We are getting our selves ready for the winter at the farm these days. Taking out all the growth from this summer (those amazing corn stalks and leafy tomato plants), turning under the last of the lettuce leftovers into the soil and building cold frames for some winter planting. We had a great team of volunteers this past week, who helped us construct 2 cold frames on our ground level beds. The day we built them was cold and very much an autumn afternoon, but we managed to build both cold frames in record time. The cover will provide some added warmth for our garlic, onions, spinach, kale and chard, as we move swiftly into the winter season. We will be starting our cold frames with a cover of row cloth, a fabric that lets light and air and water through, but still provides a blanket of warmth, and then we will move into plastic sheeting when the weather gets real cold. As usual, this is an experiment, so I'll keep you up to date with how the results turn out.
Thankfully for us the weather this week is warmer, in the 60's!, and is providing us with perfect cover cropping days! We will be spreading a cover crop mix of vetch, winter rye and a few other cold hardy varietals in all of our ground level and rooftop beds. I am hoping this helps to fix some of the nitrogen loss from this season and that we are able to build healthy soil for next year. The cover crop mix we are using is from Peaceful Valley Farm Supply, it's their Soil Builder Mix. I have had great success with their products, and I am looking forward to the tall grains fortifying our soil throughout the winter.
Next week we put our garlic and onions into the raised beds, so stay tuned for some how-to photos!
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
October showers bring November flowers? Why spring has arrived again.
It is rainy. Big surprise there. But it almost feels like spring showers to me today. Maybe it's just the peas, radishes and lettuces we have growing on the roof right now. That's right, we have new rounds of peas shooting up and lots of radishes and even some pac choi. The weather is perfect for them, so I figure why not! Last year we got a pretty good fall harvest of peas and this year is looking good so far.
It has only started to feel like fall because the leaves are gracing us with their gorgeous yellows and reds, apples are all over the farmers markets and we had to take out all the dying sunflowers. I love fall though, with it's crisp mornings and showers of leaves. This fall is falling in suit with the summer and continues to be rainy, but I feel that is almost appropriate. The grey weather is forcing me to stay indoors, make hot apple cider, can this seasons best produce and dehydrate the rest, stocking up for the cold winter ahead.
We are hosting a few volunteer days this month, if you'd like to join us please email me at natalie@uncommonground.com.
COLD FRAME BUILDING WORKDAY - OCTOBER 14th, 4pm-7pm
Refreshments will be provided. Come for part or all of the workday!
Our farm needs help with late season and overwinter growing! We will be constructing
new cold frames to cover some of our planting beds at ground level. These
cold frames will help to extend the growing season into the winter. Techniques for
building a cold frame will be covered, as well as the knowledge behind
how to use a cold frame in your own backyard. Come help us and learn
how to grow in a Chicago winter outdoors!
WINTER PLANTING WORKDAY - OCTOBER 28th, 4pm-7pm
Refreshments will be provided. Come for part or all of the workday!
We will be planting in the hoop houses at ground level for early winter salad greens.
We will also be planting garlic in our other raised beds at ground level. This workday includes
a primer on winter growing, both covered and uncovered, and will help you know what to
get started now for next springs harvest!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
And there goes September...
Sorry for the delay in posting, September seems to have passed me by.Lucky for us this month showed some warmer temperatures, still cool in the evenings, but nice and consistently warm during the days. This has provided us with over 100 pounds of tomatoes this month alone!! I finally breathed a sigh of relief that we are actually going to get a decent harvest this year, of something. I thought I would share some photos of what we have been harvesting lately, including yard long pole beans (their as long as my arm!), striped roman tomatoes, daikon radishes, and our lovely intern Shantell hugging our Bantam corn harvest!
We celebrated this month with our Harvest Party on September 18th, if you didn't make it you should come next year! It was a blast! Live music from 4-10pm, a farmers market, roasting pigs and beer! What more could one ask for in a Friday evening? It marked the kick-off for the World Music Festival, which occurs at several venues throughout town. If you have the chance to catch some of the acts, it's well worth it.
Stay tuned for a call for volunteers! As we move in the fall we will be building hoop houses over our ground level beds. We will also be planting garlic, onions and spinach soon and will need extra hands!
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
The shift of seasons
It is cold, again.
I woke up this morning and felt, for the first time this season, the fall chill in the air, enough to make me not want to leave the warmth of my bed. For real, what is up with the early fall, or the entire lack of summer. I feel like summer took a summer vacation this year.
The squash is not happy about the down turn in temperature. Neither are the beans or the corn or the tomatoes. The squash has shriveled it's gorgeous large leaves and hasn't recovered. The fruit of the plant is also looking sad, and I fear now that my forecast of a great squash harvest is going to fail. I fear too that the tomatoes will not rebound from another cold snap, they are taking forever to turn red, yellow or purple, given the varietal.
