and responsibly celebrate, Chris added to his track record as a weed annihilation machine and helped to get those transplants in and fences up.

Bobbi-Lee cleaned out our earth machine which was full of the lightest fluffiest compost I've ever handled.  We usually just ignore the bins and focus more on our managed 3 bin systems, but this passive approach broke some high quality trimmings down into the definition of loamy.


Here we are using kale as a border crop to maximize output per bed.  There should be plenty of space to reach in and handle the tomatoes and all we need now are some marigolds to ward off flea beetles.  I can't wait to see these beds all grown up. 

June 3-7

This week in Gardening!  It was a big week for beans.  Although the cool weather has given us a tremendous season for peas, the yields are starting to taper off just in time for beans to start producing.  We have a lot of varieties this year ranging from the historic Cherokee Trail, to Purple Bush, and Scarlet Runners.  The Scarlett Runner Beans have been planted in the dodecahedron as part of our attempt at the 3 sisters (corn, beans, and squash), and they will look beautiful.

Ivy uses her Cat's Cradle skills to make trellis for our climbing beans

While the Scarlett Runners will be a big show with lots of flowers and delicious beans, I am most excited for the Milk and Cider beans that were planted in the hay bales on the north side of the garden.  Months ago volunteers built a trellis out of pruned fruit wood with a beautiful aesthetic. Last weekend a team punched holes in the bales at the base of the trellis, filled them with fresh compost and planted Milk and Cider beans to grow up the trellis.  These beans are an enticing cider color with mottled splashes of white.  The goal is to allow these beans to grow and dry on the plant rather than be picked as "green beans".  The beans will be an impressive addition to every dinner plate they touch.

Dario sifts compost to be stuffed into hay bales for bean planting

Hay bales stuffed with Milk and Cider beans and compost

John offers a drink to the newly planted beans

And beans are amazing and a magical fruit and fix nitrogen and are just one of the healthiest things you can eat, but... they simply don't have the swagger of raspberries.  Melville identified the lack of sex appeal in beans when he wrote, "In this world, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim)."

This was our first substantial raspberry harvest of the year and more substantial harvests will come.  It's hard to pick the delicate Rubus idaeus without sampling every few for quality, but well disciplined volunteers are responsible for this bounty.

 

And what's this?  Our first Black Raspberries have appeared.  Rubus occidentalis is not to be confused with Blackberries, which are not actually berries at all (we don't grow blackberries, so I'll leave that alone), but instead are just a cultural shift from their red raspberry cousins.  The brambles are dense and need better trellising, but they are healthy and volunteers who wade in to get the fruit are not begrudged for replenishing themselves.

This week also brought another large harvest of leafy greens, which, it turns out, solve every problem your body can imagine.  Some of the greens are varieties of Kale, and some are Collards, but growing underneath some greens are beets!  Golden beets (pictured) and Bull's Blood beets and Chioggia beets.  Under some of the other greens are radishes, French Breakfast, Crimson Giant, and Easter Egg (I think).  Some of the radishes look bizarre (pictured).

Under other leaves are Potatoes, but those are not edible greens and the potatoes aren't ready to harvest yet, so we will save that post.

Thanks to all the volunteers who did such hard work harvesting, planting, transplanting and maintaining so that the garden get's to show off its good side.

Not-So-Lazy Saturday

The past workday featured some warmer temperatures and a lot of plotting and planning. Our fairly low key workday featured a lot of our tomatoes being put into the ground in hopes that we have a bumper crop this year, as the weather here has been very Chicago-like (that is to say, unpredictable).

We also rehabilitated the bed closest to the compost bins and planted some kale varieties there.

Also, like the mythical bigfoot, there was a brief and poorly photographed Dave Snyder spotting at Ginkgo.

Can you spot Dave?

We would also like to thank the group from Second City that came out; they were a pleasure as always! 

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.
 

 

 

 

The growing is starting

It was a busy and productive day thanks to all the volunteers who showed up.

And thanks to the mild weather, some tiny spinach seedlings have already started to appear.



As have some peas.



Kale and collards — started in the greenhouse at the end of March — were planted in a couple of beds. And, owing to the fickleness of Chicago weather, row cover was draped over the beds in case the temperature drops.



A number of volunteers spent time thinning the blossoms on the pear trees to prevent the spread of disease and to encourage bigger, better fruit.



These industrious folk are finding a route for the hose under the shed and along the back of the garden, out to the front garden, ready to be hooked up once the city turn on the water.



And the cold frame is set up and ready to go for when it's time to bring the peppers over from the greenhouse. We're still having some cool nights, so it's a little too soon for them to join the party in the garden.




(And this blogger apologizes for the lateness of recent postings; they were delayed due to computer crashes and thesis-writing! Things, however, are looking up.)

