Putting the Garden to Bed

Sincere apologies for the lack of gardening posts this season, but it's only because there's been so much going on outdoors that there just hasn't been any time to sit in front of the computer! Now that it's gotten a little cooler, it's time to freshen up the blog. I was recently asked to contribute something to The Brine, the official newsletter of the Dill Pickle Co-Op, and I thought I'd cross-post that article here, as it's all about how to prepare your garden for the winter. It's a short article, but it covers the basics:

It's been a wonderful gardening season, but as the saying goes, all things must pass, and it's time to put the tools away and lay the garden to rest for the winter. Proper care now will assure that all the hard work you've put into your garden this year will be preserved. Your plants are only as healthy as the soil beneath them, and protecting that living ecosystem is critical.

The most important word to remember here is mulch! Maybe you thought ahead and sowed a winter cover crop, and you have a lush green canopy of living foliage protecting your soil, but if not, there are plenty of options left to you. Fall leaves are one of the greatest materials you can add to a garden, and they're freely available this time of year. Shredded leaves are best as the increased surface area allows for optimal decomposition, insulation, and airflow. Many gardeners are fans of the "chop and drop" method of composting. Simply cut any remaining vegetable matter into 1-3" pieces and scatter that material over the top of your garden bed, or till it into the top few inches of soil. Be wary of incorporating tomato plants into the soil, though, as tomatoes are exceedingly prone to soil-borne pathogens. Collect your tomato plants and compost them away from your veggie bed. The same goes for any diseased plant material or rotting fruits that may be lying around. Remove them! You want to start out with a clean garden bed before you begin to mulch.

Ideally you'll have a layer of mulch a few inches deep over your entire garden bed -- but not directly touching any perennials which remain in your garden. Leave those for winter interest and to provide snuggly places for helpful critters like ladybugs. Don't have 2 inches of mulch yet? Sheets of cardboard or even old carpet scraps make a fine winter mulch. Remove the carpet in the spring, obviously. Straw bales are another great addition to the garden and are often available for free once "hay ride" season is over. Look around! Taking some time now to protect your soil will reap rich rewards in the spring, so get out and enjoy those last few chores in the garden before Jack Frost comes in and sets up his camp there.

This view of the Thomas Street Garden shows many of the strategies you can use to prepare your veggie beds for the winter. The upside down pot in the large raised bed is the lid for an outdoor winter worm bin!

Hope you enjoyed this post. Just because winter is fast approaching doesn't mean gardening season is over! Our neighbors at the Monarch Garden have several hoop houses established, and there's an outdoor worm bin at the Thomas Street Garden which I'm optimistic about keeping active. Stay tuned for more rock and roll!

Representing Rainbow Beach!

Prickly pear, little bluestem, and goldenrod are all present!

One of the fascinating features of the Thomas Street Garden is the diversity of microclimates that are present within the garden. Chicago itself is home to a much broader array of flora and fauna than most folks would suspect, and there are even plenty of gardeners who are surprised to learn that the prickly pear cactus is indeed native and perennial to these parts. Take a trip down to the south side, though, and your doubts will be forgotten. The volunteers who are working to restore Rainbow Beach Dunes are doing a wonderful job with that project, and visiting that park has been inspirational in envisioning the potential that lies within the Thomas Street Garden. I've recently been very excited to acquire two prickly pears for the Thomas Street Garden. The first cactus was a donated transplant, and the second was purchased at a local garden center when I was looking for some companion perennials to go along with our prickly pear. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found prickly pear, little bluestem, and goldenrod all waiting to come home with me! These plants all now live along the border between our rock garden and our rain garden, defining another microclimate within the garden and serving to represent a little of the diversity that is to be found throughout Chicago and her many wonderful gardens.

The next workday at Rainbow Beach Dunes will take place on Saturday, October 27 from 10 a.m. until noon. Rainbow Beach is located at 3111 E. 77th St. Check out www.chicagoparkdistrict.com for more information about this and other exciting projects within your city. Work hours will continue to be held in the Thomas Street Garden at 6 p.m. every Tuesday evening until we run out of daylight.

Plants of the Chicago Region

Featured plant: Sweet Flag

One of the projects underway at the Thomas Street Garden is a miniature rain garden. It's been a cool entryway into different ways of thinking about the garden. When the city is subject to serious cloudbursts, the rain garden will flood, and the water may stand there a few days before draining. Plants that are chosen for this area have to occupy a certain niche. Mostly what we are looking for are plants that live at the edges of wetlands and bogs, plants which are okay standing in a few inches of water but which don't need to be underwater all of the time. These plants are happy soaking up our extra rain, which might otherwise end up somewhere we don't want it.

I'm also trying to establish something like a naturalized landscape in the garden, someplace that will be attractive to the birds and bees in the region because it's representative of the surrounding region, and something which doesn't require a lot of care because that's the thing about naturalized landscapes -- they're already naturalized. Plants which are good at taking care of themselves are a lot easier to take care of, which means that they're great plants for community gardens.

