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!

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!!

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The heat is on

It is warm and muggy!! I know this isn't always something to quite so ecstatic about, but when you have gone through the coldest summer in decades, hot and muggy feels so good. The funny thing that I have noticed is that everyone is complaining. I guess you truly can't win. If it's cool out it's too cool and if it's hot out it's too hot. For us humans the cool breezy May-like summer we have been having is a blessing. But for farmers, and consequently all the food we enjoy everyday, the cool weather has been torture. It has come with the evidence of diseases that strike only when wet and cool and the slow take of warm weather veggies, like squash and tomatoes. I have hope that this year will be a long, moderate season, allowing us to dine on squash well through October.

The advantage to the sudden heat is that the cantaloupe are going crazy and so are the Italian Trombetta di Albenga Summer Squash. They are both taking over their respective beds, and starting to flower! (I promise I will post pictures soon!!) We have new ears of corn starting to form and the beans are flowering in bunches.

We have been planting out the beds like mad lately, adding new varieties of lettuce (Mascara and Sweet Valentine!) and new varieties of carrots and radishes too. I think that the addition of squash on the roof is going to prove to be a nice wind barrier, they are not minding the fact that I have them tied to the trellis system. I also love the shade they create and am planting all those new lettuces underneath their broad leaves. Just the answer to the dessert environment of the rooftop farm. As soon as the beans get a little taller on some of the other beds I'll be planting more head lettuces underneath them!

Recently I ordered some new seeds, hoping to transfer parts of the ground level beds into winter growing spaces. This year we'll try a few onions, garlic, kale, cabbages, rutabaga, turnips and parsnips down there to see how they fare come December and January. These beds are right against the building, so they should get some residual heat off the building, regulating the temperature in the soil a little more than we can upstairs. We will still be putting cold frames on some of the beds on the rooftop too, to see what we can grow throughout the winter season. Always an experiment, always fun! Let me know if you have any good winter growing tips for us!

Warm summer afternoons

It's finally warming up a bit! We have had consistent temperatures of 80 during the day and 60 at night, bringing our plants out of their shells and into bloom. Summer sort of feels like it might be here, now that it is the last day of July. So, to honor the herb harvests that we have been having and to celebrate the luxury of drinking cool cocktails on warm summer afternoons, today I am sharing a few new drinks from the restaurant. Most of these delicious concoctions were created by Christopher Becerra, our fearless bar-leader extraordinaire. All of them are using ingredients grown here on our farm or are from farms near-by, and all are made with domestic liquors, making these equally as great for the environment as they are for your tastebuds!

The Famous Uncommon Bloody Mary, complete with fresh chive bouquet.

























Agua Fresca, the summers best drink, so deliciously sweet and refreshing, with a nasturtium blossom cut from the garden. This one can be spiked with Thatchers Cucumber Liqueur or Thatchers Elderflower Liqueur, both delicious and organic from Temperance, MI.



The Treetini, seasonally changing but always supporting the planting of new trees (for each drink purchased a tree is planted!) This season's is a Market Berry version, made with Organic Rain Vodka and Organic Veev Liquor, garnished with a nasturtium blossom.





The Blue Moon, incredibly perfect in every way, I could drink a gallon of these. Cap Rock Vodka, with a housemade blueberry and purple basil syrup and a fresh purple basil, blueberry, and peach muddle in the bottom. So good.

Blessing and the Blight

A few photos and notes strickly about the farm this week!

Most of the tomato plants are looking so good, so tall and so full of flowers. However, one of them is starting to take on a few characteristics of a fungal disease called Tomato Blight. This disease affects the lower leaves, giving them a yellow color dotted with black spots. If you start to see this on your plants, try to catch it while it is just beginning. You can spray the plants with an organic fungicide if you catch it quick, and that will hopefully end the spread of it to your other tomato (or potato plants). Otherwise you need to tear out the infected plants, put them into plastic bags and throw them away. The preferred method of riding your farm from blight is to burn the plants, but farming in the city doesn't allow us to do this.

Blight can be a scary disease for farmers. It has the ability to wipe out entire fields of crops within hours, leaving the farmer without any product. Harvest Moon Farms experienced a small amount of blight this past week, but caught it with the organic fungicide spray, thankfully. Some farmers in New York haven't been so lucky. Whole farms worth of tomatoes have been wiped out by it recently, driving the price of tomatoes way up and leaving some farmers with nothing for the season. The blight that is taking out tomatoes in New York is the same type that caused the Irish Potato Famine, and this strain can transfer from tomato to potato as well. This article from the New York Times goes into more detail, it leaves me heartbroken: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/nyregion/18tomatoes.html?scp=1&sq=tomato%20blight&st=cse


On the upside, we have a surprise pumpkin patch growing along the side of our parking lot, which I am super excited about! It planted itself out of compost of last years Halloween pumpkins and Harvest Festival cornstalk decorations. We have some healthy corn surrounded by burgeoning pumpkin blossoms, all looking very healthy. It has inspired us to plant more squash there and we are hoping it trails along the parking lot, leaving us this years supply of pumpkins for our carving contest!

Lastly, I love in the morning when the cantaloupe leaves are wearing a necklace of dew drops. For those of you who don't wake up with the sun, here is a photo of one of our Charentais Cantaloupe plants doing just that. Enjoy.

Bennie and the Jets

A quick walk through the past two weeks...
On July 11th, the Mayor of Chicago, Richard Daley, arrived to dedicate our farm as the First Certified Organic Rooftop Farm in the country! The day was full of excitement and speeches, including one from Alderman O'Connor, Helen Cameron, Steve from MOSA, and the Mayor himself. During his speech the Mayor announced that we need more urban agriculture sites in the city and in the country and that the amount of beekeeping being done in urban areas should increase as well. He went on to say that the need for more organic farms is great and that he hopes that more and more people are able to grow their own food organically, however small the amount may be. This is a great stride for organic agriculture, bringing to light the need for all participants in growing to do so with conscious moves for the environment and thier own health. We were glad to have the Mayor with us to cut our appropriately green ribbon and officially mark us as the first certified organic rooftop farm!

Last Friday during our Farmer's Market we had the pleasure of hosting Rusted Root, who played outdoors to a large crowd of fans. They sounded fantastic and were a blast to hang out with up on the farm! As the band is touring across the country they are trying to play as many farmer's markets as possible to promote the idea of local, fresh produce and the importance in supporting your local farmers. I love that. Way to do good with your celebrity status. The adventures of an urban farm director became wilder as I drove the band back to their hotel downtown, all while giving an impromtu tour of the city and having all of us sing at the top of our lungs to Elton John and Journey. Never a dull moment...

The last two weeks have been quite the rush of time, but all with great moments tucked in between. Luckily this past Sunday I was able to calm down, sleep in past 5am and make brunch for a couple of close friends. After prepping all the ingredients I realized that every single one of them came from Harvest Moon Farms (our resident Farmer at our Friday Farmer's Market). Even the eggs involved in the Baked Huevos Rancheros that I made came from Jenny. I wanted to take a minute to say thank you to Jenny and her staff for working so hard to produce such tasty and beautiful goods. Is it strange to feel pride in eating? I think not. When the food you are eating is fresh, healthy and you know the hands that planted and cared for it, I think that there is a lot to proud of.