My Skinny Garden

Botanical Interests iPhone App Review

2009-10-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

When I bought my first iPhone a few months ago, one thing I did right away was look for cool garden related iPhone apps. I was disappointed with the options, so I was excited to learn that Botanical Interests, one of my favorite seed companies, had released an app a couple of weeks ago.

The short version is I love it. It's totally worth $5.99 and you should go out and get it real soon.

When you launch the app you are presented with options to:

Browse seeds by Vegetable/Her Categories
Search for seeds based on sun requirements. You can even limit to Heirloom or Organic seeds, warm versus cool season, perennials etc...
See your lists of Favorite seeds
Get Tips and Information about growing particular vegetables, attracting bees and seed starting. I learned the history of tomatoes from this app!

Each seed variety you find in the app has all the information you'd find on the Botanical Interests website including the image on the actual seed packet, time to maturity, growing needs and how and when to start the seeds. I really love that this company is committed to educating gardeners. As one of the owners pointed out on a YouTube video tour of their facility, not all of us were taught to garden by our grandmothers and mothers.

Stuff I loved about the app

Very user friendly.
Very informative - this thing could be your one resource for seed starting, I think.
Because I can essentially seed shop from my phone, I'm much more likely to buy from Botanical Interests. I love seed catalogs as much as the next person, but they are bulky which can be limiting.
I'm thrilled that this company recognizes that many gardeners are young and hip. We want to garden like it's 2009 and making seed shopping available on our fun gadgets helps us do that.
The direct email and phone links to Botanical Interests are cool too.

Stuff I like to see them add to the app

I want to be able to order directly from my phone.
Flowers! The app is limited vegetables and herbs so far. I hope they expand this to include their entire seed collection.
Seed tracking. I'd love to be able to find my seeds on this app, buy them from the app, then load in the date that I planted them and get some sort of progress report along the way of what my seeds ought to be doing according to my zone. I believe that this sort of addition would make people buy this app, even if they never bought a single seed from Botanical Interests.

Botanical Interests iPhone app is super educational and user friendly. And if you like seed starting, I'd bet you have thought the same thoughts that I have before. If I wouldn't look like a crazy person, I'd carry all my seed packets around with me at all times. This iPhone app sort of makes that possible.

Gardeners Against Climate Change

2009-10-14T05:11:00.001-07:00

first vegetable garden

That's not the name of a real organization, that I could find anyway. But if you're a gardener, you are helping with climate change whether you intend to or not. Come to think of it, somebody ought to start that organization. If you do, please send me an invite!

Preface: this blog post assumes that you already "believe in" climate change and that it's not still up for debate in your head. We've come too far to still need to convince people of this. I won't spend my time on it.

I know I'm biased but I would challenge anybody to tell me an easier way that a regular ole person can take action against climate change than to start a vegetable garden in the backyard. I don't have a bunch of impressive statistics stored in my head that I can throw out to convince you about the negative impact of those store-bought green beans on the planet (they are so easy to grow!), but, I'm sure there are hundreds of other bloggers who are participating in Blog Action Day today that wrote about how many "food miles"one person (or family) racks up each year. I just know that emissions from trucks used to transport produce from God knows where to our kitchens pollutes the air. And that pollution destroys the ozone and so forth. And anything I grow in my own vegetable garden doesn't do that. It's that simple.

There are lots of folks way richer than me that are doing a lot of fancy stuff to fight climate change like buying expensive hybrid cars or solar panels for their house or installing elaborate rain collection systems on their property. The list goes on. And while a I applaud these folks (and covet their fancy anti-climate change ammunition), it's simply not within my means at this time. (someday!) But what is within my means is growing a few of my own fruits and vegetables out back. And in turn reducing the amount of produce I need to purchase from the grocery store therefore reducing my family's pollution impact and yada yada yada.

Don't have a yard for a garden? Find a community garden in your area and rent a plot. They're cheap! And great!

Allergic to gardening? Try these...

Find a farmer's market and start shopping there (local food!)
Find a community supported Agriculture farm and buy a share (local food!)

I know that my little vegetable garden isn't going to solve the world's climate change problems, but it's what I can do to help. It's what suits me. If you know me very well, you know that I have a real problem with inaction. I need to be doing something towards a goal or a cause or a problem or whatever. It frustrates me to see people encounter a problem and just sit around thinking about how to solve it all while the problem grows out of control, rather than getting to the business of solving it. Or at least working in that direction! So, let's stop debating and take some small steps as individuals to make a difference. Gardening is what I'm doing to fight climate change. What are you doing?

Where I Spill My Guts

2009-10-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have a good friend who says she can always tell how I'm doing by my garden blog. "If you're blogging, everything's good!" She's right. The amount of blog posts you read here is directly proportional to how good things are in my life, or how bad.

This gardening season (well really all of 2009) has been filled with extreme ups and downs and honestly there have been chunks of time where I've struggled with regular ole day-to-day things.

Last October my now late father-in-law was diagnosed with lung cancer. We entered 2009 in a heightened state of anxiety about his health and impending death. No matter how much we tried, it was impossible to feel normal. It was a dark shadow that followed us every step.

