My Chicago Garden

Woodchuck?!?!

Garden Tour (5/10/08)

What a wonderful day to play in the garden! The temperature was wonderful and prospects of rain tomorrow. So I took the opportunity to do a quick look around the garden to see how things were doing.

	My wife and I hit the the Native Plant Sale in Wheaton a weekend or two ago and used what the girls picked out to replace the scraggly plants out by the big rock in the front yard. It is now our Native Plant garden. We have no idea what the girls picked out but who cares!!! It’s native.
	The plants Melissa planted down the the driveway garden are all coming back and we’ve added several blueberry plants. I’m taking a bit of a risk with acid soil loving blueberries since I didn’t do a soil test, but I never have done soil tests so why start now? There’s a little bit of room left (where I’m standing to take the picture) but we don’t know what to do with it yet.
	The perennial plants from last year are all coming up fine and I added a bird bath and bird feeder in the “screening garden” between the vegetable garden and the street/fence. You can see the edge of the vegetable garden in the left of the picture, and the fence to the right is the back of the fence in the first picture.
	Tom Miller (our wonderful do-it-all contractor who has done the roof, the kitchen remodel and window, the master closet remodel and plumbing) has started the work of removing 50 year old cedar siding, soffits and windows and replacing them with completely brand new everything including windows and doors. By the time he is done the house will probably need to be called the Tom Miller house. You can see some of his work in the background of the new front yard sitting garden. We plan on doing some extensive landscaping in this area a couple years from now (not enough money!!), but for now it’s just a container or two and some chairs. We saw an oil lantern at the Wheaton French Market this morning that would be really neat to have in the early evenings in summer.

	The vegetable garden is coming along nicely. The FedCo potatoe has started to sprout, but not the potatoe from the local nursery. Hurm….
	Since I didn’t have sun flowers in the raised beds this year, I threw a couple down in a bare patch in the “screening garden”. I have no idea how it will look.
	I purchased some row covers for the cabbage and broccoli. I had pretty bad damage last year. Hopefully this will help. I had not expected to plant broccoli this year but I had some open ground in the raised beds and there was a sad looking 8 pack at HD that needed a home
	I’ve already had to make one harvest of the oregano. I had a paint bucket full of oregano when I was done. All from my pyscho oregano. I’m having to cut it back heavily to keep it from over growing the box and shading out the new tomatoe plant. Those are the garlic to the right that are growing like gang busters.
	I’ve never really tried growing lettuce so this is my first year to give it a go. I’m trying to maximize space by having the cucumber run up and over in a shading arch to try and keep the lettuce cool during the high heat of the summer. I have several varieties all starting to peak out. There is also a row of spinach popping down in the bottom of the picture.
	Here’s the last of the three raised beds. Peas are heading up the trellis and green beans are starting to fill out the grid pattern. You can also make out a bit of carrot tops and some more cabbage I’m trying to start from direct sow seed. It will go unprotected to see what happens.  Oh yeah…and a couple basil up by the tomatoe. Can’t have tomatoe without basil in our house!

12 05 2008

Rosemarie (09:57:12) :

Looking forward to seeing how the native garden grows. It’s always so small to begin with. And I like the cedar siding photo - nice job.

12 05 2008

Nick Wechsler (10:47:28) :

Gardening with natives makes natural sense.

Five years ago there was a nasty scratch of land outside of the Blue Line Logan Square CTA station in Chicago’s north west side. It was hard packed dirt filled with litter and danger. Over the past five years several local community groups and over 400 volunteers have worked to transform this area into the Paseo Native Prarie Garden. Although this garden is in the midst of the city, it is not a city park and doesn’t recieve any city funds or maintenance. It grows from the concern and contribution of those who care and those who volunteer.

An annual plant sale to benefit the Paseo Praire Garden will take place this Sunday May 18 from 1 pm to 4 pm at the garden located on Kedzie Avenue between Wrightwood and Milwaukee Avenues. all proceeds go to purchse dirt, new plants, and mulch.

Last year a platform and benches were added to the garden and the first innaugral public performance of a play will take place following the sale at 4pm.

Come and join us, purchase plants to support our efforts, walk through the garden, and visit us often to keep up with the natural growth and changes from season to season.

12 05 2008

eric : Gardenfork.tv (21:14:36) :

i’ve been working on learning more about soil tests, and i’d suggest a simple pH test for the soil on the blueberries, as they do much better in acid soil.

i like the idea of the cucumbers arching over the lettuce to keep it cooler in the heat of the summer. thx, eric.

