Thanks to a recent Chicago Tribune article about our award from the Mondavi Growing Through Giving Campaign a lot of would-be community organizers have germinated (sorry, couldn’t resist the gardening pun). Within the first three days after the article went online I had five emails from Chicagoans who had been eyeballing empty lots and imagining what they would be like as overflowing community gardens.

This is such exciting news for me and the core team of volunteers that manage The Peterson Garden Project! We had so much fun building our garden and sharing it with over 800 people over the last two growing seasons we want to do whatever we can to help others experience the transformational power of community gardening.

So to get those groups started, here’s some philosophical musings that are best done in the dark of winter when it will be fun to get together with your new garden co-conspirators and dream of the wonderful summer you’ll have in 2012.

Ask yourself these important questions…

Who are the people that will make up your community?

Why do they want to garden?

What form will the garden take to accomplish this goal?

WHO?

Bobby Wilson, President of The American Community Gardening Association, likes to say that community gardens are “10% garden and 90% community.” This is an eloquent way of saying that while the growth and beauty are the easy things to recognize about a garden, the people behind the effort are the real wonder. Plus, any garden started by a single individual – without a core of garden believers – won’t last long. Gardens, like life, take a lot of friends to be successful.

Ask yourself and your team… Who will be the community in this garden? If you’re a school or a house of worship, you may have a built in community and the answer is simple. If you’re a block club, community organization, chamber of commerce (or crazy neighbor with a wild idea) your options may be a bit more open as to who participates within your garden.

With The Peterson Garden Project our mission (see WHY below) and the size of the garden determined who we would include… since it is such a large space (almost 12,000 square feet with 157 4×6” raised beds) we knew that we needed to be open to whomever was interested to make sure the garden was fully used.  Plus we figured it would be more fun that way… and we were right!

WHY?

It is important to understand peoples’ motivations for being part of a community garden and make sure everyone has a shared goal… There’s an old proverb that I love that states “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” It is a bit draconian, admittedly, but I think it sums up how powerful a shared goal is. This is a cornerstone to effective project management (my career background) and it is just as critical to have a vision for your garden – maybe more so because your gardeners and volunteers are there because they want to be there, not because it is their job.

You need to determine why your garden exists… here’s some examples in Chicago

Some gardens want to grow food to donate to the hungry like the 3 Brothers Garden in Chicago’s West Walker neighborhood.

Mike Nowak from WCPT Radio helped start the Green on McClean garden in his neighborhood to keep gang members from using an empty lot to congregate and harass the neighborhood (it worked!)

The Ruby Garden was started to improve Schreiber Park in the 40^th Ward of Chicago and ended up being a place for many refugee groups to garden together, celebrate and maintain their traditional communities through gardening, food and culture.

With The Peterson Garden Project you’ll notice the word “PROJECT” tacked on to the name of the garden. Turning a huge empty lot into a community garden was inspired by my interest in WW2 Victory Gardens and research about Chicago’s leading role in the movement (and the fact that I’m a sucker for a task that seems like it can’t be done). The lot that became the garden was a Victory Garden during WW2 (many continued thanks to Asian Human Services for letting us use the land!) I wanted to try that WW2 model to see if neighbors would rally around a central cause (growing food) as they had in WW2. Luckily a lot of other people thought it would be a fun idea as well and a core team of amazing volunteers quickly coalesced and made the vision a shared one – as I said, it takes a lot of friends to make a community garden sustainable.

Another motivation was the desire to teach people how to grow their own food. During WW2, 90% of the Victory Gardeners in Chicago had never gardened before so I was curious how using the same methods that made that campaign so successful (albeit tweaked for a new generation) would work. This had a big impact on the WHAT of the garden (see below).

Ultimately we decided that our mission was:

To recruit, educate and inspire a new generation of gardeners who want to gain control of their food supply, grow their own produce organically, and make urban gardening the norm—not the exception.

These are just a few examples of the dozens of food-based gardening projects in Chicago that illustrate the great motivations to grow food collectively. They’re all worthy and useful in their own ways.

Determine what your community wants, verbalize it and share it often and with anyone who will listen.

WHAT?

Your WHY will indicate what your garden is philosophically but also WHAT it becomes physically.

Now here’s where words are not our friend… there are a lot of terms floating around right now about growing food in cities: urban agriculture, urban farming, community gardens, allotment gardens, etc. Let me break it down for you – as I see it.

Community Garden: A generic term where people work together (minimally or symbiotically) to garden… this can include a garden where everyone collectively decides on what is grown and gardens together or it can mean an allotment garden (see below).

Also, this does not always mean food production although, for the purpose of this blog, I do mean food production. Come on, if you’re going to put in all that effort and can’t eat what you grow what is the point!?

Allotment Garden: An allotment garden is a British term for a piece of land that is divided up for individual use. This is essentially how The Peterson Garden Project is set up with 150 individual raised beds that are gardened by single families who eat the food they produce and 7 beds that are grown for donation to two food-based organizations in the 40th ward.

On a curious note, even though only seven beds are dedicated to donation purposes, a full 25% of our garden serves as scholarship beds (for those who can’t afford membership dues), donation to food pantries, use by social service groups vs. individual families or teaching beds. Supporting our mandate to educate a new generation of gardeners, all of our classes are free to anyone.

Urban Farm: An urban farm often has a job creation or economic impact component and is a few- to-many proposition in which a few people garden and provide produce (usually in exchange for money, barter or some other transaction) to many others.  A great example of an urban farm in Chicago is the City Lights Urban Farm on Chicago Avenue.

While these terms are often used interchangeably – I like to call them “exactly the same but different” – they do have an impact on how you set up your community garden physically but also philosophically. It is important that your gardeners understand the game plan for the garden and what’s in a name does matter.

