The official opening of the 2010 season

On our first official work day of the season, we welcomed a large contingent of volunteers to a garden that was already bursting into bloom.


Check out this garlic, happy to see spring:



A couple of lucky volunteers were able to recapture their childhood by fingerpainting some signs.



And the scarecrows that kept watch over the garden during the summer were recycled into the mushroom bed.



And, of course, we spent time weeding everywhere and preparing more beds for the sowing to come.

Sneaking into the garden

We sneakily opened the garden a week early for some wonderful volunteers from Chicago Cares. Our favorite volunteer coordinator, Stephanie, was back despite suffering from a terrible cold. And Doug made some lovely muffins for snacking on.

The weather was amazing: warm and sunny and conducive to spending time outdoors. The cover crop, planted at the end of last season, was lush and green in most (but not all) of the beds. The cover crop includes rye, alfalfa and field peas. The alfalfa and field peas are legumes. As they grow, they take nitrogen from the atmosphere during the winter and "fix" the nitrogen into the soil to feed our crops during the growing season. Also, at sowing, the cover crop was inoculated with bacteria known as Rhizobium. These bacteria do the actual nitrogen "fixing". So, as the cover crop grows it replenishes nutrients depleted from the soil during the last growing season.

During our first day back in the garden, the primary mission was to get the beds ready for planting. To do this we trimmed down the cover crop – in some of the beds the crop was about 4 or 6 inches tall! After trimming, volunteers helped turnover the beds, working the crop back into the soil where it will decompose, adding additional nutrients to help support this year’s crops.



Thanks to the hardworking volunteers and the wonderful weather, we were able to sow three beds of spinach (which will be able to tolerate a cold snap, should one come along) and a bed of snow peas (which always do well).



The rhubarb, lovage and sorrell are already growing strong. The raspberries are getting leaves.

This kind soul went out and got water for us to drink as the day proved unexpectedly warm. We’d collected water in the rainbarrel, but that is definitely unsuitable for drinking. And the city hasn’t yet turned on the water for the season.

And these two braved the compost piles, probably turning them for the first time since we put the garden to bed last November (unless someone snuck in over the winter or earlier in the spring, which is a possibility knowing some of our volunteers).




We’re looking forward to preparing more beds next week, although the weather isn’t predicted to be quite as beautiful.

Tomato planting at the greenhouse

Dave Sny and Megan and Michael biked and bused it over to the greenhouse to make sure the tomatoes got planted. Somehow, the rest of us wimped out. Thanks for picking up the slack, y'all.

They planted a bumper crop of heirloom tomatoes (which means we'll be able to save seeds from this year's crop to plant next year).

To check out what these gorgeous tomatoes look like, see our earlier post.

• Oxheart
• Japanese black truffle
• Orange banana
• Brandywine
• Fireworks
• Oregon star
• Koralik
• Amish paste
• Fruity cherry
• Rutger
• Dad's sunset
• Fox cherry
• Cherokee purple
  
• Pearly pink cherry
• Purple calabash (a garden favorite)
  

Planting continues...

In addition to saying hello to the greenhouse cat, this week we planted several trays of hot peppers and sweet bell peppers. (Those marked with * are varieties sown from seed saved by Ginkgo — that is, we didn’t buy the seeds, we saved them from plants grown in previous years.)

Sweet bell peppers

• Bull Nose
• King of the North
• Wisconsin Lakes
• Yankee Bell [not grown in 2009]
• *Orion [not grown in 2009]

Medium-hot peppers

• Poblano
• Jalapeño

Hot peppers

• *Thai Hot
• *Red Rocoto (a Peruvian variety)
• *Aji Cristal
• *Yellow Mushroom and *Red Mushroom
• *Fish
• Habañero

We’re going to wait a week before sowing the tomatoes. Last season we sowed them a little early, they got spindly, and once they were planted at the garden a windstorm hit, destroying many of them. We’re trying to learn from our mistakes.

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.

Weather

July 18th, 2009
January 10th, 2010

[Chicago's] changes in weather are often sudden and pronounced, but usually are of such a character as to have a stimulating effect upon the average person of health; and it is not at all improbable that the great energy of its people, which has resulted in the rapid upbuilding of Chicago, is due largely to the peculiar nature of its climate.

(Cox, Henry J. and John Howard Armington. The Weather and Climate of Chicago. The University of Chicago Press, 1914.)

White on white

Winter in Chicago is like living in a Kazimir Malevich painting. We took the opportunity last Sunday to remove a little white from white and, by shoveling, hopefully making it a little bit more like a Franz Kline.



There isn't much to do in winter. A lot of folks think the garden looks barren but I appreciate the tidy beauty of it, like a fresh canvas waiting for the next year's palate of browns and greens and yellows.




That said, we did a little pruning of the fruit trees (January is a good time to take off branches since dormant trees concentrate their energy in the trunk) and removed some wasp nests from the shed. We kept looking around for more to do but there wasn't much. It's hard for a gardener to hibernate.