Vertical versus horizontal cucumbers

I 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 covered in yellow blossoms. I planted these seeds at the same time, but the horizontal sprawlers are now laden with cukes. A bit of (non-scientific) internet research confirms that vertically grown plants have lower yields. One source attributed this to increased water loss in vertically grown vegetables, but argues that while per-plant yield is lower, per-square foot yield comes out ahead. I guess what confuses me is that difference isn't in yields as much as it is in maturity -- -- the horizontal plants are in some kind of two week time warp ahead of the verticals. Is it because the verticals have to put more energy into growing up rather than sideways?

I am in no hurry for the vertical cukes to start producing, because we can barely keep up with what we have. We have already had to compost a few behemoths that were uncovered well past their prime -- and here I thought that only happened with zucchini! I am planning on pickling the smallest cucumbers as cornichons this weekend. We are having Greek salad for every lunch -- yes, life could be worse. The lesson in all of this is the usual one for me: next year, fewer plants will do.

The Patron Saint of Lost Garden Causes

I stopped by the Kilbourn Park Organic Plant Sale today and as I was settling the bill, the cashier pointed out a forlorn group of plants. They had literally been kicked to the curb. There they sat, leggy and wilting, along the harsh sunny asphalt of the greenhouse driveway. She told me they were free for the taking and encouraged me to pick up a few. Sigh. I am not one to ever turn down a chance at plant redemption -- no matter how many bitter disappointments trail in my gardening wake.

Just moments before, I had been congratulating myself on my purchasing restraint. My garden is already bursting at the seams, and I still have many potted seedlings sitting around the patio. To further restrain myself, I had even arrived with just one $10 bill. I was careful in selecting a mere two herb plants -- anise hyssop and lovage. Both were herbs that I wanted to try out this year despite forgetting to purchase seed over the winter. Yet nothing quickens my pulse like the words "free plants" (except maybe "free seeds"). I inevitably looked over the sorry pots and found two that I didn't have the heart to abandon, a yarrow and some johnny-jump-ups. I love violas and am trying to get them to self-seed the whole northern edge of my backyard. The yarrow -- well, it looked horrible:

Yarrows are, however, such obliging plants, and do well in poor soil. After the harrowing ordeal of the porch reconstruction, my front bed is a mess of compacted, debris-laden dirt. Yarrow, peonies and poppies are my best bet at this point. I decided that a cutting-back and some gentle treatment might rescue this sorrowful specimen. If it dies, oh well! It was free. My husband just gave me a sad, unsurprised look as I came back to the car juggling an armful of pots. "Couldn't you have found more basil?" he sighed, eying the ferny, dying mess of the yarrow plant. This is what he gets for marrying the patron saint of lost garden causes. I pointed out that at least it is a cheap vice, unlike cigarettes or shoes.

Spring seedling protection

After the warm spell a few weeks back, Nature has emphatically reminded us that frost will threaten Chicago well into May. Blankets hopefully stowed away in closets have been pulled back out and spread once again across the bed. I recycled my milk gallon "cloches" during the early 80 degree weather, only to spend a hasty evening with a box cutter this past weekend, fashioning more.

This is not to say the garden has suffered. The peas, spinach and other cold-weather greens (mizuna, mustard, kale, chard) are thriving, but not yet at harvest stage. The herb garden is almost lush, and I can add tarragon, chives, thyme and oregano to my dinners with renewed culinary abandon. The first flush of asparagus is over, and I am waiting for another round of spears. The first of the strawberries are poking out of faded blossoms, and the rhubarb is looking almost prehistoric in size. But how have some of my other spring seedlings fared, those both naked and protected? Here is a photo update of my various experiments.

1. Cold frame lettuce: I sowed lettuce "tom thumb" on March 6th in both the cold frame and in a bed nearby, unprotected. After 6 weeks, there is a marked difference in the size of the seedlings - I didn't have a ruler, so I am using my size-11 foot for reference.

We have already thinned out the cold frame lettuce above for an early spring salad.

This unprotected lettuce has barely passed "microgreen" stage.

2. Store-bought vs DIY wall-o-water for tomatoes: As I posted a few weeks back, I set out two very small sweet 100 seedlings, with barely one set of true leaves. One went into a 2L pop-bottle fort and the other into a purchased Burpee brand wall-o-water. It pains my DIY aesthetic to report this, but the wall-o-water is vastly superior (and I even cheated and gave the DIY seedling a slightly sunnier spot!).

The amusing lesson in all of this, however, is that the most developed tomato seedling is the one I have left out to the elements:

Of course, this is an Early Girl, not a Sweet 100, so maybe she is just living up to her name. Her foliage is denser, her stems thicker. Lesson: if I am that committed to having home-grown tomatoes on the 4th of July table, perhaps time would be better spent growing earlier varieties, rather than coaxing mid-to-late season varieties into early harvests.

I have also noticed that my almost completely neglected wintersown tomatoes are rapidly catching up to my coddled sweet 100 seedlings. They too have thicker stems and denser foliage. Maybe all the indoor-start-hand-wringing is for nothing, and I should wintersow everything and be done with it. This is probably the sensible plan, and one that makes sense given my limited time. But then what would I fuss over in the waning weeks of winter? What would I do if I had no seedlings to run out and cover with homemade cloches? Why garden if you don't want to take pains, foolish though they may be?

Homegrown mushrooms

I awoke this morning to find that the lettuce has emerged in the cold frame. The first spring harvest is near! Well, the first spring garden harvest. We did eat homegrown food this week -- fresh food, that didn't come from a jar or my dried stores. Pictured above are specimens from my second crop of shiitake mushrooms. I grew them from one of those kits that you can buy in the many seed catalogs that besiege the hibernating gardener.

