My Chicago Garden

I cleared out the cucumber plants today. I harvested another 10 or so before I pulled them out. There’s no point continuing to harvest the rest of the year. I can’t handle the amount I have now! My sister in law also came over to pick up some cucumbers. She’s going to make some Bread and Butter pickles using the same recipe as I did earlier in the week. Earlier in the week I pulled out the corn as they had finished producing. So I basically had both of the 4×8 raised beds open for planting except for the butter nut squash and a couple tomato plants. I added some compost and worm castings to the beds and planted the following:

 Average First Frost is Oct 14th

In this episode I’ll give another update on the status of the garden. But before I get into that I had a few people over the last month ask me to mention a gardening related event that some of you may be interested in.  If you, or your organization, live in the Chicago area and would like me to mention your event on the podcast send an email tyler@mychicagogarden.com.

First we have a Garden Sculpture Workshop that is being held at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.  It runs for four days from 9am to 3:30pm on Monday August 20th through Thursday August 23rd.  It’s being run by the award-winning sculptor, DJ Garrity the Sculptor-In-Residence of Mount Rushmore National Memorial.  The cost is $599 for members and $720 for non-members. Space is limited, and I’m told that only a few spots are left.  You can find a link to the workshop description on the MyChicagoGarden website.

And lastly, I got an email from a listener inviting me to attend the Mens Garden Club of Villa Park.  Don’t let the name fool you though. It’s actually open to anyone.  They have a club greenhouse, a plant sale every year and various discounts on garden material for members and every meeting they have a guest speaker.  Their next meeting is August 25th at 7:30PM.  If my schedule will allow it I plan on attending as Villa Park is just a few miles east of Wheaton.  Their website is www.homegardening.org.

So what has been going on in the garden.  I installed two different drip irrigation systems which you can see in a video segment I submitted to gardenfork.tv.  A link to the video is up on the MyChicagoGarden website.
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 Standard Podcast [9:37m]: Download

I filmed a quick episode of MyChicagoGarden for Eric over at gardenfork.tv. He was kind enough to run it on his internet TV show/blog/podcast thing. I’m linking to it from here so folks can check it out. More to come!

Sorry about the length of time between posts.

Contributing to the lack of posts is that my free time, which the majority of is spent on MyChicagoGarden and the AllisonHouse weather business, has practically been zero for the last few months.  My employer, Neohapsis, has been just slammed with business in the last few months and I’ve been working the hardest I’ve ever worked in my life.  I’m hoping that all the hard work will allow for Neohapsis to expand so that I don’t have to work as many hours as I have been the last few weeks. 

Moving to Chicago is proving to be one of the best decisions in my life.  My job is great, the house is turning out like we expected/wanted and the town of Wheaton is also living up to our expectations.

Speaking of the house, we got the cabinets installed last weekend and the counter top is coming on the 12th.  We have been fortunate to have found a really great handy man/general contractor.  Tom Miller, and people he knows, have done a lot of the work in the house and we have a never ending list for him to work on.  He is a hard worker, does excellent work and has never failed to either show up or let me know he can’t come ahead of time.  He did make one request which we were happy to oblige.  We keep cold Mountain Dews in the refrigerator for him.