Early in the year I helped plan and coordinate a get-together here in Chicago for a bunch of garden bloggers. It was hard work and there were a lot of bumps along the way but the worst thing about it was that, when it was over, I was simply glad it was in the past. It really changed the way I view garden blogging and if I had a time machine, I'd have stayed in my cave where everything/everybody is happy. Don't get me wrong, I met some fantastic people that I'd likely never have met, but still...

In April I married my favorite person in the world. We never thought we'd do it but somewhere along the way things started to change. I started thinking I didn't want them calling my mother to ask her what to do if I was on my death bed. His father was dying and we suddenly realized that we only had a little more time if we wanted him to be there. And we did. So we did. Surrounded by amazing flowers and the people who love us the most.

My father-in-law died in July just three short months after our wedding. He suffered terribly. So much so that when he finally passed, we were relieved because he wouldn't have to suffer anymore. That we didn't have to watch him suffer anymore. That lasted for about two hours. Since then it's mostly been hours stringing into days of sadness. Watching my husband be this heart broken is the worst thing I've ever seen. We miss him so much. We miss his laugh. He was one hilarious dude and I'm thankful that my husband has his sense of humor. The most important thing in the world to him was his family. And that has made me see family in a different way. It's so stupid that it takes the death of somebody so wonderful to see the simplest things.

I planted a garden in his memory. In it are a Japanese maple (because they are unforgettable and so was he), a sundial that I bought with money he gave me and a couple of coneflowers (a Tennessee and a Coconut Lime) because they are still my favorite, and they remind me of a good day I had this summer with friends.

The other great thing that happened this year was that J and I got our community garden going. We built and rented a dozen or so raised beds and we've gotten started on our 501c3. It really is a dream realized but I can't help but think it would feel real different were it not being filtered through 2009 crap. I've had a hard time staying motivated about it and it has shown in my dedication (lack of) this summer. I can't wait for next year. I know it will feel better.

OH - and there was that trip to Las Vegas for my tasty tomato. I still can't believe it. We're holding that trip in our back pockets until it seems possible to actually have fun again.

Just to make things a little more interesting, I also changed jobs. I'm still with the same organization. Now, I'm an "IT guy". It's a change that really needed to happen for me to be able to spend more time with my family, and my gardens (personal and community.)

These things are just a snapshot. There are more extremes but they are far too personal to write about here. I feel more guarded than I used to about what I write on this blog. A side effect of the events of 2009.

This year gardening has not provided me the peace and solitude that it usually does. It has basically dragged me along kicking and screaming. I've walked over tomatoes that fell in my path from lack of support. I hear them crunching beneath my feet and my mind waffles between the dread of the million volunteers I'm liable to have next year and wishing that I even gave a shit. It hasn't been fun. And the other morning when I looked out the window to see the first frost on my weedy backyard grass, I thought about the ripe eggplants and tomatoes still on the vine but all I could think was, thank God it's over.

It may seem like it, but I'm not sitting over here having a pity party. Outwardly I'm totally holding it together. I just don't have much inspiration to write, or grow these days. And it shows in my blogging. I'm ready to put this season, and all its extreme highs and lows to bed.

EDIT: THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR KIND COMMENTS. I'VE HIDDEN THEM AND CLOSED FUTURE COMMENTS ON THIS POST FOR PERSONAL REASONS.

Planting Bulbs Helps Support Our Community Garden

2009-09-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

Besides gardening at my own house this summer, I've also helped get Forest Park Community Garden up and running and gardens are flourishing there as I type.

We're still raising money to have water access at the community garden. Our plot renters have hauled water in jugs throughout the summer and we are committed to fix it so that they don't need to do that next year.

If you are planning to buy bulbs this fall, please consider ordering them through our fundraiser with Flower Power. 50% of what you buy will go directly to the community garden. This fundraiser runs through 10-23-09.

If you do make a purchase, please visit my blog next spring and let me know how your bulbs are doing. We can compare notes - I'll be planting them, too.

To shop for bulbs through our fundraiser please go here.

Volunteer Cantaloupe

2009-08-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

Alternate Title: The Cantaloupe That Almost Wasn't

Not long after I completed the kitchen garden expansion, I started seeing what looked like little squash plants growing all along the walkway between the new raised beds. While I thought it was kinda cool that these free plants were accidentally growing in my garden, I wasn't excited about the potential of battling the dreaded Squash Vine Borer on all these plants. There were like 10 of them!

I mentioned these squash looking volunteers to my friend J and she reminded me that last year she had something that looked like volunteer squash that grew really big but never developed any fruit. Just what I need, a non-producing space-hog. I ripped out all the plants, except one that was growing toward the front of the garden because I have a little more space in that area and I was able to work around it without too much trouble.

Week after week I watched this plant grow bigger and bigger, taking up more space and eventually covering the entire walkway in the front of the kitchen garden. Flowering like crazy, not producing a single fruit. And every day I had the same internal debate with myself, my selves arguing back and forth about whether or not it would ever produce anything and how much of a moron I was for letting it keep growing while I stepped over it and around it in the garden.

