Apple Tree update

Awhile back, I planted a stick in the ground that Henry Field's assured me was a Sweet Sixteen apple sapling. I was dubious it would turn into anything, because it was only about 18 inches long and not much bigger in diameter than a #2 pencil. I am pleased to report that it not only survived, but it's done pretty well:

I not inviting any of you over for apple pie this fall or anything, but I'm saying the tree now vaguely resembles a young tree, and I'm not actively embarrassed to have such a beefy support for a tiny twig. Maybe next fall (or more likely Fall of 2012) we'll actually get some fruit...

The Greenhouse is Up

The greenhouse is up and functional. Here's a pictorial description of the process:

The structure with the deer (squirrel) netting still up and row covers on.

A big hunk of greenhouse plastic, donated generously by my horticulturist friend Gwen.

To get the plastic over the ribs, first put a rock on one side...

Then attach a cord around the rock and pull the cord from the far side.

The plastic is up and my 1-meter tall child stands in as a height reference.

At the bottom, roll lath into the plastic and nail down.

The plastic ,after being secured on all sides.

A crisscross of guy rope goes over the top and through screw eyes at the bottom, to help keep the plastic on where it should be and to make the structure a little more stable.

The inside view of the greenhouse after the plastic is on.

I am happy to report that the greenhouse survived the 40-50+ mph winds that arose the following days, without a bit of damage. The ribs are independently flexible and the plastic is tough, so while the shape of the arch was...altered...at times, no problems arose and the plants didn't even notice the storm.

Here's to some later fall/winter produce!

Shifting to Fall

Temperatures are dropping around Chicago, and this is normally the time when I'd been doing a fall clean-up, some final mulching, and putting my garden to bed for the winter.

But not this year!


This is the winter of Eliot Coleman, when Melissa and I are going to try our hand at Fall gardening aiming for a winter harvest. Here's where we are as of the start of October:

Planted right now (clockwise from bottom left) are Romaine and Buttercrunch lettuce, endive, yellow globe onions, bunching onions, full-grown endive, carrots in various stages from seedling to mature, tomato plants up against the house (1 box wrapped, 1 unwrapped to see the difference), mache, more lettuce, spinach, and a fallow place for garlic that's just outside the picture in the lower right.

As you can see, I have row covers in place. These let in about 80% of the light and are water-permeable. They have the added benefits of keeping out insects and providing some cover from the wind. I will say that they make my seedlings look beautiful:

Another new experiment for this Fall is the mache bed. These hardy little salad greens can germinate at 35 degrees and can bounce back from -5 if necessary. The adult plants are only about 4 inches across, so it takes a lot of plants for a salad. So, I've planted about 1200 plants in my bed and they're just starting to pop up:

They're a little hard to see in this picture, but they're there.

One of the successes this summer season has been the raspberries. All of the canes in this picture started as tiny 4"-6" transplant cuttings that came from my 5-year old bush on the side of the dog run.

As you can see, they did very well, despite having the fence in front of them completely overwhelmed by cantaloupe vines for much of the summer. Maybe they decided to grow tall to compensate.

I have noticed that the Fall temps do slow down germination and growth, so I'll keep you apprised of our progress every so often. Check back for more later, especially when we install the plastic on our greenhouse...

Yes, I'm back...

The Greenhouse in its summer look.

My blogging attention always flags in July. I start out with the best of intentions, but when summer is in full bloom, I always vanish from the blogosphere for a good month. Perhaps things get too busy, or maybe I can't imagine anyone caring how many heads or broccoli I picked or how many raspberries I harvested or how my carrots are coming along. Whatever the reason for my silence, it happens every year right on schedule.

This is the deer netting.

