Summer has arrived...at last!

On what felt like the real first day of summer, June 20, a large team of volunteers harvested 31 pounds of veggies, primarily greens (collards, chard, spinach, lettuce and mustard), but there were 4 pounds of turnips (finally!), a handful of daikon and chives, sage and mint.

It was a hot day, so after harvesting and rinsing the greens, the beds all needed a thorough watering. We’re finally seeing some flowers on the tomatoes, a positive sign of things to come. And the other veggies all seem to have benefited from the recent rain and warmer temperatures.

Here are the beans getting ready to grab onto the papasan:



The sky was cloudless and the sun was bright and the temperature was hot, so it was a good thing we’d planned a potluck for the afternoon. The reason for the potluck was to wish super-volunteer Lara well as she departs Chicago for Pittsburgh.



Lara’s been a regular volunteer for a few years, and her expertise and help will be missed. But she’ll have her own garden in Pittsburgh and she’s actually taking an heirloom tomato plant with her to get her new garden started off right.

One of the highlights (among many) of the potluck was a salad made from a selection of different greens and herbs from the garden. And the two watermelons certainly hit the right spot. The newly built patio provided the perfect shady place to eat and chat.





A man in a hat seeking answers to the garden's challenges in the shade of the shed earlier in the day:

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]

The first harvest is in!

On Saturday, May 30, Ginkgo Organic Gardens had its first harvest of the season! Volunteers harvested collards, kale, chard, spinach, radishes, chives and mint. All were transported to Vital Bridges and happily received.

The greens, especially the collards, are always especially popular. Starting them in the greenhouse this year gave them a good headstart and meant we were able to harvest earlier than last season. The collards had a long growing season last year, continuing well into the fall. (They prefer cooler weather.) It will be interesting to see whether starting them in the greenhouse has any effect on the length of their season.

During Thursday's evening session, planning was done for the few beds that are still empty. We've now made room in the schedule (and the beds) for cucumbers, winter squash, summer squash and some heirloom tomatoes. Beans and eggplant will share a bed. Lettuce will share a bed with soy. Artichokes will share the sweet potato bed.

There will be a lot of planting to do on Saturday.

...and there is still more creeping buttercup to be dealt with....It has sprouted all over the neighborhood this season.

Is summer finally on the way?

The garden welcomed a large crew of volunteers on a beautifully sunny holiday Saturday, May 23, to seed, weed, water, harvest and transplant.

The ornamental alliums (members of the onion family) in the front garden are fully in bloom now. Unfortunately, a few were snapped by the wind. These were cut and made into a bouquet for one lucky volunteer. Also unfortunately, there was a lot of trash in the front garden, which was picked up by the bravest volunteers.



A new wildflower bed was seeded next to the new patio.

Onions, pole beans and snap peas were sowed in the large dodecagonal bed. Bush beans and soy beans were sowed in half of a nearby bed.

The fava beans sowed earlier in the dodecagonal bed are looking happy.



And the radishes in that same bed continue to flourish.



Swiss chard was moved from the cold frame and transplanted into new beds.



Unfortunately, the tomato plants suffered a bit from the wind earlier in the week. They were looking a bit beaten down. Hopefully, the thorough watering they got on Saturday, and the sun over the weekend, will help them toughen up a bit.

The herb bed is rather full, so cumin and tarragon were started in pots. Chives and mint continue to proliferate and be harvested.

Creeping buttercup had taken over about three-quarters of one of the flower beds, so a team of three spent a good long time weeding, but only managed to get about halfway finished. Creeping buttercup is a nice looking plant with its serrated, variegated leaves and bright buttercup flowers, but it was strangling the sedum and everything else that might want to be coming up in that bed later.

We’re looking forward to lots of transplanting (and a lot less weeding) next week. The sweet peppers and the hot peppers are spending their last week in the cold frame, just to be safe.