Pound for pound, this is not a cost-effective way to put mushrooms on the table. For a third of the price of the kit, I could buy a nice big bag of mushrooms from the farmer's market. I do like to grow my own food and it has been interesting to see the whole growth process, start to finish. Yet if I want to eat mushrooms in a financially sustainable way, the farmer's market is the clear choice. It seems like a more cost-effective way to grow at home would be to buy a big bag of plugs and innoculate a hardwood log in my yard, or scatter spawn in a large compost box...all more of an investment of time and money than I am ready to make at present. Just the care and feeding of the small mushroom kit was a little fussy for my taste -- it needs a humidity tent and regular misting, which proves challenging if we are out of the house for a few days. I am not ready to deal with a big box or log.

The shiitakes I have grown are bigger than the kind I see at the grocery store and, since they are newly harvested, quite moist and delicate. Clearly, they haven't been desiccating on a grocery store shelf for over a week. My shiitakes stood up well to stir-frying, but truth be told, I like dried shiitakes better for this kind of dish. I get a big bag of dried shiitakes from the Asian market and a few of these caps -- rehydrated in boiling water -- add a tasty, chewy bite to my stir-fries. Of course, who knows what type of farm the store mushrooms come from? The bag in my pantry reads "made in China". Now, I know there are likely some pockets of environmentally responsible agriculture in China, but whenever I read about Chinese farming and exports, I get a bit nervous about what's on my plate. I recently read Fuschia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper, and her reports of agricultural pollution and environmental destruction was a bleak moment in an otherwise warm memoir of the Chinese culinary scene.

Wild mushroom hunting has always fascinated me, but I am too chicken to really get into it. This book, Edible Wild Mushrooms of Illinois and Surrounding States, may change my mind, especially since it features many color photographs (black and white field guide drawings just ain't gonna cut it for me!). I would love to forage my own morels. Considering my husband was skittish about eating my shiitakes, I'm not sure I'll have an enthusiastic partner on this one. But, given the pollution issues of large-scale agricultural production, why do we feel safer with something packaged on our shelf? Shouldn't the dried shiitakes give more pause?

My new cold frame

The ground is still frozen solid and the snow is just now starting to melt away. Despite the frozen breaths, I smelled spring in the air as I worked outside this morning. I decided this was as good a time as any to bring my new cold frame out of the basement. I had been planning on painting it white on the inside and dark on the outside, to maximize reflection and absorption respectively. Then I got lazy and also a bit skittish about the safety of the paints so close to edibles. Finally, I'm trying to keep the cost of the project under 10 bucks, and I didn't have any deck or exterior paint lying around. Is this all to justify my lazy reluctance to paint? Perhaps. But this whole thing is built from scrap, except for the irregularly-sized plexiglass that I picked up cheap at Menard's. The frame is rickety enough to not last more than a few seasons. So, if this works out, I will likely build a more long-lasting structure with real woodworking effort. That then may justify the preservative power of paint and I would be willing to spend more time finding soil safe formulas. Then again, I may just move to straw bale or cinder block framing. We'll see.

The snow melt pattern in my garden demonstrates the microclimates in a narrow lot such as mine:

I located the cold frame site in the warmest area of my plot, keeping a sharp eye for the past few weeks on where the snow first began to disappear. The ground is still icy...I'm a hoping a week under the cold frame will warm things up a bit. I'll add in some compost once things get "workable" and then put in some spring seeds. This is more experimental than anything else this year, so I'm going to try a few of each vegetable, and see which one takes. The other thought would be to grow things in pots under the cold frame, treating it as a mini-green house rather than an in-ground season extender. This will be my plan B if my initial seed germination fails.

Had I but world enough and time, I would have built a much more aesthetically pleasing frame. I may be particularly vulnerable to the homeliness of my garden this weekend, since I am about to set off for the Chicago Flower and Garden Show. All of the gorgeous plants, containers and photographs are inevitably going to make me regret -- just a wee bit -- the DIY look of my home landscape. I wish all of my containers were arts-and-crafts-style cement urns -- the kind that grace the bungalows of Oak Park. Unfortunately, scavenged laundry tubs and buckets work just as well and cost nothing. I know my husband wishes that I would at least get rid of the buckets, but even he concedes that our house and garden is functional, and not meant to be a showpiece. We certainly aren't decreasing property prices in the neighborhood with our choices: at least our plants are REAL! Anyway, I will report back on the progress of the cold-frame and all of the luscious displays at the garden show. I will approach the show as I do a fine patisserie...I admire the gorgeous pastries for what they are: professionally-designed commercial products. But I go home to my free-form tarts and muffins with lopsided tops and eat happily, satisfying my own tastes.

Pruning grapes

The abundant and still-falling snow has lulled me into winter complacency, so much so that I was startled to be facing the first day of March this morning. I probably should have pruned my grapevine in February. The grapevine must be pruned while still dormant, before early spring when the sap rises. One must find the ephemeral pruning window between the last of the bitter cold and the first hint of spring in the air. Here is the state of the concord grapevine pre-pruning, and admittedly I did some gentle debulking earlier in the winter:

As with most garden projects, I am forced to rely on books, the Internet and youtube videos for instructions on how to complete the task of pruning. So many books advise the new gardener to find an experienced person and watch them, learn from them. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of wise old gardeners, and those I do know live far away. I could pay for the classes and workshops that pop up around the Chicago area, and I've done so before, but I have found I dislike the group learning scenario for garden topics. These workshops are usually packed with many people with even more beginning questions then me, or who are just *thinking* about gardening and haven't tried yet. I find it puzzling that some of these folks haven't done their homework beforehand (seriously, who pays $15 bucks for a seed starting workshop and then shows up not knowing that seeds come in different sizes?). Most irritatingly, I sign up for classes to watch a master at work, and it is usually hard to see the instructor. This is where I think belonging to a garden club would be a good idea -- I could easily find some willing mentors in the group. The problem for me with this, as with any club, is time: I work a very demanding job and have a small kid. The midweek daytime club gatherings just ain't gonna work, and weekends are for my own family and garden, not driving to yet another meeting.