For those of you who have been following my greenhouse series, I have indeed completed the project and I present the pictures to prove it. The hoops were installed and painted and the perlin (ridge pole) lashed in place, and the whole structure is pretty solid. I used deer netting (a thin, black plastic mesh in about 3/4" squares) to wrap around the hoops until October arrives and it's time to put on the plastic. The best part is: the protection is working. Yesterday I watched a squirrel actively looking for a way in, even partially climbing the mesh, then giving up the exercise as fruitless and wandering away.
Malamutes, however, are another matter. Not once, but *twice* has Milady invaded the greenhouse. The first time, she slipped between the hoops and the neighbors chain link fence, pulling open a hole in the mesh. She proceeded to trample through a newly-seeded carrot bed, dig a bit in a lettuce seedling bed, and then apparently tried to exit through the yard side. Judging by the way the netting was ripped and the snap clamps were blown off (the clamps keep the netting attached to the hoops), I think she encountered the net, didn't know what it was, and panicked. Let me tell you, a scared Malamute is *strong*.
I chalked this first transgression up to experimentation and innocence...but the SECOND time it happened, I could see where she had purposefully pulled the metting away from the hoops with her claws, forced her way in (again trampling the carrots) and dug down the lettuce seedlings bed until it could no longer be considered a "raised" bed any longer! My lettuce production then suffered a three-week hiatus because all of my intermediate plants were destroyed utterly. How did I feel about that? Angry wasn't the half of it. Milady earned a quick confinement to her dog run until I figured out how to stop her.
I finally installed a stronger wire fence to prevent her from getting between the greenhouse and the neighbor's chain link fence, and that seems to have done the trick because she hasn't gotten in since. Anyway, the greenhouse is up, just waiting for plastic, and the things inside it like the broccoli and squarshes are going CRAZY. Of course, the greenhouse itself is not responsible for this growth, but soon it will be. I just planted a fall crop of endive, Winter Density Lettuce, and more carrots. Looking forward to adding leeks, mache and other goodness...

The Structure Takes Shape

Work continues on the greenhouse as we can. Summer schedules, especially for interpreters like myself, are supposed to calm down and get much more open, but with the work I have plus choreographing shows plus teaching two classes plus writing two (three?) plays, my days seem to be pretty full. This also explains why I don't blog about my every move in the garden right now.

So, in the last greenhouse post, I mentioned that I had removed the fence around the garden, then dug down and cleared the area just inside the landscape timbers. Next, I took 2' length of 1-1/4" Schedule 40 PVC and drove them down into the ground around the perimeter, then used pipe straps to attach them to the timber:

As you can see, these form the sockets for the ribs to fit into. They are drilled to allow two bolts to go through the pipes and secure them.

Next came the ribs. These are 1" diameter pipes that fit inside the sockets and are bent to form the main structural element of the greenhouse. Many hoophouse builders get very long pipes and simply bend them from one side to the other, giving a rounded arch shape. Melissa and I decided to use 90-degree elbows at the top that poles from each side fit into:

This gives the greenhouse a look more akin to a Gothic arch (a vesica pisces for you sacred geometry types) which we prefer to the Quonset hut look. We also think the steeper pitch will shed the rain and snow better. the next challenge was the shape of our garden. It's straight on one side, but on the yard side we curved the bed and the adjacent path. When we designed the landscaping years ago, we only had a flower bed and a tree where the garden is now, so we thought a curve was more aesthetically pleasing. It means that our poles will be longer on one side than the other, and there will have to be some adjusting to make the peaks of the arches line up on the centerline and at the same height.

After the poles were up, it looks like this:

You can see, especially in the first of these pictures, that we have not yet adjusted the peaks. The next steps will be to add a purlin (a ridgepole of electrical conduit that connects the peaks and adds some stiffening), build the end walls that include a door on one end and a window/vent on the other, and (for now) run deer netting around the thing to keep the squirrels (and the dog) out. The greenhouse plastic won't go on onto late October.

Sort of looks like the Air Force Academy Chapel, doesn't it?

Breaking New Ground

So, we have started work on building a greenhouse to effect our plan of harvesting vegetables during the fall and winter. Thought I'd show some in-process photos.

We are technically making a hoophouse, made of bent PVC arches and then greenhouse-gauge plastic sheeting which will go on in the fall. In the meantime, we'll cover the arches with deer netting to keep out the squirrels.