Then, one day something grew out of one of the flowers. And Holy Smokes it's a cantaloupe! I've got about 8 volunteer cantaloupe growing in the walkway of my garden, and now my backyard. The plant is about 15 feet x 6 feet. It's huge and it has now invaded the raised bed with the green beans/eggplant/cucumber.

I tried to grow cantaloupe from seed last year but it only produced one fruit that never became ripe. I don't recall ever disposing of it so it's entirely possible that I just left it in the garden to decompose and the seeds were subsequently carried to this area by some critter. Year before last I did successfully grow cantaloupe on the other side of the yard - maybe the seeds came from there. Or, maybe the dirt/compost I purchased by the yard had cantaloupe contamination.

The season is already winding down in Chicago. It's only 64 degrees today. The leaves on the volunteer cantaloupe are turning yellow and short of a garden miracle, I don't see how the fruit will have time to ripen. But, it sure has been fun watching this thing grow out of nowhere.

Big Gaudy White Hibiscus

2009-08-26T05:11:00.000-07:00

More Wordless Wednesday

Tomato Contest: Winner!

2009-08-24T19:30:00.001-07:00

On Saturday I entered the Show Me Your Tomatoes contest hosted by this awesome Tapas restaurant called Cafe Ba Ba Reeba. I'd first read about the contest on Chicago Garden and since I had what I thought was the ugliest tomato (one of the contest categories) in town growing in my backyard, I decided to enter. And since there were two tickets to Las Vegas being awarded for the Tastiest Tomato, I thought I'd be crazy not to enter that, too. I've got 18 tomato plants growing in my garden for God's sake! I bought some from our community garden, some from Chicago Tomato Fest plant sale and a few from Jewel grocery because they sold organic heirlooms again this year and, well, they were right there while I was shopping. I had no choice!

Big Ugly is a Brandywine tomato grown organically by Forest Park Community Garden for their plant sale. I didn't do anything special to this particular plant and if you've grown Heirloom Brandywine before, you know they have a tendency to get pretty mutated. But, the flavor! Holy smokes they are amazing. In the days leading up to the contest I had a lot of fun showing the picture of Big Ugly to people and watching them grimace. My husband was so creeped out by it that he would only agree to go to the contest with me if I "covered that thing up so that he didn't have to look at it again."

I'd planned to enter a Heirloom Mortgage Lifter (I'm growing it for the first time this year) for the tastiest because I think the flavor is really interesting. But, Saturday morning when I went out to harvest the Mortgage, I was horrified to find that there was not a single ripe one that didn't have some flaw. Thank you, squirrels! But, I did find a couple of nice looking Heirloom Cherokee Purple (pictured above) tomatoes. I'm growing them for the first time this year, too, but the problem was that I had not tasted the Cherokee Purple myself. The first ones were literally just ripe on Saturday morning. So, while I'd read that these tomatoes are one of the most delicious heirlooms you can grow, I had no personal evidence of that.

Cafe Ba Ba Reeba has hosted the Show Me Your Tomatoes contest for four years. We found all the staff extremely warm and friendly and we'll definitely be going back there for dinner soon. The judges were Lyle Allen, Executive Director of Chicago Green Marke t, WGN's Mr. Fix-it, Lou Manfredini and Doug Tomek, owner of Uncle Dougie's. All very nice gentlemen and as I watched them taste the tomatoes, I could tell that they really love and savor tomatoes, just like me.

Just before the judging started, I was admiring all the entries in the various categories (Ugliest, Famous, Biggest, Heaviest and Tastiest) when a lady asked from her table "which one is yours". When I pointed out Big Ugly, she said "yep, that's the winner!" I was pretty confident.

Then, after I thought the entry deadline had already passed, a lady walked by me with a really big crazy looking tomato and I groaned "oh boy, I may have some competition."

Let me just cut to the chase - they did not call my name for ugliest tomato. This late entry won that prize and dinner for four at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba. I was pretty disappointed and to be honest, just wishing they'd hurry up and finish so we could go home (it was really cold on Saturday and we'd been sitting there freezing for a couple of hours by then.)

When they called my name for tastiest tomato, it was like I'd won the lottery. I screamed and my husband jumped up and high-five'd me. As I walked toward the front to claim my prize (round trip tickets for 2 to Las Vegas including 3 nights/4 days hotel stay and dinner for two at Cafe Ba Ba Reeba, Las Vegas), the judges and the restaurant owner seemed really happy. "I would like to introduce the 2009 Tomato Queen." They put a leaf tiara on me and snapped a couple of pictures of me and the chef. I really never dreamed I'd win for tastiest. In my head I'm still a novice gardener - I'm lucky to get anything to grow much less grow something that is tastier than like 15 other tomatoes probably grown by much more experienced gardeners. It was the happiest my husband and I have been in quite a while. And it's been a rough few months so we really needed this.

A word of advice about tomato contests - know the variety you are entering! The girl who won for Heaviest Tomato was asked what variety it was by the crowd and she said "I have no idea." I didn't think too much of it until my husband told me later that, after I won and somebody in the crowd asked me the variety; they were all "well at least she knows what kind it is!"

I don't think I've ever won any contest where skill was involved. It's an amazing feeling, especially considering it involved a tomato, the most perfect food on the planet.

