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

Self Starters

This early in the season we don't have a water hook-up to the city and thus rely exclusively on our rain barrels.  Until these seemingly endless April showers kicked in, this giant ice block is all we had to work with.  Great if you're looking to make a sculpture of a man-eating sea horse, but not so much for watering sprouts.  Empty your rain barrels before winter folks!  Lesson learned.

Evelyn demonstrates Ginkgo's new wood chipper.

Despite the lack of water, we are chipper (ba-dum-ching) and our self-starting perrenials have launched the season!

On a side note: this photo will probably be the last of our wooden south facing fence... I can't think of a better photo to show why we are getting a new fence.

Take the rhubarb for example.  By their own will-power these weird alien protrusions begin freaking out volunteers  each spring.  While they currently look like sickly crumpled viscera, soon they will look like pie.  And you wonder why we volunteer.

And without any coaxing we are surprised by the half inch purple nub of an asparagus spear.  This perennial won't yield significant harvests for another couple of years, but it is encouraging to see that it survived year one.

And remember those turnips that never grew last year?  They were in the ground waiting for us early this spring.  The one that I took home was too squishy to eat, but that doesn't make their triumph less remarkable.

While we all look forward to tomatoes that a grocery store could not feasibly stock or finger-staining berries that taste better because you left a little skin in the bramble, spring is brought to us by self starters.  While we fill beds with seeds and transplants, the early risers give us something to look at.  And did I mention, there will be pie.

Frost tolerant volunteers plant potatoes.

another day, another pile

Last Thursday, John took delivery of a load of wood chips from Crosstown Tree Service. The delivery truck was too large for our gate, so the service dumped its load where it could, flooding the back area. John spent the next two hours shoveling enough to where he could barely close the back gate. To complicate matters, the new pile of wood chips partially covered the older pile of compost that we had received the week before. We had a huge and—after Friday’s rain—sodden mass of organic material that needed to be shifted.


We were thus fortunate that many volunteers arrived on Saturday morning, ready to work. In addition to a biweekly group of volunteers from Chicago Cares and a new Meetup group from Second City, a number of individuals dropped in, asking for something to do.

We had a list of tasks with which to occupy them. First, we had to weed the areas between the raised beds. Then, while some of us worked from one side of the pile, shoveling chips into wheelbarrows for distribution throughout the garden, others worked from the muddier side, loading wheelbarrows of compost to work into the raised beds.

By the end of the day, most of the garden was either covered with wood chips or overflowing with organic compost and thoroughly worked.

Away from all of the earth moving, a couple of us worked in the northeast corner of the garden lot, sowing sweet pea seed in containers that we arranged around the fence. We hope that the sweet pea will crowd out the bindweed that usually menaces the corner in early summer.












We did little planting on Saturday, except for sowing a “cut-and-come-again” bed of lettuce in the bathtub. Now that the pile in the back of the garden is no longer a worry, we can turn back to planting quick-growing, cool-weather crops and make use of the time before we can transplant our tomatoes and peppers.