First, we had to remove the wire fence that encircled the main plot, because we're using the timber edging that's in place as the baseboards for the arches. The garden did look quite different than I was used to after the fencing was gone. Here you can see the broccoli, with the garlic further down. The garlic greens are knocked over to let them cure for a week before we harvest the bulbs.

Here's another view, from the other direction. Our hope for this thing is to follow Eliot Colman's advice and use a greenhouse and row covers to extend our growing season into late fall and our harvesting season throughout the winter. And by selecting the right cold-tolerant variety and vegetables, we should be able to do all that without any artificial heat.

Most plans for hoophouse like this call for you to build a big rectangle of 2x10s to attach the bases of the arches to. We decided we would use the timbers that we installed as edging about seven or eight years ago. It's been stable for this long; there doesn't seem to be a strong reason to swap it out for something else. We'll drive 30" long base pipes into the ground next to the timbers where the arch bases will fit, and then go from there. Of course, on the side of the garden near the walk, the soil level is too high to attach anything to the inside of the edging timbers, so it required some digging out:

Got that done all along the edge, and will install the arches soon.

Later note: the dog decided that because the fence was gone she had obviously bee given free rein in the garden, so she trampled by onion and carrot bed pretty severely. We lost the green chive part of 75% of our onions (though the bulbs may still be okay) and the younger carrots may not pull through. [What was the phone number for Animal Control, again?] Milday is now locked in her dog run until a proper fence/barrier is in place once again.

More tomorrow.

My Strange Broccoli

Hey there!

I don't mean to be failblogging two days in a row, but now let's turn our attention to my broccoli. This is my first time trying to grow the stuff, and judging by the height of the plants, it's doing well:

The plants are strong, look healthy, and growing huge. Except for one problem....

There's no broccoli in them.


Again, this is my first time growing them so maybe I don't understand their life cycle correctly, but shouldn't I at least see some nascent broccoli head somewhere in the plant? Here's a shot looking down into the top of the plant:

There's some new leaves growing there at the top of the stalk, but nothing that resembles broccoli. Here's a view from the side:

Nice stout stalk, no broccoli head. I've composted them twice, kept them weeded and watered...any idea what is going on? Am I just being too anxious? Your thoughts/opinions/comments are welcome...

Success and Not So Much

Sorry about the long gap in updating. I've been having a fair amount of garden success so far this year. Above is part of one harvest: onions and cilantro (pictured), along with lettuce and baby spinach. Pretty much, we've stopped buying salad fixin's for the foreseeable future. The lettuce, carrots, onions, spinach, garlic, squash, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and raspberries seem to be growing great, BUT...

Those are my strawberries. Note the scale. They're tiny and not all that sweet. I don't know if the rain gutter system I devised doesn't allow good root expansion, or if they needed more fertilizer/compost because they used up what's was present in the shallow trough. On the plus side, the squirrels haven't bothered them (probably because they weren't worth the trouble!).

You win some, you lose some.

A New Recipe

I've recently become enamored with a new recipe for hamburger/sandwich buns. The taste is great, they are incredibly soft and have a nice open crumb, and they freeze and thaw really well. I've made them twice now, and they've been easy and a success both times. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
15 oz. flour
8 oz. water
1 large egg
4T softened butter
2T honey
1/4 c. dry milk
1/4 c. mashed potato
1-1/2 tsp salt
2-1/4 tsp instant yeast

Directions
Mix everything but flour together, then added the flour gradually--you may use all 15 ounces, and you may not. You want the dough a bit "shaggy" and it should be fairly sticky at this point. Once it's mixed pretty well, cover it with a damp towel and let it rest 25 minutes. Then come back and knead a bit to develop the gluten matrix. Again, it may be more sticky than you're used to, but avoid adding too much flour because that will make the dough more dense and tough. Put back in the bowl and cover.

Let the bulk rise go about 1-1/2 to 2 hours, stretching and folding it once or twice during that time. It should double in size. Then, divide into 3-ounce balls and place on a cookie sheet that is either lightly oiled or covered with baking parchment. Let rise until they are the nearly the size you want them. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Humidify the oven by pouring water into a broiler pan or brownie pan in the bottom of the oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until browned nicely. Remove and brush with softened butter.