Next… Using the WHO, WHAT and WHY to imagine and build your garden…

We’re a good 15 days past our average first frost date (which proves the point that the frost date is, indeed, average). This past weekend was glorious and we got (maybe our last) intense dose of  Vitamin D in addition to getting much of The Yarden taken care of for the winter… in the process I was thinking of the types of hints I would share with you all if you were my neighbors (and if you asked but, since you’re reading this I’m assuming you kind of are asking!)

[Despite our modern lives, gardening is still best learned from neighbors and books - and now blogs. Cicero had it right so many centuries ago when he said "If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need." I wonder what that famous quote would have been like if he'd had a MacBook Air?]

The first tip we were calling “The Maribeth Method” because it was introduced to us by our friend Maribeth who is a relatively new gardener that I met through The Peterson Garden Project. Last year was her first year growing vegetables. In her passion to learn (and share) as much as she can about her new love she passed this tip on to us (I’m beginning to see a “neighbors & books” theme developing here…) My first thought after hearing this handy hint was “duh” and, the second thought, “I wish I would have thought of that.”

The Maribeth Method

Instead of pulling your spent plants (especially the big, woody ones), cut them off at the base and let the root ball compost over the winter. The nutrients will return to the soil – the stalk will desiccate and be a cinch to pull out in the spring. (This is also a good excuse to use any monster pruners you may have won in a contest and didn’t exactly know what to do with until now.)

Pleasurable Plucking

This is a variation on The Maribeth Method for plants with vegetables that still need to be harvested. Cut them at the base per the method above and harvest the fruit after. You can take all the plants and place them on a table so you can harvest without bending over. Very convenient when there’s a big crop to pick.

Shrub Rake to the Rescue

You probably know from reading this blog that the shrub rake is one of my favorite tools for small space gardening. It is particularly helpful when harvesting tomatillos and ground cherries as they fall to the ground when they’re fully ripe. Instead of lots of bending to get them one by one, I use the shrub rake to gently pull them into a pile and grab large handfuls all at once.

Man, I’m sounding lazy in this post! Well, I am turning 44 in a few days so perhaps it is my age showing.

Simple Seed Saving

I save the “easy” seeds – beans, okra, etc. Essentially anything that can dry out in the garage for a few months and be processed in the winter when I’m desperate for any garden related activity. “Easy” seeds include garlic chives (which are wonderful if you haven’t tried them). My easy trick for garlic chives and other “easy” seeds is to use paper lunch bags for collection. The flat base of the bag keeps them from tipping over while you’re filling them and they allow a lot of air circulation. With the garlic chives, the blossoms can sit in the bag for a few months then I’ll shake the dried flowers to collect all the seeds. The bag is then easily identified with a Sharpie, rolled up and saved for spring seed swaps! I take all the variously labeled bags and put them in a ziplock to keep them in one place.

Tomato Desperation/Salvation

While the first frost has yet to hit, it is clear there are way too many tomatoes that will never make it to full ripeness. Aside from coming up with all sorts of innovative green tomato recipes (Green Tomato Lasagna anyone?) it is also easy to ripen green tomatoes to enjoy later in the fall/winter. WARNING: They won’t taste as great as those from earlier in the summer! But you put all this effort in to your tomatoes – might as well get the most out of them. All you have to do is wrap the tomatoes in old newspaper and put them in a dark place. If you place them in a box, make sure they aren’t too deep (two layers is good). Check them frequently and enjoy. But DO check them often or it could get gross.

Keeping Your Garden a Happy Place

Gardening should be your happy place! To me that means a guilt free place. During clean up it is easy to think about the things you should have done differently… the “flaws” are obvious this time of year. However, after years and years of gardening I’ve realized the garden is the ultimate “no control” zone in many ways (see “Top 5 Dumb Mistakes” to learn about our lessons from 2010) and it is good to adopt an attitude of wonder and thankfulness. With increasingly busy lives, I refuse to feel badly if something in the garden doesn’t go according to “my” plan. Take my scallop squashe this  year… I had to travel quite a bit for work and kept missing the window when they were tiny and delicious. Instead of feeling bad I just let them grow and decided to call them “pumpkins” and use for fall decorating. Problem solved!

Bonus Tip

This isn’t really about clean up but more about “spruce” up. Right now it is MUM season. I don’t think anyone (except my mother) really likes mums per se but we do what we must when we’re all desperate to hang on to whatever last vestiges of color we can. If you do buy mums, it is easy to cover the plastic pots with a cut up paper bag from the grocery store. Tie the bag with some raffia or rustic cord and instant cute container! [My friend Mark gets the credit for this one. He could rummage through someone's garage and cute up their entire existence with whatever he found.]

Recently I had the pleasure of hosting an Expert Panel for The American Community Gardening Association, of which I am a board member. The topic was “Putting the Community in Your Community Garden” and was attended by 50 or so community gardening organizers and volunteers from around the country.

We talked about what works (and what doesn’t work) in The Peterson Garden Project garden in Chicago’s 40^th Ward.

Here are the suggestions and ideas shared:

Remove Complexity

Urban life is busy so if you want people to be actively involved in a community garden, it needs to be simple for them to participate. We did this by making the beds small (4×6’) and individual (no need to discuss or compromise on what is to be grown). We also suggested the garden was organic and all edible. For the 50% of our gardeners the first year who had never gardened before, we used the Square Foot Gardening method to teach them.

Communicate Everything… Often

Building our garden was an exercise in gumption. We had a history edible garden building but no experience taking on a project of that size. Furthermore, what can you do when Mother Nature rains on all your scheduled volunteer days? To make sure everyone felt invested in the process – the good and the bad – we shared every up and down with our community. While they were frustrated about delays too, not just the weather, it helped us all feel like we were in it together.

Listen

The transparency about events, details, delays, etc. went hand-in-hand with listening to what the gardeners wanted. Within five days of announcing the garden, we had over 50 community members gathered for a meeting. We talked about the garden plan and we listened to their ideas and questions.  At the end of the season we did a survey to find out what the gardeners thought of their experience in 2010. We put many of those good suggestions into practice for 2011.