While browsing the stacks at Sulzer Regional lately I came across Floyd Swink's 1969 volume Plants of the Chicago Region, published by the Morton Arboretum. Swink and his team exhaustively combed 22 counties surrounding the Chicago area, extending up into Wisconsin and even into Michigan. He lists every plant found growing wild in the area and notes its typical habitat, usual associates, and whether it is native or introduced. Within the first few pages he lists Acorus Calamus, Sweet Flag, a wetland grass with fragrant flowers and variegated iris-like leaves. Swink notes that it is not invasive, but that it "is usually found in old, stable marshes."

When I came across the entry for Acorus calamus I all at once realized that Sweet Flag was going to be the mascot for the rain garden, and that Swink's volume was going to be invaluable to me in figuring out how to establish a care free yet stable, mostly native but not exclusively so, super bio-diverse miniature landscape which was representative of Chicago itself. Aw yeah Urbs in Horto! A stable marsh is what the rain garden should represent. I've already added some Sweet Flag to the rain garden, and a few of its known associates - Orange Jewelweed, Marsh Fern, and Blue Flag Iris - are now on my list of plants to look out for.

Acorus gramineus is the shorter cousin to Acorus calamus. It reaches only a foot or so tall and makes an interesting choice for container arrangements. This shorter variety is the one I planted in the garden.

This is the state of the rock garden in August of 2012. The rain garden exists in the swale between the flagstone path and the rock garden. The area is still filling in with plantings. Columbine has done very well, and I'm trying out chocolate mint in the swale. Some perennials have been divided and cleared away in the rock garden and new seeds have been sown. Sweet Flag can be spotted in a few locations along the right hand side of the photo, toward the west end of the swale.

The plots are rapidly filling in! Additional soaker hoses have been set up to combat the heat coming later this week.

May Progress in the Garden!

We created a rain barrel out of an old barrel that's been in the garden for years. It looks great and we positioned it right below a drain pipe extension and on top of it's lid with a couple of wood pieces to support. We are excited to start using it!

We've started a soaker hose system and made great progress on it at our May workday. Stop by on Sunday, June 3 to help us finish burying and setting it all up. 

We have some lovely flowers in bloom.

Radishes and blooming chives are ready to be picked and strawberries are starting to come in!

A lovely April in the Garden

There is some lovely greenery going on in the garden. We also have a garden cat! We will call him Urbs, which means City in Latin and is part of Chicago's motto "Urbs in Horto" meaning City in a Garden. It also sounds like "herbs", which is appropriate in a garden. :)

2012 Workdays Scheduled!

We have scheduled workdays in advance this year so you can plan ahead 

to attend. Join us on the first Sunday of each month, May through
November (except for September when the workday will be the second
Sunday) from 10-12 am, to help set up a soaker hose system and a rain
barrel, weed and help with various other garden tasks. 

Those dates are: 

-  Sunday, May 6
-  Sunday, June 3
-  Sunday, July 1
-  Sunday, August 5
-  Sunday, September 9
-  Sunday, October 7
-  Sunday, November 4 

We look forward to seeing you in the garden soon! 

Out with the Old, In with the New!

Last Sunday - a gorgeous, warm, spring morning – several gardeners cleared leaves and tidied the supplies to prepare the Garden for the 2012 growing season. The unusually warm spring weather has spurred an early crop of weeds. We filled several large bags with leaves and freshly pulled weeds to add to the compost pile. 

 

Donated plants help the Garden grow! This bleeding heart was donated a couple years ago through the Great Perennial Divide event coordinated by Greencorps. It is thriving in this shady corner of the garden. 

 

The forsythia was donated to the Garden by Greencorps in November 2011 and transplanted by a devoted volunteer. It survived the winter and is now in bloom! 

 

2655 Thomas

2655 Thomas, a group on Flickr.
 Checkout the Flickr photostream to see how the garden grows and changes each season.

First Day of Spring in the Garden!

For the past week the weather has been more like June than March in Chicago. I'm loving it. But,  feels strange to see the flowers blooming so early.

Last fall a handful of volunteers planted some daffodils in the perennial bed. Here is the reward!:

Here is a long view of the perennial bed. All the bulbs planted in the garden were donated by Greencorps, the City of Chicago, and volunteers. The Snowdrops bloomed in late February/early March. The fleeting Narcissus are already fading. The pink spots are a few stray tulips. 

Let's fill the garden with bulbs and bring color and cheer to Thomas Street every spring!

boardwalk

On Sunday, we dismantled the repurposed dresser drawers that had been used for growing mint and lemon balm for the last four years or so because they were splitting apart and spilling (valuable!) soil on the ground. We moved the soil over to the new raised bed along the west fence and transformed the drawers into a boardwalk.