Yield: about 10 3-ounce rolls

If you try this recipe, let me know!

Progress and Regress

Well, my cantaloupe seedlings are officially gone. RIP, cantaloupes, we hardly knew ye. I don't know if they got too cold in the last couple of weeks (remember the cool weather we used to have), or if there was some other factor, but they are kaput. On Saturday I direct-sowed some seeds in their place; we'll see if they do any better.

I also planted some more butternut and acorn squash seeds, since those plants looked to be struggling too. Don't know what it is with me and squash/melons.

In the win category, I went to turn my compost pile and found it steaming...in 85 degree weather! I used a probe thermometer and found that the pile was holding a steady 140 degrees. That should make some compost pretty fast, eh? Hot composting, indeed...

Chicago May Be Greening

There's been a couple of new developments in the urban farming aspects in the Chicago area, and I'd thought they needed some attention called to them.

The first is the nation's first certified organic rooftop farm, right here on Devon Avenue! Uncommon Ground has built it, and also offers a weekly farmer's market during the summer and is trying to set up community orchards in Logan Square.

The second stride forward is a proposed aquaponics vertical farm in the south loop. Here's a related video.

New Bread Success

I'm a big fan of fresh-baked bread, as should be no secret to any regular reader of this blog. I like fresh bread with dinner, and bread still warm from the oven is so much better than bread that's been sitting around for days. Some of my friends follow the advice of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day which is a great book that advocates keeping live bread dough in the refrigerator, than pulling out a hunk and quickly shaping it into a loaf. After 30 minutes of resting time and 30 in the oven, you have fresh bread.

That is actually great advice, but the dough bowl takes up a lot of refrigerator space, and we don't have that many dinners per week that suggest a bread side, so I was looking for another shortcut. Enter the brown and serve dinner loaf.

The loaves above were made with my Italian bread recipe, but instead of making two big 2-lb loaves and baking them for 50 minutes at 400 degrees, I made small 8 ounce loaves and baked them for an hour at 275. The result is bread that is fully baked but not browned. I then wrapped the loaves and put them in the freezer.

Tonight, to accompany a lovely white cheddar pasta bake that Melissa made, I pulled one loaf out of the deep freeze, let it thaw briefly on the counter, then popped it into a 375 degree over for 15 minutes, It turned out soft and delicious, and you couldn't tell that it wasn't baked fresh on the spot. The 8-oz size was perfect for a family meal with neither leftovers nor indulging too much.

I look forward to the rest of the loaves waiting in the freezer...

Questions from the Studio Audience

A flower-like romaine lettuce plant.

Wow, I see it's been a full week since my last post. Didn't mean for this to be a Sunday blogging thing; will try to do better next week.

At any rate, I received no less than three questions from friends today who were asking me about various gardening-related questions. Apparently, they have me confused with some kind of knowledgeable person, but I answered two of the questions anyway and have done research on the third. I thought others might be curious about similar things, because you know the teacher's adage: if one kid asks a question, that means two others had the same question but were afraid to raise their hands. So, here's what I was asked:

"The seeds I planted said they were spinach, but the things that sprouted up look nothing like what they're supposed to."

Take heart. Everything is proceeding as normal. The first leaves of a seedling are called cotyledons, and are present in the seed before germination. In fact, they contain the stored food reserves of the seed, and can sometimes stay with the maturing plant for some time, or wither soon after the true leaves appear. The true leaves of many plants do not appear until the post-germination phase (meaning after the seedling has sprouted). Shown on the left is a juvenile spinach seedling with both the cotyledons (the long thin leaves) and the first pair of true leaves. Later, the spinach plant will grow and its true leaves will expand to their more familiar shape, and begin to look like the right-hand picture as the plant matures.



