tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-45542078599393113182024-02-20T20:32:32.875-06:00K-Town Homestead-----------------Leading a pioneer life on the west side of Chicago----------------- Urban gardening * Local eating * Slow CookingAbbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.comBlogger134125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-48992860224115043432012-01-15T15:49:00.004-06:002012-01-15T16:24:14.978-06:00My 2011 HarvestMy daughter was born in the late spring of 2011. The summer and fall went by in the milky haze a newborn brings to a home. I even took a long vacation away from Illinois at the peak of summer, with nary a moment's anxiety about my garden. It was a neglected mess anyway, what did 2 weeks without water matter? We did spend long lazy days out in the garden, although I will admit that many a tomato Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-13200738700001777222010-11-01T13:19:00.008-05:002010-11-01T13:53:42.898-05:00Old Season, New LifeSnow is in the forecast for Friday, and after a six-week hiatus from gardening and writing, I face today the mountain of chores long overdue for my ragged, late-fall garden. I spent virtually the entire autumn in the low-energy state of early pregnancy -- napping, cooking just enough for family needs and generally guarding against any extra expenditure of effort. Now, at four months along, my Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-32342920588877454942010-09-20T20:21:00.004-05:002010-09-20T20:37:42.705-05:00The sweet smell of autumnAutumn is right around the corner, and -- despite the 90 degree day that we are facing tomorrow --there is no more insistent a reminder of this turn of seasons than the scent of concord grapes. The arbor hangs thick with ripening fruit right by the door of the garage. I arrive home every evening to the heady scent of sun-baked grapes. The birds are getting a lot this year, and I am not sure I Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-34630848136178620552010-09-08T19:19:00.003-05:002010-09-08T19:42:53.531-05:00A Good and Sweet YearTonight begins the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah. Apples and honey are the traditional foods, symbolizing a sweet new year. Our family is not observant -- actually not religious in the slightest! --but I try to celebrate the traditions of my mother-in-law and her family with my young son. He is an easy mark on Rosh Hashanah -- what 3 year old wouldn't want to dip apples into honey as a snack? Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-43937712856584456942010-09-05T05:47:00.002-05:002010-09-08T19:02:36.016-05:00The second coming of the nasturtiumsJuly was a cruel month to my nasturtiums and, by the end of the month, they had withered away to straggly, yellowing stems. I ripped the nasturtiums out of the corner of my yard, as the dying foliage looked particularly horrible against the lush August green of the rest of the garden. As I tore out the plants, I noticed little rootlets hanging off the main stems. I decided to replant these Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-84669893188035683722010-09-03T17:40:00.004-05:002010-09-03T20:38:13.010-05:00Passiflora incarnata albaThe most anticipated flower in my garden bloomed today -- passiflora incarnata alba, the passion flower. I started these seeds early in the winter and have been nursing this plant along ever since, first under a cloche and then against the onslaught of the slugs.All of my careful ministrations were worth it when when I returned from a long day of work this evening to find two blossoms quivering Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-50329613041396752322010-09-01T06:08:00.003-05:002010-09-01T11:18:53.433-05:00Time warpNo matter how carefully I tend my home life of urban farming and slow cooking, there are times when my professional duties overwhelm any homesteading reveries. The past 10 days have been a harsh reminder that the skills that pay my bills have less to do with my green thumb, and more to do with my medical training. I am tending patients right now, not plants. I leave early in the morning and come Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-25947196124433532952010-08-24T20:11:00.005-05:002010-08-24T20:56:42.596-05:00The year of the pepperEvery year in my garden, one plant does very well, outpacing all others in productivity and vigor. Each year a peculiar set of elements - rain, light, perhaps whatever I laid down as mulch the year before -- combine to create near-perfect conditions for one of my edible crops. 2006 was the year of basil, 2007 the year of the tomato, 2008 the year of the zucchini, 2009 the year of the green bean. Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-31589054098464067882010-08-19T16:48:00.005-05:002010-08-19T18:06:51.828-05:00Dispatch from the IGC ShowThe Independent Garden Center Show took over Navy Pier this week -- and though I am but a humble local garden blogger, I thought it worthwhile to stop by and check out what the area garden centers would be growing, promoting and teaching in the upcoming year. The show has educational sessions and speakers, but the main action seemed to be the giant hall full of vendors. There was row upon row of Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-38681216326144367292010-08-15T12:11:00.005-05:002010-08-15T12:31:20.252-05:00I choose cosmos....In his delightful gem of a book, Annuals for Connoisseurs, Wayne Winterrowd recalls an older gardener who continued to scale back her garden, bed by bed, year after year. At the end of her days, she left herself with nothing more than a single small plot of zinnias that she could see from her sitting room. "Those she could not forgo". I was utterly charmed by the idea of the flower you cannot Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-71688099773445238462010-08-14T07:57:00.003-05:002010-08-14T08:04:39.483-05:00The first of the figsThe first of the Kadota figs are ripening. They are soft and very sweet, but a little insipid when eaten fresh. They are best for canning and drying. Unfortunately, I only have one potted tree, so gathering up enough ripe figs at the same time to justify an afternoon of canning or dehydrating is a bit of a challenge. The first ripe ones will go to fresh eating, and once the "main crop" comes in (Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-27055805413876968072010-08-10T07:29:00.005-05:002010-08-10T08:09:21.088-05:00Yard long vegetablesThe salad we ate last night for dinner featured an embarrassment of garden riches....homegrown corn, tomatoes, potatoes and beans. The color of the beans is a bit jarring, no? A nearly black component of a salad doesn't exactly bring to mind summer freshness. In their raw state, these beans are a rich maroon. They are red noodle yard long beans and they are far outpacing my pole beans.The first Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-53015840216197478922010-08-08T10:28:00.004-05:002010-08-08T11:07:12.742-05:00Bogus "seasonal" recipesI went to a Barnes and Noble for the first time in a long while and was shocked by the rack of newly released cookbooks -- nearly two prominently displayed shelves of glossy hardcovers emphasized local food, seasonal produce and kitchen gardening. Snark all you want about trends and recession-era fashions, but it warms my heart to see this ethic become mainstream. There was even a thick stack of Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-33064546215109298042010-08-06T08:05:00.007-05:002010-08-06T08:36:30.590-05:00If only all children could have a school like this...Today is my son's first day of school. He will be a student in the early childhood classroom of a Montessori magnet in the Chicago public school system. This school has a garden, albeit a few raised beds on an old asphalt basketball court. I'll take it -- any outdoor activity is a luxury in a school system imperiled by a city that pours money into TIF's instead of education. In honor of the startAbbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-14648402395511143102010-08-03T20:42:00.001-05:002010-08-03T21:16:11.954-05:00Homegrown luxuryThere are those in my generation who may remember a TV game show from the early 1990's: Supermarket Sweep. The show pitted two couples against each other in a supermarket and culminated in a frenzied shopping spree. The point of the spree was to fill your cart with the highest-value items in the allotted time. Everyone went for the shallots, which were inexplicably located on a dry-goods shelf, Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-59507823963900769372010-08-02T09:49:00.005-05:002010-08-02T10:02:45.313-05:00They break your heart every timeHere is my nasturtium tee-pee before I left on an out-of-state trip:Here is my tee-pee as I found it, six days later:Annuals break your heart every time. At some point, they just pucker out and there you are, left with the wilted, tattered remains. Have the plants reached the end of their life? Was it the heat? Was it too much rain? I am going to pick off the nasty bits tonight, and see what I Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-17086897299528730452010-07-27T07:31:00.006-05:002010-07-28T06:54:00.975-05:00A wedding offeringMy sister is getting married this weekend and we are all looking forward to celebrating with the happy couple. I leave my garden with some trepidation, knowing that a few days