Anyway, youtube is probably the best teacher for pruning grapes, outside of a real, living human being. Most of the book diagrams are designed for a more traditional wire trellis set-up, and I find many of the drawings quite difficult to decipher. I found the Dave's Nursery videos to be of particular use on youtube. Again, it did make me feel guilty about the flimsiness of my grape arbor...I should really have built a much sturdier structure along the side of my garage. I have compensated by keeping it tightly pruned to a few canes. At my next home, or if we wind up staying here past next summer, I will build a good strong arbor 5 or 6 feet deep, one ready to be well-laden with heavy bunches of fruit.

I read that Concord grape-type vines like long canes rather than short spurs, so I cut back to a few long canes, with 10 or 15 buds on each. This is the concord grape vine post pruning:

I should have been even harsher than this, but I left an extra branch of the central trunk, mostly because it served a structural purpose by tethering down my lightweight arbor. I pruned off all the canes though, so it should not tax the fruit growth on the other branches.

Finally, I realized I had a second forgotten grapevine stuck about four feet away from the concord. I am always startled to find that I have forgotten anything in my garden, since it is so small. There are days when I swear I know the contours of every leaf on every plant, since I have such a small space. When I put in the concord grapevine, I also bought another grapevine -- if memory serves, this was a buy-one-get-one bargain deal. I think it was a Niagara green grape; I can't be sure, since I lost the label. I stuck it in a suboptimal spot on the other side of the arbor and forgot about it while my concord took off like gangbusters. Last year, this three-year-old mystery vine took some serious damage in a windstorm, and I cut it back severely. I forgot I left it in-ground, and was surprised to see today that it had actually come back nicely. It didn't produce any grapes last season -- it didn't even prior to the damage -- so we'll see what happens this year. I decided to lean it back away from the arbor and train it along the neighboring fence, as the arbor can barely support the concord. This redirection again risked trunk damage -- looks okay for now, we'll see how it holds up. Per Martha Stewart's website, I pruned the branches of this one more severely, to only 3-4 buds.

If the Niagara grapes grow this season, it will be a nice bonus to have some table grapes in addition to the concords, which I use for jelly. A few sites state that it is commonly used for wines...maybe I can produce a bottle or two from my mini-vineyard!

Tomato experiment

Last year, two men at work were locked in a no-holds-barred race to have the first tomato of the season. Every day they discussed at length the walls-o-water, the cloches, the coddling. I found it all a bit tiring. I felt this macho race to be first had little point, since shortly we would all be up to our necks in warm-season crops, with coworkers carefully avoiding us lest they be handed another bag of cherry tomatoes or zucchini. I employed none of my colleagues' soil-warming techniques and wound up only a few weeks behind them....in the mean time, I had radishes.

I'm sure botanic journals are bursting with scientific reports on various approaches to starting tomato plants on a large scale. I like to read nerdy science stuff as much as the next garden geek, but sometimes I wonder what these carefully controlled professional garden trials have to do with my little home plot. I'm not trying to produce acres of productive, disease-free plants, or bring a sturdy fruit to market. I just want my lazy August bowls of insalata caprese. While we're at it, I wouldn't mind enough tomatoes to meet my spaghetti sauce needs for the winter months. Beyond that, is it just production for production's sake? Can you actually ever have too many tomatoes?

Moreover, can you ever have them too soon? By the beginning of September my family has usually tired of the salsas and tomato salads that we were savoring a few months prior. We are looking forward by then to winter squash, root vegetables and fall greens. By starting the season early, am I just creating an early start to the tomato ennui of late summer?

I saw a package of walls-o-water on sale last month, and decided to give them a try. My husband snickered, reminding me of my professed disdain for these contraptions last season. But I bought them, and hence the first tomato seeds were started a few days ago. I am not desperate to be the first with tomatoes on the snack table at work -- I'll leave that to the boys -- so why did I buy the walls-o-water? Mostly, I am just curious. I love to learn new techniques in both the garden and the kitchen. Do they really work so much better than plain-old "transplanting when the soil warms"? Maybe I just don't know what I'm missing out on. I sneered at salad spinners until I tried one, and was immediately converted. I suspect that a few extra weeks of tomatoes will probably not alter my life significantly, but at least the next time I roll my eyes at my competitive colleagues, I can do so from experience. And if my family ever goes deeper into local and sustainable eating, this season extension technique may be the difference between a new salad or yet another bowl of dried beans!

Since I was doing a head-to-head trial of walls-o-water versus my usual transplanting practice, I figured I'd throw in another branch to my research study and wintersow the same seeds. I just placed them in wintersown containers outside. While the wintersowing folks make no claim to earlier harvests, they do argue that the technique yields sturdier, healthier plants. I've never had much problem with tomato plant vigor (knock on wood). Usually, it's the opposite -- they seem to grow into every corner of my garden as soon as I turn my back. By the end of August, I can't keep up with all the tomatoes. Even if the wintersown seeds end up maturing later than the other plants, they can act as replacements should I lose a plant to pest or disease. Somehow I suspect all will do just fine in the end, and I will wind up with even more tomatoes than I usually harvest. Fortunately, I am trying out Opalka paste this year, and a surplus should just mean more days in the kitchen making sauce. Remind me how nonchalantly I wrote that last sentence when I am complaining about a weekend-long canning extravaganza this summer.

Winter sown seed on Candlemas

It is halfway to Spring and snow is falling in Chicagoland in big, thick flakes. I am glad for this reminder that we are still in the thick of winter, since it was only yesterday that I got around to starting my winter sown seed project.

As a cook, I thrill to the discovery of unfamiliar recipes and cooking methods. After years of braising, baking and stir-frying, it is always wonderful to feel the occasional jolt of the new and unexpected -like when I recently found a recipe for roasted garden radishes in Saveur. Rarely do I feel this jolt in my garden reading: year after year, the magazines and books recycle the same methods and advice. I tire of the litany, in the same way that I tire of reading, yet again, a cooking article on "sexy" Valentine's menus or reusing Thanksgiving leftovers. But new excitements still lurk, beneath the oft-repeated articles on "discovering" heirloom tomatoes. Eliot Coleman's Four-Season Harvest recently awakened my imagination, and got me thinking about the way I limit myself to edible gardening only in the warmth of summer. This primed me to be especially interested in a recent blog post at Artful Greens about an unfamiliar approach to seed starting: winter sowing.