"My compost bin smells awful. Is it supposed to do that?"
Sure, that's what's happening to a lot of things while they decompose...remember that "composting" is little more than a euphemism for "rotting." Want your compost bin to not smell? Make sure you have a good mix of  "greens" and "browns." "Greens," or items high in nitrogen, are things like kitchen scraps (remember to keep any dairy or meat products out of your compost mix), grass clippings, coffee grounds, chicken manure, or weeds you've pulled. "Browns," or high-carbon items, are things like straw, dry leaves, dryer lint, shredded paper (avoid colored paper or paper with colored inks), eggshells, coffee husks, etc. The most common culprit for foul-smelling compost is a mixture too high in nitrogen caused by adding too many kitchen scraps without covering them with some kind of carbon or "browns." Also, remember to keep the pile a bit damp--like a wrung-out sponge but not sopping wet--and occasionally add a shovelful of garden dirt. The dirt will add millions of microbial bacteria that are the prime movers in the composting process. When your mix is right, you will find the pile will heat up, sometimes to as high as 140 degrees or more. Today, for example, my bin was steaming in 60-degree weather! This 'hot composting' means your nitrogen/carbon mix is right, and the only thing you will smell is the lovely scent of fresh earth.

"My potatoes are growing and I know I'm supposed to add dirt to them...but how much, and when do I stop adding it?"
The two main things that potatoes hate are inadequate water and excessive soil heat. Both problems can be solved easily, and there are many viable ways to do it. Perhaps the easiest is mulching. When your seedlings first appear from the ground and get a set of true leaves, mulch around them with an inch of compost and then cover the entire bed with a foot of clean straw. The plants will grow right up through it and the soil will stay cooler and retain moisture longer. This method can even be used at planting time; just set the seed potatoes right on the ground, cover with compost and straw, and water well. What could be simpler? Another way is to use a hoe to mound the soil up around the plants every few weeks. Don't worry about covering up the stem and lower leaves; the plant doesn't seem to mind. I've even heard of people who grow potatoes in raised beds using a "potato collar." This is another wooden frame (without a bottom) that sits on top of the raised bed and, in effect, raises it still further. This second bed is then filled with compost and straw, or just plain dirt, and the potatoes keep right on growing. In short, cover them with something to keep the ground moist and cool, and don't stress too much about the particulars.

Gardening like a Mother

Well, actually, gardening with a mother happened today--not my octogenarian mother, of course, but the mother of my kids. Melissa and I were home together and both healthy on a free day with decent weather; a perfect storm that hasn't happened in quite a while. She worked on building out a new flowerbed along the dog run, while I finished building three other vegetable beds and disassembling my drip irrigation system in preparation for installing the greenhouse. Then, Melissa planted a variety of flower seed (specifically designed to attract butterflies and hummingbirds, apparently) while I transplanted cantaloupe, acorn squash, butternut squash, lettuce seedlings, and planted about 15 more onion sets.

Both of us cleaned and straightened the patio within an inch of its life and reorganized where we stored things to make the backyard look a great deal neater and less cluttered. We marveled at how large our patio seemed after all the stuff around the periphery was stowed in more efficient places.

There are still things to do. I need to direct sow many more rows of carrots, and I need to get topsoil to fill one of the new lettuce beds and the second container for my tomato plants, which will probably be filled next week with my six 8" seedlings that are happily growing in the basement. And then there is the weeding, and many things will soon need composting/fertilizing and mulching.

But, a good day!

Still Think Growing Lettuce is a Hassle?

E-Coli in the Lettuce. Again.

This kind of thing comes up about twice a year. Any wonder why I prefer growing lettuce in the backyard?

Hidden Treasures

Since we moved into this house in 2000, there's been a little shed attached to the back of the house. Not quite tall enough to stand up in, not quite big enough to store the lawnmower in, and not terribly eye-appealing made of aging plywood, it's been on our list to demolish for some time.

This weekend, I started on the project, mostly because I noticed there were at least six 2x4s that framed the shed, which I could subsequently use for finishing the edging around one of the raised beds in my garden. As I started to unmake the little structure from the roof down, I found that sandwiched between the peeling plywood outside and the pegboard inside, the shed was completely clad--on all four walls and the roof--with 1x6 planks.

And the planks are made of cedar.

Someone spent a pretty penny for this shed back in its day, and then they or subsequent owners went on to completely hide the best parts of it. Anyway, I got my 2x4s and finished my raised bed, and now I have piles of beautiful straight cedar planks that have been seasoned for decades but protected by the weather the whole time. A list of possible projects is scrolling through my brain...