12 05 2008

tyler (23:09:49) :

What do you use/recommend for the pH test? I’ve seen the various gadgets at the big box store and a few nurseries but I haven’t tried one…for fear it will read completely wrong. And I’m too lazy to get a full blown IL extension office soil test.

25 05 2008

Kim (Blackswampgirl) (00:01:17) :

Meh… the blueberries will tell you soon enough if they’re not happy with your soil, right? And if they’re NOT, and they’re little enough (which they should be even next year, since you just put them in) you can just dig them out, amend the heck out of the soil then, and replant them. Or move them to pots.

Such is the way my (lazy–er, efficient, I mean!) mind works about these things… and I was lucky enough that the blueberries liked me without any extra messing.

Btw I found your blog via Gina at My Skinny Garden. Yay! Another urban gardening blog, and a good one–I’ll be back.

Compost gold mine found!

1 05 2008

gina (22:03:57) :

T - I discovered this garden center last year but it was toward the end of the year and all I bought was a Rudbeckia. I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip!

5 05 2008

rosemarie (12:55:04) :

We have our own compost pile in the backyard full on leaves and kitchen scraps. But I would have no idea on the nutrient values of it or what it might do to my garden beds.

5 05 2008

tyler (16:30:45) :

I would always prefer to use my own compost. But for folks who need a good mix of compost because they don’t have their own this should be the place to go. I’m working on my first compost pile so I didn’t have enough to build my 4 raised beds. Thus I had to buy-in 50+ bags of the stuff.

The weather gods hate me!

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 05 2008

Monica (08:05:55) :

See! You can not plant until Mother’s day at the earliest. And even then, I’ve seen it snow!

All of my plants are ready and waiting to go on my sun porch. It’s not heated, so I don’t really worry too much about tempering the plants to the cold. Now I have nine new babies all sitting pretty in a row. They will be joined by others after this weekends Oak Park Conservitory sale.

Plus, did I tell you that we’re remodeling the kitchen and the debris from that is all over my back yard?

Just try to think happy plant thoughts for another week at least.

1 05 2008

tyler (09:22:35) :

I had never heard the mother’s day thing. That is probably a safe methodology. I think my generic rule going forward is going to be nothing outside that is a warm weather crop (tomatoes, etc) until May 1. The cool weather stuff (cabbage, etc) are doing just fine.

1 05 2008

Mr. McGregor's Daughter (12:52:22) :

Sorry about your poor little tomatos. I was also living dangerously, by planting a Dahlia in a large planter b4 the middle of May. When we got the freeze warning, I dug it out & brought it in for the night. I also covered some of my tree peony buds with bubblewrap. Everything was fine the next day, & with no freeze in the forecast, so I put the Dahlia back in the planter. At 9 p.m. I noticed that the temperature was down to 34 degrees - but there was still no freeze warning. I left the Dahlia outside, but stuffed the bubblewrap on that instead. Result - some damaged peony buds. The Dahlia’s fine. You should invest in bubblewrap if you want to live dangerously & plant early.

6 05 2008

Monica (20:17:22) :

I’m tempting fate! My flowers, zuccs, cukes, and beans are in the ground. Fingers dirty and crossed!

A couple questions answered

28 04 2008

gina (21:47:05) :

tyler - i can’t seem to see the pictures in this post and i was particularly interested in how you covered your tomatoes. I just draped plastic over mine i hope they’ll be ok.

so now I have a question. did people in KY think you were a freakazoid with all your magic solar panels and rain barrels? I’m from the south and you don’t see too much of that stuff around there.

28 04 2008

tyler (22:25:06) :

Here’s the link to the flickr image of the frost protection tonight…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/allisonhouse/2450090893/in/set-72157604509109041/

We’ll see if it works. Temperature is slowly falling with lowest temp forecasted for around 1am.

As for being a freakazoid…hahahah The only thing that stops me from being more weird is the lack of financing

29 04 2008

Monica (08:48:12) :

Blurg this cold weather!

I got an email stating that my plants will arrive TOMORROW! (4/30). It set me in a tail spin of too soon, too soon, too soon!

I’ve been checking the weather daily and this weekend looks lousy too. The tomatoes should be fine inside, but I would like to get some of the hardier flowers out in the yard.

Oh, the joy and the stress!

29 04 2008

tyler (17:22:58) :

The forecasts are showing a heating trend for the rest of the week so the odds of another frost are _extremely_ low. Historical records show we are well beyond the 90% probability of last frost has already happened. And every day makes the probability even higher. I’m calling yesterday (Apr 28th) as the last frost of the season. Assuming it’s not too muddy it should be safe to put the plants out this weekend.

30 04 2008

Mike Szewczyk (11:10:51) :

OK, I’m going to go with your recommendation on putting stuff in this weekend!