Let Volunteers Be Good At What They’re Good At

Everyone is good at something. By listening, you will learn what people like to do. By communicating often they’ll know what needs to be done!

Find that match and let them run with a project! They’ll have a sense of purpose and accomplishment. When you have hundreds of people feeling good about their contributions it makes for a great garden community.

Give the Kids a Job

We found that the kids were as eager as the adults to participate but often were too tiny for the hard labor. To put them to work – and give them a sense of purpose- we taught all the kids how to water properly. It was really charming to see an eight year old go up to some adult they didn’t know and coach them on how to water! (At the roots!) They did a great job, everyone learned from them and we had a healthier garden to show for it.

Encourage Group Education

Provide opportunities for the enthusiastic and/or experienced gardeners to teach others. We provided classes in the garden and noticed a pattern – the same people showed up every time. And those people then taught others. When we had our seed swap this past March, last years’ gardeners were teaching new gardeners (and people who just showed up) what to do. The knowledge collected quickly and people wanted to share it.

Celebrate

Celebrate large and small victories. We had several events throughout the summer in the garden. The first was a garden re-dedication on 4^th of July weekend. It made sense considering our garden was a WWII Victory Garden. We also had a harvest fest, a wine tasting, a fashion show… some of these were to raise funds but we always said our events needs to raise “Friends” first.

For the small victories, recognize the accomplishments of the gardeners. Everyone likes to hear they’re doing a good job. Join in the joy of the first tomato! Have fun with weird things growing in the garden… it gives a chance to talk about other cuisines or cultural backgrounds. For new gardeners the growth process is a mystery. Celebrate their induction into the gardening world!

Share

Gardens are magical places – especially in an urban setting. We made our garden available to anyone who wanted to come see it… schools, church groups, garden tours. It gave our gardeners a sense of pride and the visitors a sense of inspiration.

Reach out to others in your community to find out if they’d like to view your slice of urban paradise.

Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude

A recent study found that community gardeners ate better and were healthier than most other people. Last year at our garden, one man told us that in 2009 he hadn’t left his house all summer. In 2010 he was at the garden every day… Gardens are wonderful, healing places. Enjoy yours, spread the world, help form new gardens… and maybe community gardening can be a Victory for our generation too.

To learn more success strategies for your community garden, consider attending The American Community Garden Conference August 18-21 at Columbia College in NYC!

This post first appeared in April of last year. We were just starting plans for The Peterson Garden Project which became the largest edible, organic community garden in Chicago.

As much of a novelty as our garden was last year – developing almost overnight on private land – I have heard of numerous other “pop-up” gardens happening on private land throughout the city for 2011. Much like WW2, land owners, neighbors and businesses are banding together to make food production possible for urban gardeners.

This new activity is in addition to the ongoing good work done by city organizations such as Neighborspace, the Chicago Park District and others who advocate for, manage and create new community gardens for Chicago residents all the time, albeit on city-owned lots or park property.

[One new edible garden on park land is the Merchant Park Community Garden. They've taken an unused triangle of land and turned it into an edible garden for their neighbors in the Irving Park community.]

There’s a saying “the only thing we learn from history is we learn nothing from history” (Friedrich Hegel) but I think when it comes to WW2 Victory Gardens inspiring a whole new generation of gardeners this old adage might prove wrong.

If you’re interested in starting a community garden in Chicago, or anywhere, we’re happy to help. Send a note to info@theyarden.com. Or become a member of the American Community Gardening Association to learn how you can participate in your community.

Chicago Victory Gardens 101

The year – 1943 – was a banner growing season for Chicago Victory Gardens. As the war was in its second year, Chicagoans rallied community-by-community to do all they could for the effort and to alleviate the shortages caused by the largest international conflict of all time.

As transportation resources were diverted to moving troops and munitions, shipping fresh produce to market fell low on the priority list. In addition, the glut of low-wage workers from the Great Depression were finding jobs in military-related industries so farms were short-staffed and unable to meet the food demands of the nation. To complicate matters, materials previously used for canning food were now needed for weapons.

Simply put: there was not a lot of food available to buy.

In response to this crisis, massive coordinated efforts across Chicago – by hundreds of thousands of average citizens – created four gardening seasons (1942-1945) the likes of which have not been seen since…

Here’s some of the surprising facts of the “army of gardeners” in 1943 who fed Chicago, kept up morale and did their part for Victory:

1. 90% of the people who grew Victory Gardens had never gardened before
2. 14,000 plots were gardened by children on Chicago Park District land
3. The largest Victory Garden in the country was in Chicago’s North Park neighborhood
4. 800 families farmed this gigantic garden
5. Victory Gardens produced 55,000 pounds of food during the summer of 1943
6. Chicago-based companies such as Marshall Fields and International Harvester  donated seeds and garden equipment
7. A city ordinance prevented theft from Victory Gardens with fines of $600-$2,400 in today’s currency
8. An estimated 172,000 Victory Gardens sprang up in Chicago in 1943
9. 908 acres of which were on private/city lots or park property
10. Communities held dozens of “harvest festivals” in the fall of 1943 including a city-wide festival at Soldier Field attended by thousands of Chicagoans

Fast forward to 2011… while not embroiled in the largest international conflict of all time, we do face food-related concerns and a new trend toward growing one’s own food is again sweeping the country:

1. In 2011, for the first time since the OPEC oil crisis in the 1970s, garden seeds were rumored to be in short supply
2. Sales for home canning supplies have increased 40% since 2009
3. According to a recent Garden Writers Association poll, 65% of the American public has a lawn or garden and approximately 53% of the American public is now growing vegetables

It is important to remember that today’s challenges aren’t that different from those almost 70 years ago – our food supply is in jeopardy. It doesn’t matter the cause – we are feeling similar concerns. And, like those Chicagoans who had never gardened before, we can raise our own food on our backyards and neighborhood plots.

Chicago’s Victory Garden efforts were so coordinated and successful that our plan was sent out by the US Government to other major urban areas as a blueprint for success.

