16 May 2015: It's a Garden!

Saturday, May 16th was that first day of the season when I really felt like we transitioned from starting the season to being in the season.  Of course the rhubarb and mint and oregano have been up for weeks, but they do that on their own.  On the sixteenth, we had harvestable heads of lettuce and radishes popping up out of the soil like the instant thermometer on a butterball (only the total opposite of an instant read thermometer on a butterball).  The lettuce and radish are from seeds sown by our volunteers.  Raise your hand if you planted Black Seeded Simpson lettuce! Oh, not you?  What about Red Sails? Surely, you are responsible for the Cherry Belle radishes?  Meanwhile, the Shirz and Penelope peas are making their way up trellises and our greens are looking great!



With regulars and volunteer groups from Second City and Northwestern University Gives Back, we got a tremendous amount of work done on this extended day.  We planted cucumbers. And sure, we planted your regular old slice it in a salad cause you need something crunchy cucumber (yawn), but we also planted Lemon cukes, which look like yellow tennis balls, and Armenian cucumbers (hubba hubba).  We also planted beans (Royal Burgundy and Milk & Cider), watermelon, Patty Pan squash, and a succession of lettuce. 

And that's just the stuff you can eat!  Don't get me started on the geraniums and Inky Fingers coleus.

The season is under way.  Unless we really screw something up, we will bring a harvest to Vital Bridges every week starting this upcoming Saturday and continuing into the late fall. 

May 2 2015: Blue Devils and Green Comics

On May 2 2015, two groups of volunteers worked together to complete a huge amount of work at the garden. May 2 was DePaul University's 17th Vincentian Service Day, and at least the third time that a large group of students has arrived at the garden ready to help us finish preparing it for the season. The DePaul students, many in blue, were joined by a green-clad group of volunteers from The Second City's Volunteer Team.

After John introduced everyone to the garden and described the tasks that we had planned for the day, he unveiled two pies that he had made using rhubarb from the garden. These pies approached the limits of rhubarb density possible in baked goods.

The Ginkgo Rhubarb Pie

The volunteers set to work. Two teams unearthed the fig trees that we buried last year so that they would survive the winter. The trees looked gray and a little groggy, but they both had already started putting forth leaves.

Digging up Persephone, our larger fig tree

Uncovering Kore, our smaller fig. We shroud the figs in gardening cloth.

Another team distributed the remainder of the mound of wood chips about the garden, while a smaller group nearby repaired our decrepit back gate.

Kore upright.

After finishing the heavy work, we moved on to planting. Before the start of the work day, we had received a number of flats of kale and cabbage seedlings from Dave, who had started the seedlings using greenhouse space graciously donated by the Center for Green Technology. The kale seeds themselves were made possible by yet another gracious donation from Jill, the mother of our regular volunteer and Chicago Cares coordinator Johanna.

We transplanted the kale seedlings from the flats to our raised beds. After transplanting, we covered our beds with hoop houses: a number of kale pests (including flea beetles) had reached the point in their season when they lay eggs, and we wanted to try to prevent infestation.

We finished up by watering all of the beds and setting up pea trellises.

Thanks to the efforts of our volunteers, the garden was well prepared for the 2015 growing season.

Weeding the beds in preparation for seedlings

After transplanting

Installing hoops for the hoophouses

Beds covered with hoophouses

Cat's cradle pea trellising

Watering radishes

Our volunteers

18 April: a mound of work

On 17 April, Crosstown Tree Service delivered a huge mound of wood chips to Ginkgo. We welcome these chips: they help us to control weeds, to prevent the walkways from getting muddy, to mulch our fruit trees, and to keep the garden looking tidy.

The cherry tree

The following day, Evelyn, Ivy, Karen, and I were joined by a large group of volunteers: NJ, Alex, Stephen, Holly, Grant, and Jaboukie, students from Second City (a.k.a, the Hardest Working Volunteers in Show Business); Courtney, Patricia, and Eduardo from the Palmer House Hilton; and J.J., Clare, Griffon and his mom, and Taylor and his dad.

We set to work. While some of us distributed wood chips throughout the garden, others transferred to beds compost from both our compost bins and the former "dodecahedron" raised bed that will be the site of our new greenhouse. We cleaned up the front garden; tended our hoophouse-covered beds of radishes, peas, and lettuces; organized our seed library; and repaired a rain barrel.

The weather that day was exhilarating: clear and sunny, but with a chill wind. Our ornamental cherry tree was in its brief but dazzling flower. There are, I think, fewer ways better to spend such a day than to work hard, with like-minded people, on a project whose benefits one cannot contest. With all due respect to Mr. Nash, this is certainly cheaper.

At this point, the only things growing in our garden are overwintered garlic in one of our beds and flowers in the front.

Virginia Bluebell

Tulip

More tulip

Garlic

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! 

indeed, it is the only thing that ever has

Last Friday, I prepared a list of tasks that we thought should be accomplished in the next couple of weeks. Anticipating a large number of volunteers from DePaul University, who would help the garden as part of its 2012 Vincentian Service Day, I made an ambitious list of 18 items, adding a number of tasks that I thought would be nice to accomplish, but probably not possible in a single work day.

I am now glad that I made the full task list. Three groups of volunteers arrived on Saturday morning: a dozen or more students from DePaul; at least eight more volunteers from the Second City Dream Team Meetup group; and a number from the large group of people who return to the garden after attending as a member of another group. (I am an alum of the latter group: after first visiting the garden with Chicago Cares in the fall of 2007, I returned the following weekend on my own and never stopped. )

At the end of the workday, we had accomplished all but two of the tasks on our list.

The DePaul students fanned across the garden, wreaking construction and order, leaving promise in their wake. They tied twine trellises for the sweet peas in beds 4 through 6.

They planted radishes (Crimson Giant; French Breakfast; Cherry; and others) in beds 7 through 9, carrots (Tonda de Parigi and Royal Chartenaux) in bed 12, and a border of marigold seeds in bed 13 for the tomato plants that will soon be transplanted there.

They pulled dead flowers and weeds from the front garden. They planted crowns of Martha Washington asparagus throughout the garden, including at the eastern end of the raspberry bed.

They built a brick walkway leading to our rain barrels. And after all of that hard work, they presented the garden with a thank you card.

The Second City folks were equally busy in the eastern part of the garden. Working in beds 15 and 16, they constructed bean tripods out of aluminum poles and trellises out of whatever they could find, including the pair of repeatedly repurposed papasan chair backs that are a personal favorite as a form of plant support. They planted seeds for three varieties of pole beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears, Sultan’s Crescent, and Bountiful) around the trellises before moving to the potato bed.

After repairing the western end of bed 22, the Second City volunteers dug a trench down the middle of the bed and planted sprouted red potato seeds. The DePaul students came along later and planted seed for a border of allysum flowers that we hope will live up to their reputation as potato companion plants.

Our third group focused on bed 19, under the Stanley plum tree. They planted a bewildering array of greens, alternating rows of rapini (broccoli raab), varieties of spinach (Bloomsdale Savoy, Bordeaux, and Monstreux de Virafloy), and Red Giant Mustard.

 Everyone wrapped the newly seeded beds with chicken-wire fencing. We planted so many rows that we ran out of plastic plant labels—a first. We wound up cutting up a couple of seed pots to make labels for some of our rows.










After only a single day of focused work, the garden was transformed from a collection of muddy beds to an array of fenced future homes of vegetables for the pantry. We are well positioned for the growing season.