I love finding buried treasure!

Fresh The Movie/Documentary

Fresh The Movie/Documentary

Looks like another good one. Glad to see Will Allen featured. I'm hoping these kind of movie indicate a groundswell of people rethinking how Americans eat.

Of Apples and Crabapples

We've had this poor little crabapple tree on the side of our house since we moved in ten years ago. It's a little thing that looks like it was designed by Dr. Seuss, and we had often talked of getting rid of it. But it's pretty in the spring when it blooms, and now it has another purpose: cross pollination.

You see, apple trees are social creatures, and they need another apple tree--of another variety--to cross pollinate with in order to set the most fruit. Crabapples fill that bill nicely, as long as their blooming cycle is in a congruent time with the other variety.

Several weeks ago we planted a Sweet Sixteen apple tree on a L'il Dwarf rootstock. Because of its size and appearance, we have affectionately dubbed it our "apple stick." But notice the following picture:

Our little seedling is starting to send out leaves from the top and several buds on the side. Don't come looking around here for apples this year (or even next), but I think the tree might take, unless I come too close with the weed trimmer.

State of the Garden

The garden improvements are coming along. I continued making a "channel" or footpath on the east side, both for ease of access and to eventually get to the attachment points for the greenhouse ribs. I consolidated the lettuce into one more densely-packed bed, and put out some more spinach and broccoli transplants. Finally, I direct-sowed some carrots, too...a bit later than I should have, but better late than never.

Let me allow pictures to describe the garden better than I can do with words. First, the general overview:

Then, the spinach. Some new transplants, some older seedlings.

My lettuce, with Red Sails and Green Sails in the foreground, with some Royal Oak Leaf and Buttercrunch more in the background:

A view through the garlic...

The onion sets were put in not long ago, so they're still a bit away from harvesting...

Here's the new northern bed that I narrowed and straightened. The 2"x8" on the left edge is a salvage from my alley that I just got today. I'm making this my main carrot bed, since it gets the most sun. Just planted four short rows today on the north end, and will add more in succession in the weeks to follow.

The broccoli bed that I mentioned building in the last post. The black tubes are drip irrigation lines to water the seedlings. That system will be fairly radically changed as the new greenhouse takes shape.

So there you have it: the state of the Bareford garden on April 20th, 2010!

Rethinking the Garden

I'm a firm believer in garden plans. I've even taught a workshop on how to make a garden plan, and preached the mantra "Make a plan and stick to it. Your premeditated ideas and decisions will almost always be better than your emotional, in-the-moment ones." Hopefully, if you were in that workshop, you weren't listening to that line of bull. Apparently, even I wasn't.

You see, my garden plan is out the window.

The problem began with one innocent tray of lettuce seedlings. This past winter, I was slowly accumulating some equipment necessary to eventually set up an indoor aquaponics ecosystem, and I was testing the grow lights that I had put together, using some leaf lettuce seeds as guinea pigs. They sprouted, but quickly yellowed and just weren't thriving. Because growing plants are a vital link the aquaponics chain, I tinkered around for better results: I changed the grow lights, and made my own potting soil. As a test bed, I scattered a bunch of mixed lettuce seeds in two inches of soil inside an aluminum roasting pan and waited to see what would happen.

Well, they sprouted. All of them. I was happy because my growing setup was working. And then the seedlings were 2-3 inches tall and crowding each other badly. I should have tossed them out; it was only an experiment, right? Of course, I couldn't do that. Instead, I transplanted 18 of them into individual peat pots. And then gave a half-dozen away to one friend, another dozen to a second friend. And then I transplanted another dozen for myself, and still I had more. Did I mention I scattered a bunch of seeds?

So, in March after I built my cold frame, I moved my growing little collection of seedlings outside. Then, once the beds were ready--and the drip irrigation installed--it was just too tempting to wait. I planted my lettuce seedlings where I'd planned to, but also right across the beds that I'd planned for spinach and carrots.