Perhaps, once again, we can rally and provide an example for our country in urban food production… who’s in?

There’s an old saying “No matter how things change, they stay the same.” This is particularly true for gardening… no matter how much we’re influenced by TV, internet and social media people still learn to garden from other gardeners… Surprisingly, this holds true for the under 40 crowd as well who report that 82% of their gardening info comes from neighbors and friends.

The wisdom and information we receive from other gardeners is a heritage to be treasured.

My father, Ken, learned to vegetable garden starting in 1946 when he and my mother moved from California to Oregon to be near my great grandparents. Father was just out of serving in the Occupied Forces of WW2 and they thought it would be a good time to move north and make a fresh, post-war start. He’d had lots of farming experience on his parents’ ranch in Cucamonga, California. They grew citrus and raised a few chickens and hogs but he had never learned about vegetables.

My great grandfather in Oregon was a chicken farmer and used the manure to great effect in his massive vegetable garden. My dad helped great grandfather with his garden every year until he passed away in the 1960’s. When our family moved to a large parcel in rural Oregon in 1972 my dad started his own garden and that’s where I learned.

Looking at that garden now it doesn’t seem as gigantic as it did when I was a child. The rhubarb we planted in 1973 is still going strong. Mother makes compote and jam from it every year and, in the fall, my dad mows it down with the lawnmower… When this garden started almost 40 years ago there weren’t as many trees so it was a lot sunnier.

I can’t say I “loved” my gardening education. Back then growing food is just what people did – it wasn’t trendy or seen as a (potential) survival skill. And, like many kids, I got stuck with chores I did not like – mainly weeding.

At the time I didn’t realize that the yearly tasks for putting the garden in and the tricks I learned from my dad would be the basis of something that would give me so much joy.

Did you know…

• If you soak most larger, hard seeds before you plant them they germinate faster? This is really true with corn and nasturtiums.
• If you put powdered milk in the hole when you’re planting tomatoes you’re less likely to get blossom end rot (it occurs because of a lack of calcium)?
• Black trash bags make a great mulch for melons by warming the soil and keeping the fruit clean?
• Slugs like beer and will drown in a bowl of it sunk into the dirt? (REALLY good advice in Oregon! Slug capital of the universe.)

These are a few (of many) tid bits of advice that I can now draw on when I garden thanks to my dad.

I went to college at 17 and ended up at the University of Oregon. U of O, like Berkley, Reed and Evergreen was a “hippie” school at the time – very liberal, left wing with hold-out 60’s flair. My parents were a bit terrified when I was there. Luckily they had raised me well so nothing too drastic happened. The most memorable thing from my college years in Eugene was working on an environmental newspaper and re-learning how to garden from a friend that was one of the original employees at Smith and Hawken.

It is kind of an irony that it wasn’t my social mores or religious beliefs that were challenged at U of O but my gardening skills! My new “hippie” gardening friends were into raised beds – not the straight rows I was used to! Vertical gardening, companion planting, heirloom vegetables and more… it was during this time that I really fell in love with gardening and, along with the basics from my dad, have used these skills ever since.

Did you know…

• planting when the moon is in a water sign encourages growth and pulling weeds during a fire sign prevents them from growing back?
• planting nasturtiums with veggies works as a trap crop (insects like the nasturtiums better so leave other things alone)?
• painting a milk jug black, filling it with water and putting it beside tender plants works as a passive solar heater and raises the temperature a few degrees at night? Add a cold frame structure and you have your own mini-solar powered greenhouse?
• making a necklace or crown of rosemary keeps mosquitos away from your face?

If you didn’t have the chance to grow up with a garden or learn from highly qualified hippies don’t panic! What actually prompted me to start this post was a book I read. I know I said most of us learn from other gardeners, but books are usually second on the list of information sources – although, in 2009, technology did briefly bump books as the #2 resource.

There are a ton of books on gardening and the “new” trend of urban homesteading (should I put a TM after that?) but, IMHO, Your Farm in the City is one of the best gardening books I’ve read. Period. (And I must add here that there are livestock chapters which just made me miserable that Peter refuses to allow chickens in The Yarden.)

Seattle Tilth is the education partner of the venerable P-Patch program in Seattle which is, arguably, the most successful community garden program in the country.

Started in the 1970’s, Seattle Tilth’s mission “Learn. Grow. Eat.” is about as clear as it can be and they’ve been teaching people to do just that for over 30 years. This legacy of curriculum and education is executed remarkably in this new book…

• the information is written in an approachable manner
• the book is well designed so the key points are delivered in small bites with appropriate graphics
• the artwork is lovely
• it is written in a great, first person Pacific NW “gardening forever” voice
• the “voice” has a great sense of humor

“There is an old saying… you should never plant more than your partner can weed or water.”

It is never too late to be a life-long gardener… Your friends and neighbors will certainly help you! But if you haven’t met them yet… Your Farm in the City by Lisa Taylor will be your BFF.

Even though the calendar says spring, the weather says winter. Struggling through the loooonnnngggg “spring” in Chicago’s Zone 5 can be a chore. Especially when I really, REALLY want to be out there digging and planting. It would all be much easier if Peter would just give in and get me the greenhouse I’ve been wanting – we don’t need that last chunk of lawn anyway!

It hasn’t all been miserable whining about wanting a greenhouse (an annual event) and bemoaning the cold, we did get some of the tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and basil started in the garage so that’s a plus. But after that ball gets rolling it is still too cold to do much else…

Really, I’m an optimist! Soon enough we’ll be basking in actual spring-like weather and planting away. It’s just that I’ve been missing sharing my gardening thoughts with all eleven of my readers (love you!) so I wanted to forget the nasty weather and jumpstart the garden talk by discussing tools. Yes TOOLS – the last desperate act of a Zone 5 garden writer in the final stretch… here goes.