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.

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).

Rain, rain, go away...please...at least for a little while

Only the absolutely hardiest volunteers showed up on Saturday, June 13. The rain was pretty well pouring down, and we spent some time huddled under the shed hoping it would pass or at least lighten, which it did, which made harvesting a little more pleasant and somewhat simpler.



Again, it was a bumper week for the greens: they are loving this cool weather even though the tomatoes and peppers are suffering from it. Unfortunately, one of the beds of collards has been attacked by aphids. The collards were still good, but we had to spend a long time washing the aphids off before taking the harvest to Vital Bridges. Collards covered in aphids really aren’t very appealing. Luckily, the collards planted in the bed with the chard escaped the attack of the aphids.

Many pounds of greens and herbs were taken up to Vital Bridges including two types of spinach, two types of collards, kale, some beautiful ruby chard, gorgeous purple-veined mustard, a few daikon, a large bunch of savory chives and a bunch of sage.

Here's some peppery mustard leaf



Sadly, the turnips were still a little too small to be harvested, but they are coming along, as are the beets (both red and golden – finally!) and potatoes (which are looking very happy, see photo below).



The fava beans continue to grow enthusiastically, and the beans planted around the papasan frame have already sprouted!



And the lettuce may be ready for harvesting next week.

The sun didn’t really come out while we were at the garden, but the rain did taper off enough to let us get some other work done. The aphids were sprayed with a diluted solution of dish soap. A few eggplants were put in the ground. The small plugs of prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepsis) were planted in the front garden along with some newly purchased Panicum virgatum, a native prairie plant commonly known as switchgrass and currently in vogue as a potential source of ethanol.

Caging the dropseed to protect it from predators in the front garden (that is, dogs and trash)



The Panicum virgatum, caged



And straw that had been soaked in water for a couple of days (thanks to the Thursday evening crew) was strewn under the plum trees and inoculated with more wine-cap stropharia spawn.

Wine caps and prairie dropseed

On Saturday June 6, Ginkgo hosted a happy bunch of enthusiastic volunteers (including a Chicago Cares crew), who tirelessly harvested, weeded, sowed, planted and mulched things into order.



Our second harvest of the season included the rest of the radishes, more spinach, chard, collards and kale, two heads of lettuce, and assorted herbs.



With the harvest in, we moved on to various maintenance activities. One team earthed up the La Ratte fingerling potatoes (half a bed, plus the overflow in pots and the bathtub). The principle is to raise the soil around the growing potato plants to encourage them to generate more roots and less foliage.





Another team tidied the raspberry canes. And given the continued cool nights, we also blanketed the sweet potatoes with row cover. Much weeding was done in many locations. Benefiting from the advice of Ginkgo co-founder Eric, in town for a rare visit, we mustered enough courage to take out the sickly old boughs of the smoke tree to the left of the front gate, in the hope that some of the healthy shoots at the base will produce strong new trunks.

In a re-enactment of a scene from My Ántonia we also dispatched volunteers to trade growing stock with neighboring homesteads. Alan returned first of all with a bountiful selection of unusual varieties of organic tomatoes from Rogers Park. We needed these to supplement our home-grown plants which have struggled in this spring's cold and damp.

Meanwhile, Doug trekked across the flatlands to Barrington to pick up the long awaited allotment of prairie plants from Native Seed Gardeners, a seed saving program associated with the the Chicago Botanic Garden. I think we had all envisaged getting something more than the six small plugs that they were able offer us. Apparently they have received lots of interest from local gardeners in their program, which is great. However, it looks like we set our expectations a little high. We're definitely going to need to purchase many more plants if we're ever going to have anything like a prairie garden.



Undeterred, we made a start on increasing our prairie plantstock by sowing Echinacea purpurea (purple coneflower), Echninacea angustifolia (prairie coneflower) and Rudbeckia hirta (one of the many plants called black-eyed susan) in parts of three beds at the west end of the garden.



Back with the vegetables, three of the remaining beds were quickly consumed by all sorts of squash: zucchini, acorn squash, two types of pumpkins, and Armenian cucumbers (strictly speaking, a weird melon). In the next bed, we finally discovered a use for the reclaimed papasan frame which has now been repurposed as a climbing frame for pole beans.

We finished up the session by inoculating our first bed for Wine Cap stropharia mushrooms. We're going to take two approaches with these. Today's was to mix half the sawdust spawn into a dampened 4-inch deep bed of 75% wood chips and 25% compost, spread out under one of the plum trees. With some more compost/chips mixture on top and a light straw mulch, this should provide the ideal growing medium. Next week, we'll try the other approach, inoculating a bed of pre-soaked straw.



[Photos courtesy of Dave Short]