Ugly Tomato Contest: Big Ugly Brandywine

2009-08-22T18:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a short video of my entry for the Ugliest Tomato at the Show Me Your Tomatoes contest hosted by Cafe Ba Ba Reeba. This is a Heirloom Brandywine tomato grown organically from seed by Forest Park Community Garden for their plant sale.

You can also check out Chicago Garden for a sneak peak at the results. I plan to write a full post about tomorrow.

First Certified Organic Rooftop Farm

2009-07-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

Today I attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the first certified organic rooftop farm in the country.

Uncommon Ground in Chicago's Edgewater community is a really cool restaurant run by this really cook chick named Helen Cameron, seen in this video describing how she went about installing her rooftop farm atop her restaurant.

I hope this is a trend we'll see much more of in the coming years. What an inspiration.

Forest Park Community Garden: A Dream Realized

2009-07-01T04:22:00.000-07:00

For over a year I've been working with a friend and fellow garden blogger on starting a community garden in our Chicagoland neighborhood of Forest Park, Illinois. I've been hesitant to discuss it here on my personal gardening blog because, well, I'm paranoid and I didn't want to tell you about it, then need to un-tell you about it if somehow the project wasn't a success.

This past Saturday we finally broke ground at Forest Park Community Garden. Rather than tell you the specifics of it, I'll simply direct you to our website and the great article published in our local paper today.

After seeing the article for the first time last night, I couldn't sleep from all the energy it gave me. This article prompted me to reflect on just how big an impact gardening has had on my life. Not only has it taught me more than I can articulate about the environment and where my food comes from, it gave me the passion and wherewithal to start and finish a pretty big project designed to help my community. All my life my actions have pretty much been limited to crap required for my paying job, or crap I did for personal gain. This is so different, and so rewarding. I couldn't be happier.

Now that our garden is sort of "official", I'll likely be sharing more about it here. I hope you'll be able to learn something from our experience or maybe even find the motivation to start, or get involved in a community garden in your neighborhood.

Garbage Can Potatoes

2009-06-21T13:24:00.001-07:00

Here's my first attempt at video blogging. I shot this with my new iPhone 3Gs (in stores now!).

This is the second year I've tried to grow potatoes in these garbage cans. The first year was a bust but these are looking pretty fabulous!

Harvesting Garlic Scapes

2009-06-16T05:31:00.000-07:00

I planted garlic last fall for the first time. I chose one hardneck and one softneck variety and planted them in one of the two 4x4 foot beds after all the veggies I'd grown there were finished.

Of course I took on the garlic-growing not knowing what the heck I was doing other than trying to be cool by growing my own garlic.

While reading one of my favorite garden blogs, Skippy's Vegetable Garden, I saw that Kathy had harvested garlic scapes then used them on her delish looking grilled pizza. Never heard of garlic scapes! Thank goodness she had pictures so I thought I'd better go outside and see if I have anything that looks like a garlic scape. Holy Moly there they were all curled and looked whimsical.

Harvesting:
Before it is time to harvest the garlic, the plant sends up a single thick round shoot from the center and the end is a bulging area that will eventually burst open with a flower. In order to encourage the garlic bulbs to grow larger, the garlic scape should be cut off so that the energy can be spent on the bulb, not the flower. So, that's what I did.

One article I read suggested cutting the garlic in the heat of the afternoon to decrease the drippage from the garlic scapes but I did that and still found the garlic scape juice running down my hand. I also read that you should harvest the garlic scapes before they curl but since I didn't even know these things existed before mine were already curled, I missed that chance. I did notice that the less they were curled, the more tender they were.

Preparing:

I cut off the bulging part at the top of the garlic scape leaving just the green stem then cut the stems into 1/2 inch pieces. The smell of these things was heavenly. It's like a cross between a really strong garlic smell and a green onion.

Cooking:

I sauteed the chopped garlic scapes with some spinach and local portabello mushrooms I'd bought, chopped and marinated. You can also make garlic scape pesto which I may try later when I harvest the garlic scapes from the softneck variety that I have growing.

If you have a great way to use garlic scapes, please share your recipe with us. I'm so excited about this newly discovered food that I can't wait to see what all can be done with it.

2009 Kitchen Garden Expansion Complete

2009-06-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

After about a month of hard work and backaches, the kitchen garden expansion is finally done. All that's left now is to cover the paths in between the beds and finish planting them.

The dimension of the new area is 18 feet wide by 21 feet long. That was supposed to be reversed (21 feet wide by 18 feet long) but I made an error on my drawing and in my communication to the guys who were helping me remove the old Vanhoutte Spirea and the sod from the area.

When they alerted me about the error, I couldn't imagine removing any more of my flower beds to make the kitchen garden bigger, so I just went with it. But, because of the error, I lost the extra 3 foot compost space (now it'll just be a one 3 foot bin system) and the space for the two narrow 1 x 10 foot beds that I was planning to use for strawberries. Still, I love this size. I think it's perfect!

Also due to the measurement error, I have this wide space at the front of the garden. I'd like to build an arbor in the center for grape vines and either build a couple of small narrow strawberry beds, or place pots and a couple of benches there.