First, I’d like to say that good gardening isn’t about shiny toys or the best gadgets. Most of us like to think of gardening as an opportunity to recycle household stuff to prevent it from going to the landfill. However, a few well-selected tools, well cared for, can make your gardening life easier and last for many years if you take care of them properly.

DISCLAIMER: Nobody paid me to say nice things about their products. These really are my favorite garden tools. What are yours?

My heart used to belong to the Ho-Mi Korean Garden Plow (long name) until I met the Cobrahead. In all truthfulness, four years ago at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show Peter bought the Cobrahead and I bought the Ho-Mi. I’ve been stealing the Cobrahead from him ever since. Sometimes he insists that he gets to use it and I go back to the Ho-Mi – which is a very nice tool… but it is no Cobrahead.

We have the long-handled Cobrahead and it does everything I need it to do. With some leverage it can pull out a deeply rooted plant, scratch compost into the soil, weed. It really is versatile and amazing. Since we plant so intensely, the tool’s small size can get in tight spaces and it is light and easy to manage. We’re buying a bunch of these this year at The Peterson Garden Project because they’re so versatile.

My next favorite tool was found through a lot of trial and error. Having a good garden snip is important. I have tiny hands so I like these pointy, skinny bladed snips by Fiskars. Their fancy name is “Softtouch (r) Micro Tip (r) Pruning Snip” (at least it rhymes.) They’re spring loaded so they work with you (some aren’t believe it or not) and they don’t have any loops in the handle to create blisters (don’t laugh – it happens!) They are also very affordable which is good because I am often misplacing mine and have several pairs (I found one in the car the other day). I use them for almost everything from deadheading to harvesting herbs.

Ironically, the only other cutting tool I like to use – which has none of the soft-grip-spring-loaded-loop-free attributes of the fancy-named Fiskars I was just extolling – is these Bonsai Scissors. They’re old school and beautiful. Peter tends to gravitate toward using these. We keep them in a vase by the door so if we’re going to the garden they’re in easy reach. If you were laughing before about the pruning blisters, stop right here. That’s the only drawback – if one is obsessive compulsive about training tomatoes and needs to cut a lot of garden twine then there’s a chance a blister might develop.

As I mentioned, we plant intensely so smaller scale tools are in order… for instance, I bought a shrub rake (which is the same as a regular rake except fewer tines) a few years back at a yard sale and it is now my favorite clean-up tool. I do get annoyed when the tines hook on a garden staple holding down the drip irrigation but have learned to live with it.

Everyone needs a trowel for hand digging… I’ve tried many of them. [People seem to want to give them to me as gifts including a metal one my mother tole painted for me. It also had a big bow on it.] None have caused blisters but I have gotten a thumb cramp now and again with those that have no contour in the handle. My new favorite is this ergonomic-a-liscious version from Corona Tools. It is design specifically to fit the hand and it really does prevent muscle strain/cramps. If you’re still laughing, consider how much time it takes to plant 90 tomatoes… you might understand the value of an ergonomic trowel!

I have a lot of those Fiskars snippers because I misplace them frequently. Once I got this garden tool belt from Garden Things the problem went away. [How brilliant is this that you can put the twine in the pouch and not have to go searching for it?!] This handy – and perhaps geeky – garden belt has made my garden time more productive – more digging, less looking for my gear.

Finally, I know I said that gardening is about reusing stuff – which we do all the time – but year one in The Yarden we made an investment in these faux bamboo garden stakes/connectors from Gardeners.com and we’re glad we did. Some of us with engineering degrees (you may guess who that is) like them more than others as they’re kind of a garden erector set. They’re durable, flexible and show no sign of needing to be replaced in this lifetime. These are another great lifesaver in an intensively grown garden where we need to go up – up – up for all sorts of crops.

So those are the go-to tools for us in The Yarden. I can’t wait to start using them instead of talking about them!

Happy Spring!

PS Full disclosure #2: I have one more favorite garden tool but the photos are too embarrassing to show (even for me). It is a bicyclist flashlight that attaches to your head with a velcro strap. Sometimes I get home very late from work and I need to inspect things no matter what the cost. Peter laughs at me the minute I put it on but it is very effective!

Lots of Chicago-style politics going on right now around the One Seed Chicago vote! Gardeners are pulling out all the stops for their candidates… so far the competition is polite but who knows what passionate growers will do for their favorite vegetable as the April 1 deadline gets closer!

I’m not one for politics… with a Libra rising I’m eternally cursed with the ability to see all sides of an issue… being a life-long veggie grower I’ve had vast experience with all three of this year’s candidates and have reasons why each of them deserves to win.

RADISH. Full disclosure, I am somewhat indifferent toward radishes… cooking-wise there’s not a lot you can do with them other than salads – I do like them sliced and tossed with rice wine vinegar and a little sugar and salt. But, in their defense, they’re easy to sow and fast growing and they do make for a happy and optimistic spring garden.

I grow them every year for my friend Betsy. She’s one of those special friends that no matter what nonsense I’m up to she’s wants to participate and makes things extra fun. I grow them for her and do eat a few myself – the French Breakfast variety are quite charming and mild tasting. Peter likes radishes but always seems to forget about them.

Last season I really enjoyed growing Cincinnati Market Radish – they’re very productive and long like a carrot. You get a lot of radish with this variety. Another one I enjoy is called Watermelon -they’re white on the outside and red in the middle – very pretty!

EGGPLANT. I love eggplant! We start them from seed every spring and grow at least six heirloom types and try a few new ones each season. I tend to like the purple varieties although I also grow Casper each summer for the novelty (they’re also sweet and yummy). I’ve tried some Asian non-purple egg-shaped eggplants, like Lao Green Stripe, which I haven’t been crazy about eating but enjoyed growing. This year I’m really geeked about Brazilian Orange Oval Eggplant.

My favorite way to serve them – and one of my favorite dishes of summer – is a variation on an Italian dish called Involtini de Melazana. Instead of mozzarella and basil I use feta and mint. And a splash of lemon juice. Yum.