of not picking cucumbers or tomatoes could promise a pathetic vegetable patch on my return. I have promised the neighbor kids a monetary reward for keeping the vegetables picked and the containers watered. Twelve year-olds,Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-40708909592370228022010-07-24T15:30:00.001-05:002010-07-24T15:34:57.923-05:00The savory side of canningWith apricots and cherries in season, I am up to my ears in jam, despite the unavoidable fact that my family prefers salty preserves over sweet ones. It was time to put up some more savory treats, so I turned to a newly released book: Homemade Living: Canning and Preserving with Ashley English (I received a review copy from the publisher). Ashley English writes a blog, Small Measure, that will Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-14703613482249792052010-07-23T07:50:00.003-05:002010-07-23T08:23:02.971-05:00On sharing the garden wealthThis morning I experienced two conflicting emotions about sharing the bounty of my garden. On one hand, I need to foist off my surplus now, lest our family develop some kind of nutritional deficiency from living entirely off cucumbers. I collected a large basket of produce this morning from my beds, including the giant cucumber above that sneakily swelled up on a rogue vine behind the AC unit. I Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-39793793620497972202010-07-19T06:57:00.004-05:002010-07-19T08:03:30.676-05:00Better late than neverMy strawberry patch had a second flush of ripe berries over the weekend. Given the wealth of fresh plums, cherries and peaches on our counter right now, I feared that the strawberries would go uneaten. What? Homegrown strawberries uneaten? Well, we find these July berries to be a little less luscious then the first June crop -- blander and drier, likely secondary to the inevitable heat and water Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-68955887771205915242010-07-17T11:46:00.005-05:002010-07-19T08:08:54.808-05:00Vertical versus horizontal cucumbersI have four cucumber plants in my garden this year. Two are in a raised bed, sprawling along the ground in a forgotten corner of our patio. Two have been trained vertically up the sunniest section of fence in my yard. Both receive the same amount of water and light, but the sprawling plants are well ahead of the vertical climbers. What gives? The vertical climbers are lush with leaves and coveredAbbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-66843889901267286722010-07-14T08:12:00.006-05:002010-07-14T08:52:48.568-05:00L'eteI can't spend my summers in the French countryside, but at least my garden lets me eat like I'm there. The garden stars have finally aligned to give me all the critical ingredients for one of our favorite summertime dinners, a French tian. Tian is just a fancy way to say a baked vegetable casserole. Larousse Gastronomique officially defines it as "an earthenware ovenproof dish from Provence, Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-30404666943975002102010-07-12T11:51:00.003-05:002010-07-12T12:09:09.369-05:00Blossom End RotOne of my Opalka tomato plants has come down with blossom end rot. Blossom end rot (BER) is not a pathogen-borne disease, but rather a calcium-uptake issue. Either there is calcium soil deficiency, or conditions (drought or excess water usually) lead to impaired calcium delivery from the roots. None of the other neighboring tomatoes are suffering similar issues, so I am loathe to blame this on aAbbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-48398522371661276562010-07-10T20:25:00.005-05:002010-07-10T21:02:38.234-05:00Preserving cherriesIt is hard to face another canning project so soon after the flush of June strawberries. Early July offers a little bit of breathing space in my own edible garden. There is little to eat aside from young squash and the earliest of the cherry tomatoes, which are eaten immediately upon discovery. My blueberry bushes -- more likely candidates for preservation -- are young and only have a few berriesAbbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4554207859939311318.post-33570638389026020612010-07-09T07:28:00.006-05:002010-07-09T08:06:16.635-05:00July SurprisesThis week has brought me two sets of flowers I have never seen, from my hen and chick plant and from my spider plant. The hen and chick flower stalk is a little jarring -- making for an oddly asymmetric and top-heavy container. The mother hen plant will die after flowering, but fortunately there are plenty of chicks to take over. Some folks cut the stalks off, but I will keep it for now-- I want Abbiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11367654702422691061noreply@blogger.com1