It is no small excitement to flutter about with seed mats and grow lights, especially in the doldrums of January, but it always makes me sigh and wonder why I have complicated everything so much. All of these expensive accessories, all of the time rigging up wiring! Looking at my fussing, it should be a wonder my foremothers ever managed edible gardens and beautiful flowers. Wintersown.org encourages the curious gardener to throw the received wisdom of modern seed starting out the window. Sowing flats in the dead of winter, and leaving them outside under protection avoids all the nicking, filing and stratification we put seeds through just to mimic the treatment of a winter outside in the ground. Advocates of this method argue that not only does it save time and money, but it also yields hearty seedlings that are more productive over the long term. As further enticement, the lady at wintersown.org will even send you free seeds for the price of postage. With nothing to lose but two first-class stamps, I signed up.

My seeds came yesterday, and thanks to my husband's voracious milk habit, I had plenty of containers ready to recycle as mini-flats for my winter sowing. I found a great pictorial post on how to prep the jugs at the blog Our Little Acre. Some folks do a "U" shaped cut in the side of the milk jug and use it like a pull down flap. The cut-in-half method at Our Little Acre seemed easier in the long run, especially when removing seedlings. Above you will see my collection of nine "flats", with everything from columbine to kale, soapwort to tomatoes. If nothing comes up, all I have lost are some stamps and a pleasant afternoon in the basement, getting my fingernails dirty for the first time this year. I suspect, however, that something will germinate, and I will be converted to this new low-tech method. I am especially interested in the tomatoes. Beside what wintersown.org sent me, I may put out some Opalkas and Sweet 100's just to see what happens. I may never be able to rid myself of the heat mats, especially if I want my passion flowers and cacti. But just as a new recipe launches me on new adventure in the kitchen, this method has renewed my enthusiasm for gardening, no matter how thickly the snow falls outside.

First germination of 2010

I checked on my first seed-starting projects of 2010 today and was excited to find some babies popping up! I started my Passiflora incarnata seeds a mere two weeks ago. My web research had indicated that germination could take months, especially for seed that wasn't fresh out of the fruit. As is typical of gardening advice on the web, germination instructions varied wildly: some sites recommended soaking seed in passion fruit juice prior to planting, some said to nick or pre-soak in water while others just said to plant directly with no foreplay. I suspect some of the confusion stemmed from people discussing "passion fruit" seed rather than the specific scientific name of the plant -- there is more than one Passiflora! The seed packet had minimal information, and said germination occurred at 30 days to 3 months, with only a 30% germination rate. I planted 9 seeds and left them on top of my fridge, which I hoped would keep it at a tight 70 degrees. Last week, when I pulled out my seed heat mat, I decided to stick the P. incarnata on there, as I suspected that even with the radiant heat of the fridge, my kitchen temperature was more in the 60's on average.

Ahead of schedule, I have two seedlings. Maybe more will pop up -- I am owed another one, if I am to trust the reported germination rate. I wasn't expecting such rapid progress -- now I am worried I started too soon. Fortunately, I saved some seed for this exact scenario -- when you are facing a spotty "days to months" germination prediction, one always needs to keep some reserves. I will be breaking out the grow lights sooner than expected, and hopefully I will have a nice healthy plant to put out in the spring. For all of the hand-wringing about the difficulty of propagating from seed, the Maypop passion fruit seems to be cheerfully resilient. Many gardeners in warmer zones complain about the plant's invasiveness, and by all reports the hardiness limits are underestimated. I will hedge my bets (if I only have these two seedlings) and stick one in a pot to bring in to overwinter, and one in the ground, close to the house to benefit from a warmer microclimate.

The other little seeds that popped up are my cacti -- I got a packet from Pinetree Garden Seed on a whim, and picked up a bag of cactus mix medium on sale at Lowe's. The seeds are incredibly small and must be sown on top of the surface since they need light for germination. I stuck these on my seed mat as well. At first, I had Saran wrap over the rectangular container, but when water condensed it drooped onto the medium. When I pulled up the wrap, little black specks were sticking to it, and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what was potting medium and what was a cactus seed. I scraped as much as a could back onto the surface, and put a seed starting tray lid on top. Here is the first germinator! The packet was a mix of several different types of cacti, so this is another "days to months" scenario. I will keep a close watch -- I may need to prick out the early risers and transplant to a different pot as environmental needs change.

Finally there are my hellebore, which are still in their cold stratification period. They currently inhabit the butter compartment of my fridge. I get to pull the bag of seeds and medium out on March 15th and send it into the homestretch of germination. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it works. If not, I have to repeat the 5 month warm-cold-warm process. Aargh! I am so desperate for some hellebore that I may just suck it up and pay the premium prices for a plant at the nursery. My passion fruit and cacti give me hope, though. Maybe my seed-starting stars have aligned for 2010.

The intensive raised bed

I sifted through my seed packets today and laid out a plan for the first area of my garden: the 4x4 foot raised bed. I am going to attempt to succession plant this bed using a cold frame and floating covers on both ends of the growing season. I have divided the bed into 9 sections, similar to a square foot gardening approach -- I'm not sure I am going to put a physical grid down, I think I can keep it straight! I know there are probably nicer designs, with beans winding up the corn stalks and radishes interplanted with carrots, but dividing into discrete planting areas does make intensive succession planting easier.

Even with a late start and a cold, wet summer, I was surprised by how productive this bed was last year. While my approach emphasized variety over volume, I still had so many vegetables from just this one bed that we dried and canned several things. And, honestly, how much Swiss chard can a family of three eat? But what about corn?, you may ask. Surely a mere 4 stalks is verging on the ridiculous. Well, I have excellent local sources of corn. And I'm not trying to feed my family from this one bed. I see it mostly as a way to gain experience with succession crops, with cultivating various vegetables, and with companion planting. This is my future writ small. The experience I gain can be easily transferred to a quarter acre or ten acres or wherever I eventually land. Watching and caring for 4 stalks of corn through a season gives as much knowledge as watching 400.