As much as I’m gushing about lovely eggplant, I have to tell you why it isn’t getting my vote. The decision is made purely with the new gardener in mind… the eggplant starts that you get from local nurseries are usually boring varieties. If you start your own interesting types by seed, they’re sometimes moody and slow to germinate unless conditions are just right (they really like a heating mat to get growing.) Once you set them out, they need lots of warmth to get started and the payoff comes toward the end of a long growing season. If you harvest them too late they tend to be bitter tasting. They also have nasty spines. This isn’t to say they aren’t worth growing – I’ve clearly stated that I do grow them religiously. But for all those new edible gardeners out there, I’d hate for them to get free eggplant seeds and be discouraged…

CHARD. Oh how I love chard! It is second only to spinach as the healthiest vegetable and can be cooked in so many ways. It is easy to direct sow early in the spring and performs well all season long… the large wrinkly seeds are easy to handle, it is fast to germinate and is one of the first spring vegetables. You can eat it as a baby vegetable in salads or quickly sauteed. If you practice the “cut and come again” method with chard, your plants will last all season long. Unlike spinach, they defy summer heat and keep growing all the way into late fall even through light frosts. We’ve even had chard regrow in the spring from plants we had cut back at harvest. They’re a happy site in an empty early garden!

Versatility is the name of the game in cooking with chard… You can use the ribs as you would celery or carrots in sautes or stews. The stems even make for tasty pickles!

The leaves can be steamed with lemon and garlic for a great side dish or blanched and frozen to eat all winter long. I like to use it as a layer in lasagna – I’m partial to polenta lasagna pictured here. The leaves may be used as a substitute for spinach or kale in almost any recipe. The stems or leaves are a tasty and pretty addition to soup. I haven’t tried it myself but hear you can stuff them as you would grape leaves for dolmades.

Probably one of the main reasons I love chard is because it is beautiful. Bright Lights chard offers some colors not often seen in the vegetable garden. A new strain – Flamingo – offers hot pink stems! If you are an ornamental gardener just getting into edibles in your landscape, chard is a beautiful start.

Finally, chard is a vegetable with a long, venerable history. Lucullus is an heirloom variety that was recommended during the 1940’s as a staple for Chicago Victory Gardens… we grew it out last year at The Peterson Garden Project and donated it, along with over 200 pounds of other fresh produce, to food pantries in the 40th Ward.

So there’s my vote… while I love and respect the competitors, Chard is always a winner in my garden!

Now is the time of year where the hardcore gardeners in the northern part of the U.S. start suffering. The brain is ready for the start of the gardening season but the weather has something else to say about it… at least in Chicago’s Zone 5. I’m no different and, actually, this year is worse than usual… I try to wait until January 15 to start perusing the seed catalogs but this year I succumbed in December… now, just a few weeks later, I’m exceptionally impatient to get digging for real. No dice in Chicago… however, due to my work schedule, I happen to be in Seattle for a few weeks which is a much friendlier Zone 8 who’s frost date is (don’t be jealous Zone 5) March 1.

I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and pulled on my waterproof boots to check out one of the amazing Seattle P-Patch gardens: The Interbay.

I wasn’t the only person braving the weather to get a dose of garden. A volunteer was re-digging the 15-year old water system and adding new hose bibs for different corners of the garden. Others were rebuilding beds or inspecting hoop houses. And we all seemed to be quite happy despite the cold winds.

One good thing about a garden in winter is you notice some of the features that are obscured by the lushness at other times of the year… The Interbay P-Patch does a great job educating and guiding the visitor through the garden. I love the “street signs”… the Interbay is 40,000+ square feet so some guidance is a good thing.

Other features that were fun to see were the artistic elements different gardeners use to embellish their plots. I really liked the boxwood balls. And you can’t see it very well in the photo on the left but there are roses planted on either side of the trellis. I bet this is beautiful in the summer.

The herbs sure fare well in Zone 8 compared to Zone 5. This rosemary bush was blooming happy lavender flowers. And, yes, strawberries are a fruit but they’re often included in herb gardens so it seemed fitting to batch them with the lush rosemary and thyme.

There were multiple structures employed to extend the growing season… the wonky view to the left is a homemade cold frame constructed with a discarded window.

There were lots of hard working plants braving the “winter”… The kale made me smile – especially the beautiful purple version!

Finally I HAD TO see what chard was doing in the garden due to my strong opinion that it should be the winner the One Seed Chicago contest… sadly I didn’t find a lot of chard – just one patch of struggling white chard. It was still pretty – as was a lone radicchio…

The hangover from New Year’s Eve wasn’t so bad so I am excited to jump on Part 2 of my Top 10 for 10 list… now that 2011 is firmly here, and the work insanity will be starting soon enough, it is nice to enjoy the final quiet holiday moments by thinking back on the things that were really fun in 2010 and start planning for more fun in 2011!

Happy gardening!

Number 1

Good melons. Or, as they say in the old Benny Hill sketch “Nice Melons!” Ours were both good and nice this year. We’ve attempted growing them every year and they are hit or miss depending on how hot the days are and the amount of rain we get. This year we tried Golden Midget – which very politely turns golden when ripe so you’re really sure it is done – and the famous French Charanais which is an old favorite of ours… they’re small enough to trellis, usually flavorful (extra good in 2010!) and just the right size for two people to share.

This would also be a good time for me to recommend a lovely, lovely book by Amy Goldman called Melons for the Passionate Grower.

Number 2

Growing garlic! Admittedly toward the end of the growing season the last thing I wanted to do was plant garlic cloves in 2009. But I sure was happy that I did in 2010! Garlic couldn’t be any easier to grow… you separate the cloves, push them deep in the ground (we did it at about 4″), mulch (if you remember to) and come spring you have early green in the garden, tasty scapes that seem to have their own personality and, in the case of Elephant Garlic (which is technically part of the leek family, not the garlic family) beautiful flowers too!