The dimensions of the raised beds are 2x8 and 4x8. They are all 8 inches high and I used 2x2x8 foot boards to make them. Did I mention I made these all myself? And that I purchased and used a circular saw which was terrifying?

If you've been following me on twitter you've probably already seen pictures of the new pie garden where all the plants that used to live in the now kitchen garden were moved to. If not, I'll be posting about that in the next few days.

Here's the before picture (left). What do you think about the transformation?

The Tomatoes I'm Growing In 2009

2009-06-11T06:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes coming up with a catchy title is exhausting

Now that my tomatoes are finally in the ground, I wanted to tell you which ones I'm growing this year. It's only my 3rd year gardening, but my tomato lineup this year blows the two prior years out of the water. 17 tomato plants total. 17! For two people! I can't help it. I love anything related to tomatoes from ketchup to straight tomato sandwiches, so since I have the space now, I'm going all out.

This year my tomato plants came from 3 sources. The plant sale supporting our future community garden in Forest Park (FPCG) the heirloom tomato plant sale sponsored by Slow Food Chicago, and good ole Jewel Grocery in River Forest who carried organic and heirloom plants for the second year in a row.

Looking at all these plants, it's easy for me to tell the source even without a tag. The ones we grew from seed for our community garden plant sale look the feeblest. In their defense, I bought them in early May and they've been sitting on my patio in their bio-degradable cups filled with nutrition-less coco fiber since then. So, I'm just glad they're alive!

The ones from Slow Food look better but still not all that lush. Damien commented to me that this is their 3rd year growing tomatoes from seed and that these plants look much better after the lessons they've learned over the past couple of years. And the best looking ones by far are the ones I purchased at Jewel. I don't really want to think about why. Period.

Oh, the other thing is that I have no labels on any of the plants that I purchased from the Forest Park Community Garden plant sale. I wrote on the cup with a black marker but it wore off in the rain. This has happened to me before. I never learn.

What I'm growing

Roma by Jewel
Super Sweet 100 by Jewel
Rutgers by Jewel
Mortgage Lifter by Jewel
Cherokee Purple by Jewel
True Black Brandywine by Slow Food
Cuor di Bue by Slow Food
Tappy's Heritage by Slow Food
Tess's Land Race Currant by Slow Food
Riesentraube by Slow Food
Brandywine by FPCG
Sugar Sweetie by FPCG
Beefsteak by FPCG

This year I'm hoping to try canning. I helped my mom with it once years ago and we had a great time and made some delish Marinara and Salsa. I'd like to can enough of both to last us the entire season, but it'll be hard. We eat a lot of spaghetti!

If you purchased tomato plants from Slow Food, be sure to check out their Chicago Tomato Fest blog where Damien is asking us to report our tomato progress throughout the season. And even if you didn't, stop on by there for your tomato fix.

What kind of tomatoes are you growing this year?

Ginkgo Organic Garden, A Community Garden In Chicago

2009-06-04T05:46:00.000-07:00

Later on Saturday after the Garden Bloggers visited Rick Bayless' kitchen garden, we headed over to Ginkgo Organic Garden, one of the many community gardens in Chicago.

Ginkgo Organic Garden is located at 4055 N Kenmore Ave on a vacant Chicago lot.

Just like the Bayless kitchen garden, this one is planted in raised beds and dedicated to feeding a particular group of people. But, from the time you step foot on the Ginkgo property, you know that the similarities stop there.

As soon as I walked through the gate I thought I can do this - I was comfortable. Like walking into a house where you don't need to take your shoes off.

Ginkgo grows all their produce for a local food bank that supports HIV positive needy people, a group who can really benefit from organic fresh vegetables and fruit in their diet. The garden is maintained exclusively by volunteers but overseen by a fantastic organization called Neighbor Space.

I noticed that, while the Bayless gardener talked in terms of how many dollars worth of food they grew last year, the Ginkgo gardener (pictured above, in the white t-shirt) talked in terms of how many pounds of food they produced. Around 1500.

The crop selection was also quite different here. At the end of the year Ginkgo surveys the food bank to find out if they'd like different food options than they have been provided and the Ginkgo gardener says that every year the food bank says the same thing, "more collard greens! less herbs!"

Ginkgo has a fantastic 3 bin compost system and they recently installed a rain collection system onto their modest shed. Their biggest problem? Rabbits! They protect their crops from them using chicken wire.

When we asked Ben Helphand (he's the guy from Neighbor Space pictured above in the blue shirt)how they deal with vandalism, he had four main tips for us:

Involve as many people in the community as you can so that it is shameful to do any harm to the garden.
Make a sitting area outside the garden and encourage the community to gather there and enjoy the garden.
Grow enough to "share".
Plant stuff like Rhubarb at the front because criminals typically have no idea what to do with it.

Before we left, Ben handed out free Blue Lake Pole Bean seeds that were left over from One Seed Chicago, so hopefully, gardeners all over the country will be growing and blogging about their Chicago beans.

