Home as Your Own Creation

If you listen closely, a collective sigh can be heard from gardeners around the West Coast. We had a royally bad summer. It was cold. It was cloudy. It was horrible tomato weather.

In the spirit of looking on the bright side, I’d like to think that this crummy season gives us the opportunity to try some new green tomato recipes. I asked for your ideas and you guys really came through, submitting recipes for everything from chutney, to sweet and savory pies, to green tomato jam, to fried tomatoes and “unfried” tomatoes.

So don’t throw all those rock hard tomatoes in the compost pile. Pick th

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Gardens are great equalizers; they’re also places where people can get a second chance. Today was the annual harvest festival and graduation ceremony at the Cook County Jail’s garden. Really, they need to start calling it an urban farm, a working urban farm.  As I blogged about last year, the jail garden constructed a greenhouse and moved ahead with plans to sell produce grown at the jail garden. Charlie Trotter’s and The Publican are two local restaurants that purchased produce grown at the jail garden this year. Read more…

Deluxe Grow Box on the left, A Garden Patch’s Grow Box on the right. I am simultaneously a lover and hater of gimmicky garden tools, especially items that purport to make gardening easier. Gardening is already easy, so a lot of garden products get a big eye roll from me. Whenever I heard gardeners talk about sub-irrigation planters like the Grow Box I had to roll my eyes. I mean, just how bad of a gardener do you have to be that a traditional container, or even a repurposed one, doesn’t suffice? For a while I wondered just how easy this products made container gardening and growing vegetables. Read more…

Young and young at heart urban gardeners in North Lawndale garden tour
Last month I had the pleasure of attending the North Lawndale Greening Committee’s garden tour.  It was a change from doing the North Dearborn Garden Walk. The gardens themselves weren’t much different, larger mostly, but the vibe was noticeably different. This garden tour was like visiting the gardens of friends you’ve known a long time. Among the gardens we toured where backyard gardens, a community garden, a garden built on an empty lot, the African heritage garden and the preSERVE garden. Read more…

Some photos of my small space urban garden in July 2010. The garden is located on the West Side of Chicago and this is where I grow the annuals and perennials I blog about here and on the MrBrownThumb garden blog. I like to describe my gardening style as ghetto because of my haphazard approach to placing plants. Basically, if I find a plant I like I will add it where I have space without taking into consideration things like height and color combinations. The space is around 13 feet wide by 33 feet deep.    Take note of all the weeds. Yes, that’s burdock in the foreground of the picture above. I Read more…