My Chicago Garden

Sorry for the delays in posting. Here’s a rundown of September. 

Four weekends ago we harvested the red clouds potatoes  

Two weekends ago I made my order for garlic from Seeds of Change. My notes from last year say they should arrive in November sometime. I’ll be growing a soft-neck variety next year called ‘Chilean Silver‘.

Last weekend I finished building the two-bin compost system. I used the diagrams from Lowe’s (BTW their instructions are wrong) and $200 in materials. I have one bin already full and one is waiting for the leaves to fall.

On Saturday we visited the Morton Arboretum (pronounced Martin Har-Bore-eat-um by Teagan) for their bulb sale and purchased an arm full of Crocus and assorted bulbs.

We had our official start of fall today.  We ate lunch inside at Scooby’s today, which means fall has begun at our house.  I also filmed a short garden tour and our potatoe harvest for Eric over at gardenfork.tv.  I suspect he’ll post it as soon as he can do the edits. If not..I’ll post it here. I also picked up two bales of straw from the Barn Owl Feed and Garden for over-winter cover in the garden .

Next weekend we are going for our yearly apple picking pilgrimage. We are heading back to Royal Oak Orchard like last year. Yeah!

Oh yeah…I purchased a used high-quality digital camera (costs $600 new) from a friend of mine for my wife, Melissa. Melissa has been showing an interest in photography again, and since she needs a hobby I’m trying to encourage her to get out and do it.

One last thing…be on the lookout for first frost. On average we should be getting it in the next 3-4 weeks.  Long term forecast has us safe for another 7-10 days, but all bets are off after that.

On labor day, our family took our second annual U-Pick Raspberry trip down to Plow Creek Farm, about 2 hours south west of Chicago.  Prior to leaving I had researched on their website to make sure the season was up and running and how the crop was doing. I noticed that blackberry season was still open, so I had a plan in the back of my mind to check out their blackberry patch.

We spent about an hour picking 8 pints of raspberries at $2 a pint.   Other than the one other family finishing up when we got there, we had the entire patch to ourselves. I remembered from the website that the blackberry patch was up “blueberry hill”, so everyone jumped back into the van and headed up the hill.  WOW!!! I had no idea we were missing the jackpot. The blackberry bushes were at least 6 foot tall, with some pushing 8 foot.  In just a few minutes we had picked another 6 pints of blackberries.  I noticed there was another patch of raspberries next to the blackberry patch and further up the hill…the blueberries. It looks to me like everyone stays down the hill in the lower patch as the raspberries were not as picked over as the lower patch. Next year we are going to head straight for “blueberry hill”!!

Sorry for the delay in posts. It has taken several weeks to get back to normal..sorta.

I was able to harvest 12+ cucumbers but was only able to use a handful for my refrigerator pickles. I ended up using one to make an absolutely wonderful cold salad using the lemon infused olive oil from Pasolivo. I’ve used the Pasolivo oil several times since we returned from vacation and I have to say it is down right awesome. I’m a convert! Now to find the Pasolivo somewhere close!

Last weekend I planted cabbage seeds, and 2 rows of carrots in the cold frame ready bed. That leaves a 2 foot by 2 foot area for something when the tomatoe plants dies.

We are making plans for apple harvest season.  Probably the highlight of the fall for me. I nearly made myself sick last time we went from eating too many apples.

Wine country in Paso Robles. The most interesting part of the day so far has actually been visiting an olive oil farm (Pasolivo) and doing a tasting and tour. I didnt realize just how bad the olive oil I have been buying from the local grociery stores realy is. Doesn’t even taste like olives when I compare to Pasolivo’s various bottles. And I was trying to be selective and buying only the ‘good stuff’. Argh!

Sorry for the horrible picture, the camera on my phone sucks in low light conditions (actually any condition). We had a wonderful dinner at Ristorante de Gaetano in Paso Robles, CA. Our B&B hosts told us most of the good restaurants in town are closed sunday night, but my wife found this little italian place in the menu binder at the B&B. It’s an unassuming little store front in an average looking part of town, but the inside is familial and the food was wonderful. Gaetano stopped by the table several times to chat and was very personable (that’s him in the fuzzy picture). He made a wonderful local wine recommendation for our meal, although he tried to steer us towards an Italian wine at first :). If you are in the area and looking for a great Italian meal I would highly recommend Gaetano’s. How does the chef make the risotto like that?!? Mine never looks and taste that good. Dang It!