Tomatoes are one of my most favorite things on Earth, ever. And more than disliking the slow uptake of summer, I dislike a summer without tomatoes. How can this even be called summer without a rich harvest of tomatoes? Err. It is like going without raspberries or corn on the 4th of July or without mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. Sometimes I think about how our climate is shifting and that we are being slowly (or in this summers case, drastically quickly) moved into a shift of what our seasons mean to us. Will we continue to have the late summer harvest of sweet corn, or the large, hot sun indulging, pumpkins that sit and wait for Halloween to come? Or, will that now happen in August because the hot weather only lasts for a few weeks and the fall starts sooner?
I grew up in southwest Colorado, way up in the mountains (10,000 feet above sea level), in a tiny ski town called Crested Butte. It snows there from the end of September through early June (and several times it snowed on the 4th of July's parade). The summer happens in July and lasts, maybe, into early August, the fall happens in late August, leaves fall off the trees in September and then it goes back to winter. We, according to the locals, have 3 seasons; winter, summer and mud season. And even there the harvest of raspberries came in strong, the tomatoes ripened nicely in late July and the pumpkins were popping in October, despite the calculated snowfall that would always happen on Halloween night. So, I think if we are to suffer the shift of shorter summers being the norm then we may be able to make it work, we just have to adapt. Luckily we are quite adept at doing just that. I will plant more radishes, carrots, lettuces, kales, onions and garlic in the next few weeks, gearing us up for that early autumn growing season, even though it's the first day of September.
I woke up this morning and felt, for the first time this season, the fall chill in the air, enough to make me not want to leave the warmth of my bed. For real, what is up with the early fall, or the entire lack of summer. I feel like summer took a summer vacation this year.
The squash is not happy about the down turn in temperature. Neither are the beans or the corn or the tomatoes. The squash has shriveled it's gorgeous large leaves and hasn't recovered. The fruit of the plant is also looking sad, and I fear now that my forecast of a great squash harvest is going to fail. I fear too that the tomatoes will not rebound from another cold snap, they are taking forever to turn red, yellow or purple, given the varietal.
Tomatoes are one of my most favorite things on Earth, ever. And more than disliking the slow uptake of summer, I dislike a summer without tomatoes. How can this even be called summer without a rich harvest of tomatoes? Err. It is like going without raspberries or corn on the 4th of July or without mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving. Sometimes I think about how our climate is shifting and that we are being slowly (or in this summers case, drastically quickly) moved into a shift of what our seasons mean to us. Will we continue to have the late summer harvest of sweet corn, or the large, hot sun indulging, pumpkins that sit and wait for Halloween to come? Or, will that now happen in August because the hot weather only lasts for a few weeks and the fall starts sooner?
I grew up in southwest Colorado, way up in the mountains (10,000 feet above sea level), in a tiny ski town called Crested Butte. It snows there from the end of September through early June (and several times it snowed on the 4th of July's parade). The summer happens in July and lasts, maybe, into early August, the fall happens in late August, leaves fall off the trees in September and then it goes back to winter. We, according to the locals, have 3 seasons; winter, summer and mud season. And even there the harvest of raspberries came in strong, the tomatoes ripened nicely in late July and the pumpkins were popping in October, despite the calculated snowfall that would always happen on Halloween night. So, I think if we are to suffer the shift of shorter summers being the norm then we may be able to make it work, we just have to adapt. Luckily we are quite adept at doing just that. I will plant more radishes, carrots, lettuces, kales, onions and garlic in the next few weeks, gearing us up for that early autumn growing season, even though it's the first day of September.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Sweet Corn, Gardeners Supply, and Slow Food
This week has been an exciting and very busy one. The Bantam Sweet Corn is reaching new heights, towering high above the squash plants underneath them. So it made me start to think, "When do we pick these lovely ears of corn?" and more importantly, "How do we preserve all this corn for use later in the winter?".
After some research I found that you should pick corn when the silk turns dark and starts to shrivel, preferably first thing in the morning. The kernels should be bright, plump, and milky, if they are watery let them be, they're not ready yet! Usually it takes about 20 days for the ear to ripen, from when the silk starts to appear. To harvest, snap off the ears by hand with a quick, firm, downward push; then twist and pull. Corn is at its prime eating quality for only 72 hours before becoming overmature. (Info found on Pick Your Own Veg, http://www.pickyourown.org/pickveg.htm )
When it comes to preserving I found great info on the Gardener's Supply blog, written by the staff-owners of the company, one of which is Kathy LaLiberte. Kathy came to visit us this week, along with Cindy (also from Gardeners Supply) and Kathy's husband Henry. What a fantastic group of people, we had wonderful conversations and got all geeky about all things urban farming. It was great to hear their enthusiasm and ideas for what we could do better for the farm, different applications of some of their products and to hear all about their interesting seeds from their own personal gardens. (For those of you who may not know, our raised beds were built with corner brackets from Gardener's Supply) Back to the question at hand though, you can find some great info about corn preservation, written by Kathy, here http://blog.gardeners.com/2009/08/freezing-sweet-corn.html.
