My Chicago Garden

Man! I can’t win this year.  Two days of below freezing have completely obliterated my poor little tomatoe plants.

You can see the row of 3 tomatoes in the first picture.  Yeah…that’s them…the brown lumps of goo. Just two days ago they were busting out of their store pots begging to be let loose.  You can see, if you squint, the forth tomatoe behind my king kong, take a beating, show me some more SNOW, I dare you..oregano.  It over wintered with the garlic just fine and is going gang busters frost or no.  You can see the lettuce is popping up too.  I had a simple layer of straw over them for the last two days of frost.

I also noticed that I forgot to try and protect my two squash plants over on the other side of the house *sigh*.  They have some tip burn it looks like but I think they may have survived.  I’m not too concerned with stunted growth as they are in a tight area anyway.

Forecast looks good for above freezing temperatures, though still cool. But something else to watch for. It’s severe weather time (eg: tornados) and the College of DuPage folks are out storm chasing this week and Paul Sirvatka has posted that we are heading into a period of potential severe weather for Illinois.

If you don’t have a NOAA weather radio you really should.  A couple of my weather nerd friends swear by the Midland WR-300 ($50) or WR-100 ($30). Your local Radio Shack should carry the WR-100 if you don’t want to order via the web. That reminds me. I need to get one!

1) What are you using for the seed potatoes?

I maintain a planting diary that is fairly up to date with the latest information about the garden. If you check the diary you’ll see that I planted Red Cloud potatoes and Kennebec.  The Red Cloud’s I got from Moose Tubers (a Fedco company) and the Kennebec from Barn Owl and Feed (a local garden/farm/feed store)

2) Did you get the tomatoes in the ground? If you did, what are you doing for them now that it’s snowing out?

I did. My seed tomatoes I killed due to lack of attention on my part. So I went to a big box store and picked up some seedlings while I grow some more in the garage.  When there is a threat of a late frost (like tonight) and my cold frame isn’t available, I use plastic in a makeshift cold frame style. Here’s a picture from this evening.  The tall plastic is my tomatoes already staked and ready to grow.  The smaller rectangle is the herbs, cabbage, garlic and another tomatoe.

3) I noticed in your gallery that you have a solar panel set up. I’m curious to know how you are using it.

I don’t have that system anymore.  When I lived in KY I was the Emergency Management coordinator for the Amateur Radio operators in the county.  Because of that, and because it was fun to build, I designed and built a fully off the grid power station for my amateur radio and weather station equipment in my basement. I could technically run forever without power. I kept a parts list if you want to try and do something like it yourself. Here’s the flickr set with wiring diagram and photos. I also participated in the Alternative Energy Associate (AEA) of Cincinnati. You can see a tour of my rain barrel setup and solar dog house on their website.

4) What is that tent in your image gallery. You never posted about it!

Sorry about that!  My wife and I are going backpacking in July and I wanted an ultra light tent.  I did a bunch of research and decided on the RainShadow 2 from TarpTent. I had it up a week or two back to seam seal it and get some practice putting it up.  The tent is not a traditional tent, in that it is not completely enclosed. It’s basically a tarp (see name of company) with a sewn in floor separated by bug netting. It makes the tent only 46oz instead of somewhere around 100oz for a traditional 2 person tent (50% weight saving).

Well it happened.  In preparation for this weekends garden activities, I put my seedlings out in the cold frame to harden them off with a bit of outside weather a few days ago.  And with all the hustle and bustle I forgot they were there!!!  They got fried when I forgot to lift the windows during the 70 degree weather this morning and the temperature went over 100 degrees.  By the time I got to them I had lost nearly all the plants.  An entire early seedling set down the toilet. I think the hardiest of them, the one tomatoe and the two squash may have survived. But I don’t have much hope for the cucumber, cabbage, cauliflower and the cherry tomatoes.  I can’t believe it! I’m going to have to scramble to replace the dead plants with store purchased varieties if I want any early harvests. I could have kicked myself.  That’ll learn me.

I replaced the cabbage and cherry tomatoes from seedlings at Home Depot this evening and they’ll go in tomorrow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen cucumber seedlings so I planted a few seeds next to each seedling I set out in hopes that if the seedlings die the seeds can take over. I remember seeing cauliflower at Menards this morning so I’ll go there after hitting Planters Pallette tomorrow morning to see what they have.  I’m taking a day off from work due to the awesome weather and a bunch of garden stuff needs doing ASAP.

On one good note, I got the potatoes cut and ready for planting tomorrow.  And my wife is actually warming to the idea of the front grass area (between the low front yard fence and the road) being turned into a squash bed!! Wouldn’t that be a hoot….monster squash plants as the front border! heheheh

It looks like the last frost of the season might just be in the next few days.  Which means the next weekend will be the first plausible time to get the garden work finalized and get some direct sow seeds in the ground.  Current forecasts show a trend upwards for temperature but be ready to protect any seedlings for the next 3-4 weeks at least.

Here are some pictures of my current seed starting in the house.  I’ve had to "pot on" more seedlings than I had expected but I jumped the gun hoping for an early last frost and that didn’t happen.  I haven’t lost any just yet, but a couple of them are showing stress.

Here at our house we decide when spring is by the first sunday it is warm enough to eat hot dogs at Scooby’s outside under the umbrellas (on North Ave in West Chicago). Well yesterday was that day! Yeah!!!!




The girls even spent some time down in the creek behind the house. Melissa (wife) and I cleared brush and sucker trees from the creek bank in preparation for building a little "forest walk" area by the creek.


I also got a call from Moose Tubers that my seed potatoes are shipping tomorrow.  Good thing I got the potatoe bed started on Saturday!