The non-plan problem deepened when my strawberries didn't come up the way I'd hoped, and I moved them to the new rain gutter planters and put broccoli in their place (therefore not putting the broccoli in the bed space I'd planned it to go). Then, after reading Four Season Harvest, Melissa and I have decided to put up a convertible greenhouse over our main garden, which requires space around the edges.

So today, I fully converted the tiered strawberry bed into a fully-enclosed raised bed for the broccoli, and I made a footpath on the west side of spinach, lettuce, and onion beds, even transplanting some plants to do it. It looks great, and it will improve both the look and the usability of the garden.

But now my garden looks almost nothing like the design I crafted last winter, and my plan bears little resemblance to the growing reality behind our house.

Oh well, even architects have their initial blueprints (the way they imagine it) and their as-built drawings (the way the building was actually built). Maybe next year my plan will be better...

In the "See, I'm not Crazy" Department

Student Melanie Christion, 17, tends to the fish farm at Chicago High School of Agricultural Science, which is raising 1,000 tilapia. The school's farm operates at commercial grade, but not on a commercial scale. (Photo: Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune/ April 11, 2010)


Urban fish farming: Will it catch on in Chicago? - chicagotribune.com

Next week, I'm planning on taking a journey to Milwaukee with a friend to tour Growing Power, an urban aquaponics operation that is becoming more and more well known. But, there are things happening right here in our little Chicago, as well! I may have to add the Chicago High School of Agricultural Science to my tour itinerary, to see how they're doing things. I wonder if Alderman Bernie Stone will be as receptive to such endeavors.

The Bareford aquaponics project has no official start date yet, but it will happen. Oh yes, it will happen.

Book Review: Four Season Harvest

For my birthday this week, my family gave me a couple of books, including Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. The basic premise of the book is that Coleman, a gardener who lives in Maine, grows a kitchen garden and harvests food throughout the year, even during the winter months--and he does it without an expensive, artificially-heated greenhouse! His success is due to a simple formula: plant cold-resistant vegetables, such as spinach, carrots, kale, and mache, and protect them by using simple technologies like a plastic-sheeted hoophouse and the time-honored cold frame. Coleman points out that he is not trying to grow plants during the winter, only to have them available to harvest. Think of it like a large-scale crisper drawer from your refrigerator!

The book has starting Melissa and I seriously thinking about covering our main garden plot with a "convertible" greenhouse. During the warm months, it would be covered with deer netting to keep out squirrels, dogs, rabbits, etc., and as fall and winter approach would be clad with clear plastic sheeting and stocked with cold frames inside to preserve the fall-planted crops for harvesting throughout the year. The price is far less than you might think (the PVC materials to make the ribs of the structure will cost less than $40 total!), and it seems simple to put together.

Stay tuned for more greenhouse information to follow, and hopefully more four-season harvesting, too!

First Harvest

Shown above is our first harvest of the year--a salad of baby greens and spinach that was wonderful when tossed with mozzarella cheese and oil and spices. Of special note is that this harvest is at least six weeks earlier than our first crop last year. This is partly due to the unseasonable warm Spring we've been having, but also to starting seeds earlier and having a better indoor growing setup coupled with an outdoor cold frame to extend the growing season back several weeks.

My goal this year: a four-season harvest! Stay tuned for how we will do it...

Rain Gutter Strawberry Beds

Those humble-looking additions to the souther wall of my house are my new strawberry beds. Like I mentioned in my last post, my old bed wasn't being fully utilized by the plants, so I installed these. There are nothing more than a 10' length of vinyl rain gutter cut into two 5' pieces and secured to the wall. There are drainage holes drilled at intervals along the bottom, which completely wrecks them as actual rain gutters but makes them much better planters.

Now, 17 strawberry plants call these gutters home. We also hope they'll be easier to protect from squirrels and birds, once we overlay them with deer netting. I think slugs or other creepy-crawlies might have a harder time scaling the wall to get at them, too! The best part is, now my strawberry take up absolutely zero "floor space" in my garden and are located in one of the sunniest places in my yard. Hopefully, I'll take pictures of them in coming months, brimming with berries.