Young and young at heart urban gardeners in North Lawndale garden tour
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North Lawndale Greening Committee Garden Tour Photos
Pilsen Paseo de Jardines, Chicago TomatoFest
Want to be part of garden history in Chicago? Several organizations in Pilsen along with Alderman Danny Solis are hosting the 1st Annual Neighborhood Garden Tour. On September 18th, 2010 from 10am-3pm. Over 20 gardens are participating, gardens include; community gardens, edible rooftop gardens, butterfly gardens, backyard gardens, porch gardens and community gardens. There will be educational presentation and demonstrations along the route where you can learn about repurposing materials for container gardening creating compost bins and worm composting bings and a presentations on monarch butterflies from the Peggy Notebart Museum. This garden tour is free. (Full details below)
TomatoFest Potluck Supper is being held at the Chicago Honey Co-op on September 9th, 2010 from 5:30pm-8pm. Proceeds benefit preSERVE, a community garden in North Lawndale in partnership with the North Lawndale Greening Committee, NeighborSpace, the Chicago Honey Co-Op, and Slow Food Chicago. Bring a homegrown tomatoes and a potluck dish to share, cost is $10 for SlowFood Members and $15 for non-members. Sign up here. If you don't know what to expect I blogged about the TomatoFest Potluck Supper from last year here and highly recommend the event.
"Please do not steal the Vegetables!!"
This summer Chicagoans have been treating community gardens like personal food banks.
After spending their summer carefully cultivating fruits, herbs and vegetables, some community gardeners are being beaten to the harvest by vegetable thieves. While not as expensive as rubies, diamonds and emeralds, these tomatoes, cucumbers and melons are just as tempting and pricey. Heirloom plants and seeds that are all the rage can be more expensive than recent cultivars. These plants that new community gardeners favor sell for top dollar at farmers markets around Chicago. Then there are also the costs associated with being a member of a community garden. In allotment-style community gardens, gardeners rent plots to plant in every year.
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My Small Space Urban Garden
Some photos of my small space urban garden in July 2010. The garden is located on the West Side of Chicago and this is where I grow the annuals and perennials I blog about here and on the MrBrownThumb garden blog. I like to describe my gardening style as ghetto because of my haphazard approach to placing plants. Basically, if I find a plant I like I will add it where I have space without taking into consideration things like height and color combinations. The space is around 13 feet wide by 33 feet deep.
My Porch Garden
Here's a picture of my porch garden. I'm growing vegetables, herbs, annuals and houseplants in containers on this little porch out back. The weather is my biggest problem with this container garden because it is full sun, sometimes the heat is unbearable back there. A list of the plants pictured after the jump.
The North Lawndale Greening Committee Annual Garden Tour
The North Lawndale Greening Committee Annual Garden Tour is on August 7, 2010. The tour starts at 10:00 AM at the Douglass Park Library and winds through Chicago's west side featuring private home gardens, community gardens, urban greening projects and a bee farm.
Don't miss your opportunity to see some of the great things this group of urban greening and community gardening pioneers have accomplished on City lots.
In between touring gardens there's a potluck lunch and you're encouraged to bring a dish to share with attendees.
Below, a list of the gardens highlighted on the tour, a PDF schedule and description of each garden, and a video that follows the North Lawndale Greening Community during a previous garden tour.
Cracked Tomatoes
You're watching a tomato ripen on the vine and your mouth is watering at the thought of that tomato finally ripening. Then you go to pick your tomato from the vine and notice that it is cracked! What went wrong? Tomatoes will split and crack as they grow because of fluctuations in the soil moisture. Uneven watering, especially in container gardens, is the cause of tomato splitting and cracking. This will happen if you forget to water your tomato for a few days and try to make up for it by giving the plant a lot of water at one time. Or, if you skip the watering schedule because a recent rain has given you the impression that your plants are fully watered. The tomato pulp expands faster than the skin grows. It is a common tomato problem and happens to the best of them.
This is what happened to my "Great White" tomato pictured above. I thought it was getting enough water between recent rain fall and my normal watering schedule. Then we got a heavy rain this week and overnight the tomato cracked. It looks ugly but the tomato is still edible. I wish I had listened to that little voice inside my head that told me to pick the tomato this past weekend and let it continue to ripen on the windowsill. Now I have a tomato with more cracks than a room full of plumbers.
Uneven watering is also the cause of blossom-end rot. I'm growing these tomatoes on my porch garden. See the link for a list of plants I'm growing in that small space.
Working at Chicago Botanic Garden's Green Youth Farm
What's it like to work at Green Youth Farm? Three high school kids who are part of the program share their thoughts on what they get out of spending their summers working at Green Youth Farm. At Green Youth Farm they learn skills ranging from- organic farming to cooking and selling the food they grow at local farmers markets. Click through for three mini-guests post by kids who aren't farming on Facebook, but have their hands in real dirt leaning valuable skills and info on where you can buy their produce.
Combat Mosquitoes in the Garden
According to Chicago Breaking News, a pool of mosquitoes in Evanston has tested positive for West Nile Virus. The majority of people who contract West Nile Virus usually have no symptoms or show very little symptoms. People who have contracted West Nile Virus may show signs of "fever, headache, body aches, skin rash or swollen lymph glands." As gardeners we may inadvertently created perfect conditions for mosquitoes to breed. Combat mosquitoes in the garden by taking a few simple precautions.
Chicago Gardeners 7/25/10
I'm going to try something new here and share some local gardening links. I'm not sure if I'm going to make this a weekly or monthly feature. What I want to do here is share some links from fellow Chicago gardeners. The links may be to blog posts or they may be to pictures, video, text that the person is using to document or express their desire to to get their hands in the earth.