Number 3

You probably know from reading this blog that I am a bit infatuated with heirloom vegetables and grow them almost exclusively. One of the things I really like about them is they challenge our modern ideas of what a fruit or vegetable should look like. I tend to seek out things that are unusual or out of the ordinary and love it when a visitor is surprised that a melon, tomato, bean, etc. comes in an unusual color.

In addition to color, many heirlooms are striped! This year we had quite a collection of really pretty stripey things… they made me happy…

A note on the tiny orange striped melon on the lower left… that is called a Pocket Melon and they don’t taste great but have a beautiful fragrance. Story goes that Victorian ladies would carry the in their pockets (thus the name) and sniff them when they encountered a less than pleasant odor. An added BONUS with the pocket melon… it seems that the squirrels like them! We found a lot of half eaten ones around the garden over the summer and it seemed fewer half eaten tomatoes. I’m going to try them again next year to see if they’re a good trap crop!

Number 4

Tomatoes. Yes, you know I have a little problem with the heirloom tomatoes and 2010 was no different. I did enjoy finding new ways to present tomatoes to friends as gifts as well as taking lots of pictures of them… they’re so beautiful.

Number 5

What you might not know is that The Yarden is mostly edible… not that I don’t like flowers but, in general, you can’t eat them so I concentrate on edibles. I do have two rose bushes but I figure you can make tea out of the hips so that makes them somewhat edible. I also have lots of Siberian Iris (which make me crazy they’re so beautiful) and, again, I’ve heard that in times of hardship you can dig up the corms and eat them. So… maybe a stretch but technically edible.

In 2010 I made an exception and planted poppies thanks to a post I read from one of my favorite Chicago garden bloggers Mr. Brown Thumb. NOTE: I did plant some bread seed poppies in hopes of harvesting and eating them but they were one of many…

The great thing about poppies is they’re even easier to sow than garlic and sowing the seeds gets you outside in early March when there really isn’t a lot of garden stuff to be done in our Zone 5 climate. Oh, seed saving for these is a snap… you just pick the dried pods!

Number 6

Miscellaneous new veggies and herbs. Like I said, I like to try new and interesting heirlooms especially ones with an interesting color. This year of the many I tried, four really stood out – one so much that I’m reserving him for #7. Here’s the first three…

Here’s a tale of woe that you may remember from my post on Top 5 Dumb Garden Mistakes in 2010… these lovely “white” peppers on the left are now a mystery to me. I can’t find the seed packet – they may have been sent by one of my twitter garden friends – and all of my garden markers faded because I didn’t use indelible ink. I’m hoping I’ll find their info when I clean out the garage this spring and am kicking myself for not saving any seeds. They were DELICIOUS – sweet and not too peppery tasting. I loved them. Sad.

The second image is Shiso – aka Perillo. This herb grows to be shrub sized, is mild and delicious – we used it a lot in herb salads – and the color is amazing. There is also a green version that is said to be more pungent than the purple version so I may have to try that one in 2011!

The third image is an Armenian Cucumber aka White Serpent Melon. These “melons” – they’re taste like an vaguely apple flavored cucumber – are wildly prolific and delicious. We had few of the issues we usually have with cucumbers. There’s a green version of this guy too which we might try in 2011 as well!

Number 7

Gardening is never boring and Peter and I both love every step of the process… well, I probably love it more. But, my point is, all of it is great and yet once in awhile a plant comes along that is so interesting, prolific and or full of “personality” you want to tell everyone about it. In our 2010 garden that plant was Trombetta Squash.

We had so much fun watching these plants grow! We got the seeds from Renee’s Garden Seeds and planted them as we would zucchini which means, in our garden, that we over plant because the plants either get powdery mildew and/or don’t produce like we’d want them to so we plant extras and pull the diseased/lazy plants as the season progresses. Trombetta didn’t have any of these issues and virtually took over one quarter of the garden and beat the tomatillos in a domination smackdown. The instructions say to “eat when young” (see image on the left) but one day they’re tiny and the next day they’re monstrous like the middle picture. You really have to keep your eye on them. It would help if you anticipated how jungly they would get and plant accordingly – you could perhaps see the squash lurking under the giant leaves better.

Number 8

I feel like I need a little break after all my Trombetta gushing so this one is simple… my dear friend Tony got me this great garden statue for my birthday last year. It now holds court over the herb corner.

Number 9

Another simple one… the first year we had The Yarden we planted some lovely white currant tomatoes – per #3 you know I like the odd colored veggies! Ever since that first year they volunteer profusely. We pull up dozens and keep three or four. These are the sweetest little currant tomatoes you can imagine.

Number 10

Sharing gardening with friends. This is nothing new but 2010 had a twist on it… because of my activity on Facebook and Twitter I have gotten to participate in some “communal” gardening activities which have expanded the number of gardeners I get to learn from. It has been really tremendous especially since I travel so much for work – the on-line gardening community just goes with me!

Many of these cool experiences have come because of #gardenchat which can be found on Facebook and on the web HERE. I’ll let you read for yourself how fun the weekly Twitter “chat” on various topics can be (I got to lead one on Community Gardening awhile back).

One experience I really enjoyed was Super Sow Sunday. That’s where many itchy-to-garden gardeners (who aren’t interested in the Super Bowl) start seeds that day instead and Tweet about it as we work. It is a really interesting way to feel connected to other gardeners out there in a vast community enabled by social media. Below you can see some pictures of my besties who help with all sorts of gardening tasks… they were excited to learn about seed starting this year!

And here’s a numerically appropriate bonus for the new year…

Number 11

Possibly the coolest garden thing I’ve ever done was work with The Peterson Garden Project which is rocking again for 2011… it is a real pleasure to get to teach people how to grow their own food which has always been my mantra for The Yarden. I am so looking forward to learning more, and teaching more!, in 2011!

This afternoon I was attempting to take a pre-New Year’s Eve party disco nap but I kept thinking – like everyone else on the planet – about the great things 2010 brought to us. I’d love to find a different or unique way to position it but being original this time of year is hard since we’re all focused on New Year’s resolutions and summing up the past 365 days… who am I to fight human nature… here’s my plain old Top 10 for 2010: Kitchen Edition list… it was a tasty year!