...and the wood chips from the city finally arrived! They were spread throughout the garden to help keep down weeds.

With thanks to Evelyn Y. (again), who seems to have become our unofficial photographer.

Planting out the tomatoes and weeding (again)

Saturday, May 16 was a lovely day at the garden. It was perfect weather for finally planting the tomatoes in their new beds. So far, we’ve set aside two beds for tomatoes and two beds for hot peppers and sweet peppers.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite warm enough to plant the hot peppers or the sweet peppers, so they went back into the cold frame for another week. One group of volunteers weeded (yet again) the tomato beds and then planted about 40 long-legged tomatoes, securing them to stakes and surrounding the beds with chicken wire to keep the rabbits out. The temperature was predicted to drop Saturday and Sunday nights, so we were hoping for the best.

Another small group weeded the flower beds just inside the gate, in preparation for planting cosmos, zinnias and calendulas. The native echinacea (purple coneflower) and rudbekia (black-eyed Susan) plants will be coming along later. (We're starting them from seed.)

Meanwhile, the rhubarb (beautiful big leaves in front of photo) and the raspberries continue to flourish.

As do the beans (on the right) and radishes (on the left) in the dodecagonal bed (you can see the two newly planted tomato beds in the background). The beets are still struggling along.


The daikon are looking leafy and there are a few carrot tops sprouting too.



The wine-cap stropharia mushrooms have been ordered. Mushrooms will be a new crop at Ginkgo this year. But...we’re still waiting to find out from the city when they will be able to deliver wood chips...

We've also started trying to ferment some comfrey leaves into fertilizer. We've got to make use of that ineradicable plant somehow. We dug out all the leaves we could find and put them into a container with a lid, and a spout at the bottom. Apparently, they are supposed to rot down quickly into a (possibly foul-smelling) liquid that is especially good for tomatoes.

Sunday's Chicago Cares crew got to work weeding (again!) and re-seeding the spinach bed, potting up the remainder of the plants that were brought over from the greenhouse at Kilbourn, seeding onions and more beets, and planting sweet potatoes!

Many thanks to Evelyn Y. for the photos this week.

Time for tough love in the garden

It’s that time of year – tender seedlings need to be moved from their safe, warm home in the greenhouse in preparation for facing life in the great outdoors.

During the first week of May, about 60 of the most robust tomato, jalapeño, artichoke and herb seedlings were transferred from the greenhouse to various living rooms to begin the “hardening off” process. This involved putting them outside for a few hours each day in the windy and unpredictable Chicago weather to toughen them up a bit. The seedlings will spend about a week-and-a-half at various way-stations in preparation for being planted outside on the weekend of May 16th and 17th.

Meanwhile, at the garden on May 9, a handful of hardy volunteers braved the increasingly cold and windy weather to weed, plant more potatoes (Desirée variety this time) and plant additional golden beets (not very many had germinated and some of us were looking forward to seeing them, so we’re trying again). Somehow, the spinach bed had become covered in a multitude of tiny weeds, so several dedicated volunteers took on that tedious weeding task. On the other hand, weeding the dodecagonal bed was a bit like playing Twister, as volunteers struggled to balance on a few paving stones and avoid being strangled by the bean trellis. (Sorry there aren’t any pictures of that, but our fingers were cold!)

It is amazing how many of the herbs have already come back: several clumps of chives are doing well and about to flower; the sage looks healthy and happy; the thyme is starting to make an appearance; and the oregano is taking over one end of the herb bed. In a different bed, the mint is already tall, and the Monarda fistula (bergamot) is coming along.

In the front garden, the viburnum is blooming and scenting the air, and the alliums are just about to open.

Next weekend will be spent planting all those seedlings and hoping we don’t get a late frost like we did last year (which killed off most of the original tomato plants). Keep your fingers crossed!

...but the wait goes on for woodchips to be delivered by the city....

Thanks to Evelyn Y. for this week's photo.