Last year's heavy production was likely due to the bed's location in the absolutely sunniest part of my yard. The bed also sits in close proximity to both the hose and the compost pile, so it is easy to keep watered and well-mulched. One end of the bed sits right up against the west-facing wall of my house. Thus the bed enjoys radiant heat and wind protection, and this also gives me a support against which to trellis the pole beans. At the close of the season, I layered it with manure and garden compost, and now it sits, frosted in snow, ready to get back into action.

Here's my plan below -- please forgive the lame graphics. I've listed the vegetables in order of planting. So, for example, I'll put the radishes in the upper right corner in March (and succession plant those for a few weeks), followed by corn once the soil warms up. I have read that you can get a late fall crop of sugar snap peas if you plant 10 weeks before the first frost. If the corn is done by late August, I may be able to squeeze them in, especially if I give some late October protection. Ambitious? Yes. But I am optimistic.

Parsnips	Chiogga Beets Blue Lake pole beans Mustard greens	French Breakfast Radish Corn Sugar Snaps
Witloof Chicory Daikon	Pea Cucumber French breakfast radish	Daikon Basil Kale
Sugar snaps Bush bean Carrots	Nasturtium Swiss chard	Swiss chard Hot peppers Beets

The year of the stinky onion?

This is the third year that all Chicagoans can achieve horticultural unity and sow seed together, courtesy of One Seed Chicago. This "urban greening project" distributes free seed packets of a single selection to all interested Chicagoland residents. Everyone then raises the same plant in their yard, school or community garden. The idea is to foster a green community spirit. This effort is similar to the Chicago Public Library's "One Book, One Chicago" campaign, where folks city-wide are encouraged to read and discuss a chosen book. Chicago is a large, sprawling city and it warms my heart to think of the same little seeds bursting forth in both a fancy Lincoln Park yard and a scrappy Southwest side community garden.

Last year, the selection was Blue Lake pole beans. Despite the dismal summer weather of 2009, these were a great success in our square foot garden bed. We had plenty of fresh beans, and even pickled some for winter use. It was interesting to stroll around various neighborhoods and see evidence of One Seed Chicago trailing up the side of some one's house -- a garden version of a secret handshake.

Voting has begun for the 2010 seed choice. For those of you in the Chicagoland area, you can cast your on-line ballot now, and the winner will be mailed to you. This year the choices are purple cone flower, bee balm and nodding onion. I voted for bee balm, mainly because I have too many Echinacea and Allium in my tiny plot as it is. I've been considering adding a Monarda or two, so this is my chance. I'm particularly hoping the Bee Balm wins since its herbal use includes treatment of gingivitis and dental caries. I recently found some seed for the toothache plant, Acmella oleracea (the name says it all -- chew the blossoms and your mouth numbs). Wouldn't it be great to plant a section of garden in honor of oral hygiene? I'll make sure to put it near the mint...then all the necessary ingredients for homemade mouthwash will be close at hand.

Enticing though it may be to concoct my own herbal Listerine, I suspect the nodding onion will win. Yes, my words are marked here, three months before the results are revealed. I'm betting on the romance of our city's name to carry the day. As the guidebook introduction goes, "Chicago" likely derives from a native word for "stinky onion". How can we resist planting such a tribute to our storied city? Considering the various alliums crowding every nook and cranny of my tiny yard, I can say with confidence I already live in the land of the stinky onion. But can a collector ever say no? I will certainly participate with enthusiasm no matter what the winning seed. How about dropping five or ten bucks and starting your own One Seed project in your neighborhood?

Laying out the game plan

With 2010 seed packets beginning to arrive, my fingers are twitching to start the spring garden. It is months away, but I have promised myself that this year I am going in with a game plan. I used to be one of those gardeners who realized it was Memorial Day and would go to the nursery, buy some plants and plant them in one weekend-long burst of garden energy. I rarely considered eventual height, relative water needs or companion planting issues. If I found some interesting seed packets, I would scatter those about the remaining bare spaces. The resulting garden plot was usually productive, but never as much as it could be. It surely looked haphazard. And, by the time the idea of fall crops crossed my mind, it was usually too late to get anything started.

This year, I will have a more careful approach. This should help me have a true three seasons of harvests and should also help me keep my resolution of not over-planting vegetables. It will let me thoughtfully incorporate companion planting ideas. In a perfect world, this game plan would also limit the impulse purchases in the spring - ha! Inevitably a few wayward specimens will make their way in under the radar -- it is too hard to resist all the spring temptations. But no longer will I impulse buy three Thai hot pepper plants only to realize I have space for one, or purchase zucchini seeds when I already have two packets at home. If I know I am going to need certain supplies (new trellises, or large tree-size containers), I can scour the stores now, prior to the costly exuberance of the new season.

I do wish I wasn't forced to use my space quite so thoughtfully. There are those lucky gardeners who have a long, warm growing season and more than a narrow Chicago lot as their gardening canvas. I enviously imagine them strolling through their acres of sunny backyard, deciding to install berry patches on a whim, or planting a 25 foot row of okra without the slightest concern for the first hard frost. Unfortunately for me, each square foot of garden must be carefully considered. The growing season is short in Zone 5, and I must maximize the heat if I want to get certain vegetables on the table. Moreover, the cruel calculus of urban space rationing means no sandbox in favor of a strawberry bed; no swing-set in favor of one beautiful flowering tree. I remind myself that the sandbox would just be a toilet for alley cats, and that we live close enough to city parks that my child is most certainly not deprived of recreational opportunities.

I have been investigating various on-line garden planning tools. The two that were the most readily accessible were www.plangarden.com and the Gardener's Supply Company. Both have their merits, but neither beat out plain old pencil and paper. Plangarden has a nerdy feature that lets you track the harvest and the relative money earned from your crops. Gardener's Supply offers quickly accessed advice on how many seeds to use per square foot, as well as a printable, personalized guide to sowing and plant care. Neither one boasts a sufficient variety of vegetables, herbs and flowers in their preloaded menu of garden options. Moreover, I can't seem to find a feature in either that lets you plan for a double-use of the space (i.e. radishes followed by kale). In the end, I will resort to a pleasant afternoon of paper and colored pencils.