I must add my usual caveat that these are in no particular order… they’re all fabulous to me!

Number 1

A friend bought Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller for me for my birthday this year. The Crispy Chicken with Olives, Lemon and Fennel on page 30 is going to be my new favorite chicken recipe for a good long while… yum, easy and lovely.

Number 2

I have one really nice knife (read: expensive) that my sister-in-law bought me for my 40th birthday a few years back. She also bought a sharpening steel. Today I suggested to Peter – as I do every year on December 31 - that his New Year’s resolution could be to learn how to use said sharpening steel. He gave me the fish eye as he does every year when I suggest this. Luckily I made a discovery this year that made Peter, my sharp knife needs and our collective cheapness happy: Kuhn Rikon Colori knives.

Not being a knife expert, I don’t know (or care) how they make them but they’re sharp (and STAY sharp!), colorful and affordable… I grab a new color of the paring knives every chance I get. And the “sandwich” knife is perfect for sandwiches and tomatoes. Love.

Number 3

Again with the birthday gifts… my friends know me well. I have several books on cheese making that I love to pour over and have yet to actually use to make cheese. I must have mentioned this in party-talk because this great cheese making kit made its way to our kitchen. Honestly, I have yet to make the mozzarella – although I have made it with friends at different times. However I can personally vouch for the ricotta which is a breeze. It seems like a complete waste to not make it when you compare its deliciousness with store-bought.

Number 4

Pesto. Or should I say “Not Basil Pesto”… Pesto means “to crush or to pound” (and in my vernacular “to food process” – I know, not traditional but I’m real, real busy!). We tried it first with mustard greens. Now every herby/greeny thing gets the Pesto treatment. Again – YUM!

Number 5

This technically isn’t from or part of our kitchen but it was a bit of a food revelation and a fun day! I got invited to judge a pie contest. It was a beautiful thing – until I started eating the pies. At first I thought it would be hard to pick the best three pies. I was right but for the wrong reasons! My pie eating snobbery was definitely a hinderance in this case and, in all fairness, I’m not a pie making expert because pie crust scares me. When I shared this with my 80+ year old mother she said, “honey, you’ve got time. I didn’t make good crust til I was 50″. Well, that’s a relief… so I guess all of the ten pies that I tried get a big A for effort at the very least!

Number 6

Giadia DeLaurentis. I don’t watch the Food Network or any TV for that matter. Not due to snobbery, just due to time… well, the Food Network thing is a bit due to snobbery. I think it is kind of cruel – all that great food, expertly prepared, and the viewers can’t smell or taste it? Torture! To report accurately, one New Year’s Day I was very hung over and watched a marathon of that program where they show popular food products being made, extruded, squeezed onto conveyor belts, etc. Perfect for a hangover day but pretty much the extent of food show expertise.

Anyway, living under my TV-free rock I wouldn’t have paid much attention to Giadia if it wasn’t for a recipe I received in an email called “The 12 Days of Cookies” – you may know about my cookie baking habit from a recent post on Traditions. Anyway, I don’t watch Food Network but I do receive the cookie update which featured a Lemon Ricotta Cookie recipe  from Giada that is possibly the best new cookie I’ve tasted in years. Seriously. On top of that, I’m not a “sweet + lemon” fan – I love lemon in savory applications. But this cookie really changed my mind on that front too. You must try this miracle cookie! Do it! Click HERE right this second!

I did make one small variation – instead of making them as cookies I made them in mini-cupcake liners so the glaze would stay put – they’re pictured above and to the right stacked on the pie plate like a little mountain of lemony heaven. I don’t think it made a difference in the flavor. On top of that – if you’re not tired of my ranting about this cookie – they are lovely and fragrant to make as well. A real pleasure! I wonder what they’d be like with homemade ricotta?!?!? Hmmm…

Number 7

Again with the Giadia! She probably had very little to do with her eponymous bakeware line at Target but I loved the lines, heft and color. I have a thing about white dishes… [I know you're surprised that I might have a "thing" about anything.] Plus the line is affordable (back to the cheapness in Number 2). I bought the ceramic two quart oval baker. Yes, it is still rolling around in the way-back of my Honda CRV but I intend to use it VERY SOON.

Number 8

This isn’t a new thing to our kitchen but it is delicious and influential and makes me crazily happy every time I make it. This stacked salad recipe was what pushed us over the edge to buy The Yarden (and the house attached to it) and move out of our condo. We tried it for the first time in 2005 with tomatoes from the farmer’s market. In 2006 we moved. I can’t say the recipe was the only or main reason we were pushed into having our own garden again… but it is the first thing we make every year when we have enough tomatoes… and it has quite a loyal following…

Number 9

A renewed love for my crock pot (and a new annoyance that they’re now called “slow cookers”)… this is mostly due to the awesome book The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolon. During this year’s cookie making marathon I had a companion marathon going using my $19.95 decade old and completely serviceable crock pot and recipes from this book.

Number 10

My general toast when we have dinners is “Here’s to friends worth cooking for!” and a seminal piece of advice shared by my dear mother was “If you’re a good cook then you’ll always have friends.” Both are very true… Again, no revelation for 2010 but certainly a delight, my friend Amy! Amy likes to “chop and stir” and she also likes to eat and take home leftovers. If you read this blog or follow us on Facebook and wonder how on god’s green earth I can accomplish so many of my OCD goals it is because of Amy. Well, Peter helps too, but Amy, wow, the lengths she’ll go for a good cocktail, some laughs and DINNER.

That’s the Top 10 for 10: Kitchen Edition… I’ll post the Garden Edition soon… perhaps after my New Year’s Day hangover and Food Network  mass-produced-things-on-conveyor-belts marathon… I will be toasting to friends worth cooking for and a successful and bountiful 2011 tonight!