We had the pleasure of having Kathy and Henry return again in the evening on Tuesday to join us for the Slow Food benefit dinner that we held. The dinner went very well, with cocktail hour on the rooftop farm and then a great pork dinner made with Slagel Family Farms pork that our kitchen staff helped slaughter the week before. Overall it was a fantastic garden geek day and a lovely evening full of cucumber agua fresca and super fresh local foods. If you don't know about the Slow Food Organization, please visit the local chapter's website here, http://www.slowfoodchicago.org/.
Happy corn picking!
After some research I found that you should pick corn when the silk turns dark and starts to shrivel, preferably first thing in the morning. The kernels should be bright, plump, and milky, if they are watery let them be, they're not ready yet! Usually it takes about 20 days for the ear to ripen, from when the silk starts to appear. To harvest, snap off the ears by hand with a quick, firm, downward push; then twist and pull. Corn is at its prime eating quality for only 72 hours before becoming overmature. (Info found on Pick Your Own Veg, http://www.pickyourown.org/pickveg.htm )
When it comes to preserving I found great info on the Gardener's Supply blog, written by the staff-owners of the company, one of which is Kathy LaLiberte. Kathy came to visit us this week, along with Cindy (also from Gardeners Supply) and Kathy's husband Henry. What a fantastic group of people, we had wonderful conversations and got all geeky about all things urban farming. It was great to hear their enthusiasm and ideas for what we could do better for the farm, different applications of some of their products and to hear all about their interesting seeds from their own personal gardens. (For those of you who may not know, our raised beds were built with corner brackets from Gardener's Supply) Back to the question at hand though, you can find some great info about corn preservation, written by Kathy, here http://blog.gardeners.com/2009/08/freezing-sweet-corn.html.
We had the pleasure of having Kathy and Henry return again in the evening on Tuesday to join us for the Slow Food benefit dinner that we held. The dinner went very well, with cocktail hour on the rooftop farm and then a great pork dinner made with Slagel Family Farms pork that our kitchen staff helped slaughter the week before. Overall it was a fantastic garden geek day and a lovely evening full of cucumber agua fresca and super fresh local foods. If you don't know about the Slow Food Organization, please visit the local chapter's website here, http://www.slowfoodchicago.org/.
Happy corn picking!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Red Corn Husks and Purple Beans
We are finally in the hot humid Chicago summer we all know and (rarely) love. But it is so good for all those edibles!
This week we have had huge growth at the farm...the squash and pumpkin blossoms have been prolific and the bees are doing their job well, pollinating like crazy. The corn is so high that it now has the tendency to strike emotions along the lines of, "wow, nature is so incredible" and "us humans sure are small on an earthly scale". Not only are the stalks super tall, but the Bantam Sweet Corn is producing lovely red husk hairs! So striking in a sea of green foliage. 
The beans have started producing from their well established vines; Cascade Giant Pole, Purple Podded Snap and Haricot Vert are a few of the varieties that you will find on our menu these days. We have had a special this week that featured our Italian Relleno Sweet Peppers, which also have been growing fast!
Update on the blight from a few weeks ago: We are holding it at bay (thank goodness), by trimming back any infected leaves and fruit and then spraying them down with Serenade copper spray. We have been able to stave the spreading of it at least. The copper spray is organic, but is still a fungicide so it's best not to eat the tomatoes without washing them off first. The spray is available at some of the local garden centers, if you know your plants are at the beginning stages of blight, catch it before it spreads! If you think your plants are infected but aren't quite sure, please feel free to email me photos and I'll take a look to see if it is indeed blight.
Happy Harvesting!!
This week we have had huge growth at the farm...the squash and pumpkin blossoms have been prolific and the bees are doing their job well, pollinating like crazy. The corn is so high that it now has the tendency to strike emotions along the lines of, "wow, nature is so incredible" and "us humans sure are small on an earthly scale". Not only are the stalks super tall, but the Bantam Sweet Corn is producing lovely red husk hairs! So striking in a sea of green foliage. 
The beans have started producing from their well established vines; Cascade Giant Pole, Purple Podded Snap and Haricot Vert are a few of the varieties that you will find on our menu these days. We have had a special this week that featured our Italian Relleno Sweet Peppers, which also have been growing fast!
Update on the blight from a few weeks ago: We are holding it at bay (thank goodness), by trimming back any infected leaves and fruit and then spraying them down with Serenade copper spray. We have been able to stave the spreading of it at least. The copper spray is organic, but is still a fungicide so it's best not to eat the tomatoes without washing them off first. The spray is available at some of the local garden centers, if you know your plants are at the beginning stages of blight, catch it before it spreads! If you think your plants are infected but aren't quite sure, please feel free to email me photos and I'll take a look to see if it is indeed blight.
Happy Harvesting!!
Thursday, August 6, 2009
VOTE FOR US!!
Vote for Uncommon Ground Restaurant and Organic Farm as your favorite Green Business!Click below to vote!
http://www.greenamericatoday.org/greenbusiness/peopleschoice/
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