I am a shameless lover of Martha Stewart Living, and I aspire to the "garden inspiration boards" the magazine often features in its pages. If you read the magazine, and even if you don't, you probably know of what I speak: imagine expensive grosgrain ribbon crisscrossing a fabric-covered cork board (the fabric is usually robin's-egg blue). Beautiful photographs of plants as well as old-fashioned seed packets are tucked into the ribbons, and postcard-sized watercolors of flower beds are pinned carefully about. Usually this work of art hangs over a beautiful antique wooden desk arranged with gorgeous secateurs, unmuddied garden gloves and a few cuttings of rosemary. If only we all had such a station for inspiration! This is a far cry from my scribbles, hung with masking tape on a basement wall above an old laminate kitchen counter. It comes down to hopefulness either way, be-ribboned or not. Stretching before us is the new season, full of promise.

The Obligatory Post of Garden Resolutions

The new calendar year starts today and visions of the 2010 garden dance in my head. I'm sure every garden journal and blog today will be replete with earnest commitments for the coming season, and I gladly join the chorus of hopeful resolutions.

1. Share seasonal feasts. Our family life is marked by the appearance of much-anticipated foods from the garden. The Italians have a word for a festival celebrating the bounty of a single, local ingredient: sagra. Our personal sagre include the first radishes, the four-course chive extravaganza, the first fried zucchini blossoms, the first tomato-basil salad ... the list goes on. I resolve to invite fellow food lovers to our table to share in the celebration. Perhaps even a potluck for spring food, summer food and fall food?

2. Vegetables: more variety, fewer plants. As I've discussed before, I usually over-plant certain vegetables -- a family of three, for example, just doesn't need three cherry tomato plants. In a very small garden such as mine, one or two plants of each kind should trump a row of a single species. Usually I dedicate too much real estate to a certain vegetable because a) they came in a four-pack at the nursery or b) the seed pack had 300 seeds in it. I resolve to start my own seeds when possible, and if I buy a four-pack I will gift the excess plants to neighbors. I will either share the excess seed, store it carefully for next season or guerrilla garden it it the vacant lots nearby.

3. Flowers: less variety, more plants. While I over-plant certain vegetables, I tend to take the opposite approach with my perennials. Usually my garden beds are studded with single specimens rescued from the end-of-season bargain table at the nursery. In the fall, I dug up and divided, and tried to mass my plantings more. I resolve to adhere to the design wisdom that even small gardens look nicer with healthy drifts of a single species rather than random scatterings of one or two plants.

Naturally, the garden cycle breaks into yearly increments and I am glad to set these goals for the coming months. Yet I want to move past the short-term, the myopic burst of fecundity that I tend each season. I resolve to be content with, as Wendell Berry writes, the crop I did not plant and that I will not harvest. I want to invest in the decade! In the millennium! On the first day of the year, I usually turn to Whitman. So here, from Song of Myself is my resolution of contentment:

"And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,/ I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait./My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,/I laugh at what you call dissolution,/And I know the amplitude of time"

My first "greenhouse"

Well, my Christmas present has arrived....my first little greenhouse! It probably barely qualifies as one, since it is basically a shelf with a fitted plastic cover. Had I been a little more crafty and resourceful, I probably could have rigged one up myself. But, I received some holiday spending money specifically designated to be used towards gardening supplies, so I decided to try it out. I seriously considered buying this asparagus harvesting knife, but restrained myself. A simple kitchen knife does just as well, and it's not like I'm harvesting from a giant patch!

I have read all the reviews of this type of mini-greenhouse, and people were generally positive. Most of the negative critiques had to do with the propensity to being blown over and that the cover wears out after a few seasons. But, for 50 bucks, I'm not sure what people want. Folks generally say to put it in a protected area, with bricks or heavy pots on the bottom, and it will stay in place. Part of me wanted to hold out until I had the space for a beautiful, more permanent structure. In buying this cheap, intermediate tool to extend my growing season, I am going against some commitments I recently made to myself about long-term investments. In the end, my desire for a different approach to seed-starting won out. Additionally, with space at a serious premium, this was just about the size of sunny real estate I was willing to give up in my yard.

For years, I have struggled with seed starting and getting a jump on the growing season. So many books instruct the beginning gardener to place little pots in a sunny window. But no matter how sunny the window, my seedlings usually turned out leggy. And now, with a curious toddler about, nothing lasts very long on a window sill. I tried grow lights as well, which worked a bit better, but made me feel a bit disconnected from the "natural" process. It all seemed too industrial, and walking into the eerie glow of my basement at seed starting time made me feel like I was on Star Trek.

I did find an interesting suggestion for seed starting in some now-forgotten gardening book I skimmed through at the library. The author suggested that, if you don't have your own greenhouse, just befriend the local independently-owned nursery. Give them your seed packets, have them start the little buggers, and then buy them back at the three dollar price tag that the nursery puts on all of their seedlings. She argued that the premium was worth the labor saved, and that also the nursery gets to sell more heirloom seedlings. I don't have the chutzpah to try this. Nor does one ever, in my opinion, get into gardening to avoid unnecessary labor. So, hopefully this mini-greenhouse will give me a jump start on the season. The shelves can be moved later, to give me more container-garden space. Or, one reviewer did say she grew a vertical container garden of lettuce and microgreens on the shelves, once the summer heat rendered the cover useless.

It is indeed still winter, but the solstice has passed and the new calendar year is upon us. This greenhouse is a harbinger of the new season, like the first sighting of a warbler or the new blades of chives pushing up through spring earth. I will have to wait for March for the latter two, but until then, I can plot my seed-starting on my four tiers of "growhouse".