If you live in the area and have any spare time during your week, stop on over to Ginkgo Organic Garden and offer to help out in some way. They say their biggest stuggle (besides the rabbits) is having enough volunteers to tend the garden. They'd appreciate anybody, regardless of your level of knowledge and experience with gardening.

Follow me on Twitter for bonus Ginkgo Organic Garden pictures.

Inside Foxglove

2009-06-03T05:40:00.001-07:00

more Wordless Wednesday

5 Things I Loved About The Rick Bayless Garden

2009-06-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest, I'd never heard of Rick Bayless until a fellow garden blogger mentioned wanting to dine at his Chicago restaurant during the Garden Blogger's Spring Fling.

After a little research, we were delighted to learn that Rick grows a lot of his own produce in his home kitchen garden and even more delighted when we secured a tour of his garden for our group.

Rick's garden is tended by full time gardeners. Bill Shores and his wife Lori (pictured) specialize in small-scale urban gardening. Take a look at those beds (1st picture abov).

During our tour, Bill gave us the blow-by-blow of how he makes the most efficient use of Ricks urban garden space which produced about $20,000 worth of food for Rick's restaurant last year.

Here's what I found most interesting about Rick's kitchen garden:

He does not rotate crops. Instead, he uses lots and lots of compost which he adds before every planting.
His single compost bin produced 40 wheel barrows of compost last year. We all agreed that that is kind of hard to believe. He adds red wiggler worms. (If those worms will up my compost production to 40 wheel barrows per season, I'm ordering some. Like today!)
He plants a new bed of salad greens every 3 weeks through the entire summer. (I had no idea that you could grow salad greens in the late summer here, but if he can do it, I can do it!)
He's got a heated greenhouse on-site (pictured below) and between that and the fluorescent lights he uses to start his seeds, his set-up has all the components needed to start and grow all that wonderful food on-site.
Bill says they spend about $3000 on seeds every year. $3000! They get most of them from Johnny's. (I will look at my basket-o-seeds in a different way from now on)

Bill says that over the years he's gotten to know the many micro-climates that exist on the Bayless property and he plants accordingly.

They even plant on the roof of the garage and said that the south facing wall that borders the kitchen garden (1st picture above, currently covered with ivy) is the next project. I can't wait to see what they grow there!

I also really loved that, even though Rick is probably pretty darn well-off, he still chooses to live in the city in a rather modest house for somebody like him.

I was so inspired by Rick Bayless' kitchen garden that I wanted to jump in a cab and go right home to finish working on mine. In the end, I'm glad I didn't because I would have missed another great raised bed kitchen garden on the tour.

Next up, Ginko Organic Garden.

Follow me on Twitter for bonus pictures of Rick Bayless garden as well as progress pictures of my current kitchen garden expansion.

Like Ants On Peonies

2009-05-26T19:09:00.001-07:00

Years ago before I started gardening and before I'd ever heard of Peonies, I was working in the lab one day when one of the girls from the second shift came in with the biggest, gaudiest, most beautiful bouquet of flowers I'd ever seen.

When I asked her what kind of flowers they were she said "they are peee knees!" in her very thick accent. "They are growing all along the side of my house" she bragged. She put the flowers in a vase with water and left them on the lab counter.

After she walked away I was admiring them up close (fondling them, really) and as I grabbed one of the flower heads, several ants crawled on my hand freaking me out, causing me to scream like a girl and swing my hands around violently trying to shake the ants off me.

I ran to tell my coworker that the blooms were covered in ants (I was sure she wanted to know right away!) but she was not alarmed or surprised in the least. "Oh yes, ants love Peonies" she dismissed. "So you brought a bunch of flowers into the lab knowing they were infested with ants" I asked? "They are just ants! They won't hurt you!" Man, was she annoyed with me.

I've never grown Peonies but when I bought these a couple of years ago at the Chicagoland Flower and Garden Show, all I could think about was ants. So, I did what any scaredy-cat gardener would do. I planted them way back by the garage as far away from the house as possible, where ants are welcomed to hang out. These are my first Peony buds, ever.

I did a little research and it turns out that the Peony buds release a sweet tasting nectar that ants love to eat. Supposedly, the ants leave once they bloom and the nectar is gone. But, speaking from experience, that's a bunch of crap! So, in anticipation of my wanting to cut some of these flowers to bring in my house, what is your favorite technique for getting rid of the ants on Peony blooms?

pictured above: Paeonia Festiva Maxima and Paeonia Sarah Bernhardt

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Coveting "The Good Life"

2009-05-24T20:15:00.001-07:00

I was reading one of my favorite garden blogs (In the Garden Online) this morning where Colleen was lamenting about how she's so ahead of the game that she's able to just sit back and wait to start gathering food from her garden. While I read her list I realized that it mirrors the same list of things I've been agonizing over.