Winter Garden Project Update

Planning for my winter garden projects can often mimic planning for the actual garden itself. A long season stretches out ahead of me. In a fervor of excitement and overconfidence, I forget my work obligations, my family obligations and my budget constraints. Example: I actually printed out blueprints for a 6 foot long grape arbor, imagining I could set it up in my basement prior to the spring. A whole month of winter has gone by, and nothing has been done except lying on the couch imagining myself lounging in the dappled shade of fruit-laden vines. I have tabled that project for the moment. Anyway, that's where I want to put a chicken coop....someday. Here's the project updates, mostly to remind myself for next year, when I get carried away again.

1. Worm Bins

The worms have been relocated to the basement. They lived with us in our front hall for the first few weeks, but I was forced to send them into the netherworld of our house. First, the bin did smell. It wasn't a bad smell, but it was definitely not odorless. Before the worm bin enthusiasts jump all over this one, I promise that I did set up the bin correctly. It wasn't too wet, it had enough bedding and I was careful not to overfeed. But, I would come home after work, and my whole house was permeated with a gentle "rotting leaves" kind of smell. Not unpleasant, but also not the ambiance I'm shooting for in my living room. Second, in the interest of my worms' health, it was also better to move them a little further out of reach. Having them that close to the kitchen definitely led to the temptation to overfeed. The basement is more conducive to a weekly or biweekly burial of vegetable scrap. The rest just goes into one of our outdoor composters to freeze over until spring. The worms are just not breaking down the amount of vegetable matter that I thought they would. Maybe this is because they are new to their bin, and it is winter. I will keep an eye on this, but for now, they are barely scratching the surface of our daily compostable scraps.

2. Cold Frames

I have decided where the cold frames are going, and have measured out the area. They will get pride of place in a spot adjacent to the asparagus bed, since it gets some of the best southern sun in my garden. Something happened with the heavy rains in the fall, and this normally level section of my garden was regraded into a micro-slope. Now, I am trying to figure out how to prevent a spring bog in this little 3X5 ft area. I am probably going to dump a good amount of compost on there in the next few weeks, and let it over-rot until the spring, Lasagna-garden style.

As for the frames themselves, I have enough wood scrap around to build the base, most of it old shelving from the closet I re-organized this summer. I had planned to use some old storm windows as the top of the frame, until I started my library research. Jeff Ashton, author of The 12-Month Gardener, argues against use of recycled windows in cold frames. Kids, he warns "at some point, will climb on top of a cold frame, or kick through some other home-spun glass contraption. Apparently, the allure of a raised platform...is too much to resist...I've heard horror stories...kids, animals, or adults who were cut because they fell onto the frame, climbed on top and broke through, or sat on the frame thinking the glass would hold their weight". While I do usually try to avoid the "danger at every turn" approach to parenting, Ashton's warning seems wise. I am the mother of an avid climber, and can only imagine the damage that shards of glass could do to his little legs. So, I am planning on a reconnaissance mission to the hardware store to see what types of fiberglass or plastic I might be able to use.

I think this cold frame project is in reach before the cruel winds of March roll in, and my fingers get itchy to plant radish seed. I have a whole list of other things I wish I had the time to do over the winter: the grape arbor, a home-built wooden cheese press, seed starting shelves in my sunniest window, a chicken coop for the long-awaited chickens, and, most fancifully, a small urban greenhouse. That greenhouse will likely not materialize in the next few years, but I just found a cool jar, so my son and I will create a terrarium. Right after I finish those cold frames.

Pride and prejudice

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an urban gardener in possession of a good portion of shade must be in want of a new shade plant. Hostas only go so far, and already they command a large area of shady real estate in my garden. "Large" is, of course, a relative term, when one considers my narrow Chicago lot. Earlier this fall, I summoned previously hidden wells of plant cruelty and heavily edited my backyard beds. I divided, I dug up, I composted. Now, I am left with some gaping holes, mostly part-sun to light shade. I have finally cleared the way for a nascent obsession: hellebores.

Now, I admit, I tread fashionable ground on this one. It is like admitting a nascent obsession with butchering, locally-sourced cocktail ingredients, or Grizzly Bear's latest album. I am making an effort to accept that I am an ordinary dilettante gardener, and that I should stick to the tried-and-true plants noted in gardening books for their ease, economy and reliability. Who am I to be too proud to plant begonias and impatiens? How dare I be a snob about hostas, especially when they brighten up otherwise dank corners in my yard? But, I do have a kernel of prejudice for the ordinary. I welcome work-a-day plants in my garden, but long for some corners of "plantsmen's plants" and rare specimens. This is not unlike the aspiring cook's habit of serving a comfort food like macaroni and cheese, but lacing it with a rare ingredient like truffles. The dish may seem ordinary at first, but take a bite and you will understand that the cook knows something special, has taken the time to offer a precious taste.

Ever since I laid eyes on a "Lenten Rose" at a nearby fancy-pants nursery this past season, I have been plotting my entrance into the world of Helleborus. Reading of them in Our Life in Gardens only stoked the flames of enthusiasm. I was scared off by the price last year -- the plants are expensive, partly because of burgeoning demand and partly because they are a challenge to produce quickly on a large scale. As usual, I am now ashamed of my chintziness: once they are well-situated, this is a plant that keeps on giving. Plant Delights Nursery gives a wonderful testimonial of a hellebore garden from the 1940's surviving despite being home to a frat house for over 50 years!

I firmed up my budgetary resolve for this upcoming season, and was ready to spend for a few good plants. If it meant less pots or annual flats, so be it. Then, as I was perusing the first of the seed catalogs, I noticed a package of H. orientalis seed for a couple of bucks. Impulse seed purchases began early for the 2010 season. Of course, it was only after they arrived that I started to do my research. Germination can take over 18 months! Only the freshest of seeds should be planted! I scanned the hellebore websites with growing dismay: impassioned gardeners battled over the minutiae of germination, but all seemed to agree that it was best started in the spring or fall. So, I was faced with a dilemma. I could hold on to the seed for direct sowing in March, or I could try to kick-start the process now. I worried that holding on to it would compromise the "freshness" factor. I worried that starting it now would leave me with tender seedlings at the wrong time of year, should my efforts succeed. I do recognize the irony of my worry over a two-dollar packet of seeds, when I had previously decided to drop a hundred bucks on mature specimens in the spring.