This Spirea (pictured right) has the most beautiful little white blooms with a tiny yellow center. I'm likely getting rid of it in a couple of weeks and every day I've stared at it it from my kitchen window thinking I should cut some of the flowers to bring inside. Haven't done it!
I've had these lettuce and mustard green plants (pictured below ) in these little cups where they were grown from seed for several weeks waiting to be planted.
Mint tea - I'm scared to grow mint on the count of I planted one little ole mint plant years ago at a house I was renting from my grandmother and it took over. To this day when you walk in the back door of that old house, the smell of mint is intoxicating. No-thank-you to invasives!
When I step outside I see no thriving eco-system. I just see all the un-done work. The "eco-system" is hanging out in my neighbor's yard (she's a teacher and off for the summer and way ahead of me on gardening) waiting for me to get my act together.
My plots are not planted. In fact, my plots are not even built yet! I've got one table full of veggies waiting and a million empty pots that need to be planted. (The sky is falling - the sky is falling!)

This year's garden has really taken a backseat to the other stuff in my personal life. Between the weddings and swine flu's and budget's and community garden fundraising... I either need a time machine, or a bunch of spare gardeners or I may not get to see my kitchen window lined with tomatoes this summer.

Are you on schedule? God knows I hope I'm not the only one...

When Birds Build Nests In Inappropriate Places

2009-05-20T05:40:00.001-07:00

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know crap about birds. And when it comes right down to it, I don't really care for them. I mean I truly appreciate the work they do and their place in a good eco-system, I just don't like the damage the can do to the food in the garden, or when they fly anywhere by my head. I know they mean me no harm and I blame that old movie The Birds along with my irrational fear of other random things like clowns and people touching my ears.

A few weeks ago I noticed a few strands of something hanging off the corner of my pergola which I can see from my kitchen window. At first I thought the wind had just blown something up there that had gotten stuck. But later we were leaving to head off to a Bulls playoff game and I glanced up there when I walked out the back door to find the beginnings of a bird nest. Right up in the corner of my nice new pergola! My husband and I do not do well with any sort of animal removal so we were both instantly overcome with dread about this bird's nest and what it might lead to. I was planning to try to get rid of the nest before it was finished being built so that no eggs would end up there but by the time we returned home from the game that afternoon, the nest was fully built! (I wish I could get that kind of productivity out of the contractors who build stuff in my house!)

The same day that I discovered the bird's nest on my pergola, I also discovered one in the side of my neighbors garage where the siding had become detached in some areas after a fire from the garage immediately behind it melted off some of the siding. I mean I have no idea what it's like being a bird, but building a nest in the side of sharp metal objects does not seem cozy! Or safe!

What's with the birds building nests in these untraditional places? In my neighborhood, there is some rule that requires trees be planted all along the parkway on both sides. There are so many trees that it is virtually impossible to have any sun-loving plants growing in your front yard because of all the shade from the trees (lucky for me, my tree fell on my house last year so my front garden is now in full sun). So, it's not like there's a shortage of trees! I'm just wondering if there is some cool interesting reason for this bird behavior (please God I hope I can somehow blame climate change) or if birds always build nests in weird places and I've just never noticed it because I don't pay attention to them.

What's the strangest place you've discovered a birds nest? If you have a picture of it on your blog, please let us know where we can find it. And if you don't have a blog and you want to email me a picture of your inconvenient birds nest, I'll be glad to post it on my blog so we can all enjoy it.

Planning the Kitchen Garden Expansion, Again

2009-05-17T16:54:00.000-07:00

I spent several hours this morning doing this.

I'm not an organized planner by any means. In fact, I wish I could say that this one piece of paper contains all the grand plans for the new kitchen garden area, but alas there are 2 spreadsheets and several other pieces of grid paper that contain lists and prices and lots and lots of scribbling.

Anyway, this plan is pretty firm at this point. Since there's no way you can figure all this out from the picture, I'll tell you what I decided on.

All beds will be 8 inches high. I would really prefer 12 but it's just not in the budget.
There will be a compost area on the south-facing fence with a 2 x 8 bed on either side where I'll plant tomatoes so that I can use the fence to help support them.
There will be four 4 x 8 foot beds and a narrow 1 x 10 foot bed on either side of the garden that I'm planning to fill with strawberries.

I finally outlined the pie shaped area where the plants will be moved to make room for the new kitchen garden. I'm waiting for an estimate on how much it would cost to have the grass removed and the soil amended there but I think I've already changed my mind about paying somebody to do that. I'm a pro at grass removal!

So, in the next two weeks I need to dig a new flower bed, move a crap-load of plants and build 8 new raised beds. Otherwise, I'm liable to miss the entire planting season. I'm real real far behind on gardening activities this year and it's freaking me out.

Saying Goodbyes

2009-05-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

Van Houtte Spirea is blooming for the last time in its life. News at 11:00.

When Garden Geeks Get Married

2009-04-28T05:16:00.001-07:00

Apparently I'm somebodies wife as of Friday April 17th, 2009.

The ceremony took place at the Oak Park Conservatory which is about 5 minutes from my house.

When we were trying to decide where to get married, there were really only two places that we even considered. One was the Unity Temple in Oak Park and the other was the Oak Park Conservatory. Both are in our community (keeping things local really appealed to my inner-hippie) and both quite lovely for completely different reasons.

The Unity Temple is a smallish Unitarian church designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Because we are an inter-faith couple we really appreciated the symbolism of the Unitarian church (embracing and celebrating diversity) and even though I'm not exactly and architect aficionado, I could totally see myself bragging to all my friends that I'd gotten married in a historical church designed by FLW. But, when I walked into the Oak Park Conservatory, I knew that was the place.

If you know me at all, you'll know that nothing terrifies me more than the thought of people sitting on pews staring at me wearing a big white dress. The Oak Park Conservatory was the perfect size and atmosphere for people to be standing with us instead of staring at us which is what we both wanted. It was the perfect canvas for our perfect day.

If you love gardens and you are getting married I'd recommend checking out your local conservatory. It's like having an outdoor garden wedding without the risk of the weather ruining everything. We were surrounded by beautiful sweet-scented flowers. My favorites were the giant snapdragons that you see in the pictures. The deep red ones were amazing against the lighter pastel colored ones. The other nice thing was that our our guests were able to roam through the other garden rooms before and after the ceremony which kept them occupied with no effort on our parts.

I also loved that the flowers in the conservatory served as instant free decorations for our ceremony and obviously made a beautiful backdrop for our pictures. Spending a million dollars on flowers to decorate a church that would then be discarded just seemed so wasteful to me. This way we were able to use what was already at the conservatory and our very reasonable rental fee went to support the conservatory which made me feel good, too.

In case you're wondering, the wedding was lovely. We had 10 guests and besides the part where I started crying hysterically while trying to say my vows (like ugly-face crying where I had to say "can you please give me a moment") which started a chain reaction of crying which included grandfathers and photographers, everything was just perfect. Our dinner reception was right down the street from the Oak Park Conservatory at Philander's Restaurant in the Carleton Hotel. They were great to work with and I'd recommend you check them out for dinner, or your private party.

Did you get married in a conservatory or an outdoor garden? How was it? I'd love to hear about it. And you know me, I love the funny ones so please let me know if there were any storms or bee stings!

garden photos courtesy of Shannon

Macy's Flower Show, Belatedly

2009-04-25T18:54:00.001-07:00

First off, I'd like to publicly apologize to Macy's for being such a slacker loser and not posting my review of your fab flower show until way after it's all over. You see, what had happened was...I was getting married and ...I had a lot of work to do at work and ...I'm planning this Garden Blogger's Spring fling thing and um...there's the community garden and the remodeling and something about a dog...and I'm sorry as I can be.

Wanna know how you get a garden geek to look at cute dresses and cool jewelry? Put a wig made from roses on it, that's how! Is this awesome or what?

Besides the fact that these rose-wig-wearing mannequins were sitting in the middle of a beautifully arranged garden, the lighting at this display was amazing and I believe it was responsible for grabbing the attention here. Sexy.

Macy's flower show theme was "Welcome Back Color" and I gotta say I really was so happy to see the color in their displays when we previewed their show back on April 3rd. Sure, I went to the Chicagoland Flower & Garden Show last month but as much as I loved most of the displays there, they were trying to be all artsy-fartsy and this was just manure-free jaw-dropping out right pretty-ness which any girl can appreciate.

The flower show was drenched in these loud vibrant colors and I don't know if they planned it this way (and I forgot to ask) but the colors in the gardens and on the mannequins did a great job of drawing out the merchandise in the area with complementary colors which made me want to buy huge bright blue so-not-me bags and so forth. Great job marketing, Macy's!

Despite the rose wigs and the loud colored mannequins, nothing topped the gaudiness of the pink flamingos found all throughout the show. Garden Girl, MrBrownThumb and I nearly out right begged to take these giant topiaries home where we'd proudly display them in our yards because, well, they're cool and who cares?

I hope you had a chance to visit the Macy's Flower Show this month. If you did, I'd love to hear what you thought of it. And if you didn't, I bet you've got some tulips of your own blooming by now. I know I do!

Thank you Macy's for the private tour. The show was beautiful and it was great to learn about all the hard work that goes into the planning and execution of this type of event. Outstanding work!

If you'd like to read more about the Macy's Flower Show please visit GardenGirl and MrBrownThumb who both reviewed the show on their blogs.

Zero Emissions Lawn Equipment, Here I Come!

2009-04-08T05:31:00.001-07:00

Now that I'm hip to the green movement it really pains me to use my nasty, gas powered weed trimmer because I'm fully aware of the damage I'm doing to the environment. Not to mention, sometimes I have such trouble just getting it started (curse those string cranks!) that I just put the thing away and storm in the house to pout, never having cut a single weed. Well, those days are over (hopefully)!

Environmental rant: Did you know that, until recently, emissions from this type of equipment were completely unregulated? Because of that, using one of these gas-powered pieces of equipment actually produces way more pollution than you would on a cross-country drive to your favorite grandma's house in your full-sized bad-gas-mileage-getting automobile.

The nice folks over at Troy-built sent me this fancy new zero emissions battery operated trimmer to try. I plan to try it side-by-side against my old gas-powered Homelite trimmer then tell you all the gory details here.

Side note: we just had another snow storm a few days ago so while I'm anxious to try this new equipment, I'm starting to wonder if Mother Nature is planning to just skip Spring and Summer all together this year.

Are you a zero-emissions lawn equipment convert? Or have you tried them and hate them? I'd love to hear about your experience.