I decided to plunge right in. The source of the seeds offered little instruction as to the best method of germination, so I will have to go with the Internet on this one. I went with the most authoritative post on one of the gardening forums, who advocated for Tom Clothier's method. Soak the seed in warm water, then subject them to months-long cycles of warm and cold, with the aid of your refrigerator. The first cycle will probably take about 5 months, which will hopefully give me some seedlings in April, just in time to put outside with protection. We'll see what happens. I applaud the seed-sellers who managed to lure me into a seed impulse buy before the year even turned. But, should this experiment work, this gardener will be ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the company who, by bringing her into the world of home germination, had been the means of uniting her with hellebores.

Strawberries to bed

I woke up this morning to find my raised beds heaved out of place by the overnight cold. One side of the strawberry bed had burst open -- the victim of a curious toddler having removed some of the reinforcing anchors. I had been waiting to mulch my strawberries. All my references had advised to mulch only after several frosts. But, I figured if it was cold enough to make the soil in my bed expand this forcefully, I should mulch now. I don't want my strawberry crowns to be damaged or heaved out of place. So, after a rib-sticking breakfast, my toddler son and I went out to face the 6 am cold with a pile of newspapers, and we layered them around the plants. Then, we spread a good 4 inches of shredded wood on top.

The traditional mulch for strawberries is barley straw, which I am sure is more picturesque than the newspapers and wood I used. Straw mulch was difficult for me to find, and I don't have a pick-up for transporting a big load anyway, so the bags of organic shredded wood from a local nursery were my compromise. I saw last season that the North Park Nature Village offers straw mulch for the taking. I worried that this free straw would bring seeds of the North Park prairie plants along with it, and I don't want troublesome weeds in my beds. Apparently the city offers free mulch as well -- from chipped trees -- but you have to take a lot, and some folks have reported insect infestations following its use. Strawberry care sources also suggest using leaves as mulch or just newspapers, but I have tried both in other areas of the garden and they blow away. And the newspapers look terrible -- soggy and depressing.

I have been surprised by how engaged my son has been in the care of the late fall garden. I thought he would only want to participate when big vegetables were growing and the soil was squishy and earthworms abounded. Indeed, whenever I see discussions of children's gardening -- Joe Eck being the one exception--, there is focus on rapid production of showy plants or easily harvested vegetables. But my son has enjoyed composting debris, layering mulches, and planting bulbs. This is a reminder to me that children too can enjoy chores and the excitement of planning for another season. If we only offer them radishes and sunflowers in "children's gardens", then how will they ever learn the peace of a spent garden, well-tended, or the subtle pleasure of a cold morning and sweet-smelling mulch? We worked together to spread a satisfyingly large pile of mulch around the bed, and I watched as he fit the rhythm of gardening into his own toddler life: "Good night, strawberries! Go to bed!" he chirped as he patted down the wood. "Don't let the bedbugs bite!".

Front bed in peril

When I was in college, I lived in Bolivia for 6 months. There was no available mid-semester storage, so I had brought most of my earthly possessions: books, clothes, CDs, etc. More stuff accumulated over the course of the 6 months, and as I headed back to college I was burdened with three large duffels, all of which required extra payment for being overweight. When I landed in New Jersey, none of my bags appeared on the baggage claim. My instant reaction was utter and total relief. Nearly everything I owned had disappeared. I wasn't at all sad or regretful. I imagined buying a small amount of new clothes, and slowly replacing my books, burning borrowed CDs. My whole life could be edited, reinvented on a smaller scale. Of course, everything eventually found its way to me a few days later, but for a few days I walked around light as air.

A similar feeling came upon me as we talked to our contractor a few nights ago. Our front porch is being demolished and replaced, and as he sat sketching out the game plan for an expedited job prior to the winter cold, I realized my front garden bed was toast. I looked at him, trying to conceal my hope: "Will all my plants be destroyed?" I asked. He looked uncomfortable. "We'll do our best to not damage them", with the same aspirational tone he had used when he told us the whole porch was to have been finished within two days, a month ago. My husband glared at me and went back to discussing the finer points of permit acquisition. Once again, the baggage had disappeared. I imagined a new bed, prettier, more well arranged, less haphazard.

Right now our front garden bed is a complete mish-mosh, mostly plants orphaned by the previous owner of the house, with two peonies thrown in by us the first year. The one beautiful specimen, a deep magenta rose, succumbed to some blight late last year, and did not bounce back this summer as we had hoped. As we spend most of our time in the backyard and only enter the house by the back door, I always focus my burst of spring and fall gardening energy in the rear of the house. By the time I consider the front, I am tired, and figure I'll just leave well enough alone. Of course, when I approach my house by the street instead of the alley, or when we have friends over who will enter by the front door, I feel sad about how the front yard only enhances the ragamuffin appearance of our home. With our listing porch now hopefully a thing of the past, I expect to feel newly inspired to actually put some thought into the front. It is like losing 20 pounds and going out for a new clothes shop.

If they survive the onslaught of construction, I will keep the peonies, and add more. They look great, even when their flowers are gone, and seem to thrive on total neglect. After that....who knows? While my husband gives me total reign in the back yard, I have a feeling he'll actually care about the choice of plants in the front, so likely I will find a time for us to sit down together and pore through the garden books. Our usual disagreement revolves around color choice. I like whites, pale pinks, delicate yellows. He likes a bolder, hotter color palate. One exception to my color taste is the slim bed edging our front fence: I put in California poppies the first year, and now they self-seed with abandon. I love their delicate foliage and their beautiful cheery colors. Although I'm sure I could plant something more sophisticated, they edge the fence happily with minimal care. And this is one plant that I know will come back no matter how many boots trample on the soil, or how much the bed is disturbed by planks and debris.