Growing in Chicago

I'll be on the Mike Nowak Show tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sat, 01 Sep 2012 17:08:00 +0000

UPDATE:
Here are some links to things that I may or may not get around to mentioning on the Mike Nowak Show Sunday, Sept. 2. But if I do, here they are.

Apple growing and picking
Kuipers Family Farm, Maple Park
Midwest Fruit Explorers, a backyard fruit growing club that will have its Fall harvest Festival in October at the Chicago Botanic Garden.
The Indiana Nut & Fruit Growers Association, a group of fruit and nut enthusiasts in Indiana.
Backyard Fruits from the University of Illinois Extension.
Apples & More, University of Illinois Extension site with growing advice and list of you-pick farms.
Pick Your Own, a list of you-pick farms.

Green events in Evanston
Green Arts Show, Evanston, Sept. 7-21
Evanston Green Living Festival, Sept. 29

Misc. garden-, conservation- and plant-related events

Illinois Mycological Society Show and Sale, Sept. 2, Chicago Botanic garden, Glencoe
(A story I once had fun writing about mushrooms)

Douglas Tallamy, author of "Bringing Nature Home," speaks Oct. 20 in Bolingbrook at the invitation of the DuPage County chapter of The Wild Ones. Free, but you have to register.

Garfield Park Conservatory Harvest Days Celebration, Sept. 8 and 9

Openlands Water Trailkeepers Des Plaines River Cleanup Day, Northbrook and Deerfield, Sept. 15

HERE IS THE LONG BUT DELIGHTFUL AND READ-WORTHY ORIGINAL POST:

It's been a busy summer, during which I have shamefully neglected many things, including this blog. As penance, I have to spend the Sunday morning of Labor Day weekend filling in for Mike Nowak on his gardening-and-greening radio show, the Mike Nowak Show, from 9 to 11 a.m. tomorrow, Sept. 2. The show airs on WCPT, 820 AM and 99.9 FM south, 92.5 FM west and 92.7 FM north. Heather Frey, formerly the show's producer, will return to co-host.

Of course the big garden issue this summer has been the drought. Recent rains, including the remnants of Hurricane Isaac, may have taken the edge off, but that doesn't mean we can forget about the effects of the blisteringly hot and dismally dry summer, especially for trees and shrubs. Doris Taylor, who runs the plant clinic at The Morton Arboretum, will be with us to talk about how we can help trees, especially, recover and how to care for them through the fall. (Full disclosure: I'm about to start a new job as a writer at the arboretum. I'll still be freelancing and speaking on the side; learn more at thegardenbeat.com.)

We'll also hear about the Green Arts Show starting next week in Evanston. Ideas about sustainability and the environment provide both ideas and materials for the artists in this show – last year the big hit was a portrait made from salvaged plastic bottle caps. Peter Athans and Anne Berkeley will be in the studio to give us the highlights.

Apple-picking time has come a little soon this year, another gift of our extreme weather. Fruit crops took a big hit from that bizarre week of 80-degree days in March and the survivors are ripening early. We'll hear about the state of the apple crop from Wade Kuipers, whose family has a farm and you-pick orchard in Maple Park, out west of Aurora.

Sitting in for the goofing-off Rick DiMaio to deliver the gardener's weather report will be Patrick Skach, who contributes climate data for the National Weather Service and the College of DuPage Meteorology Department.

What about Mike? He's out West, doing some filming for his TV show, Dig In Chicago, in Denver and hiking in the Dakota badlands and I don't know here else. He will be back, no doubt snakebit and sunburned, next week.

If you have a comment or a garden question during this week's show, please call in while we're on the air at 773-838-9278 (773-838-WCPT for those who like to get cute with phone numbers). Or you can tweet at @mikenow or to me at @chicagogardener. I'm especially looking for apple memories and ideas from listeners. Apples are strongly associated in my mind with the change of seasons -- at least they were, back when fruit had seasons and apples weren't shipped in from Chile in June. We would pick apples every fall when I was young; my mother was fond of piling all the kids in the station wagon several times a year for rambling fruit and vegetable foraging expeditions all over northern Indiana and southern Michigan. There used to be a lot more family-owned orchards and fruit and vegetable stands where you could buy or pick many different varieties of not only apples but plums, peaches, nectarines and pears.

One favorite dessert in my family is a simple, moist, fruity apple cake, almost more apples than cake, that was one of the first things I learned to bake. Since it can be mixed up in a large bowl by a small child with a wooden spoon (as long as a grownup dices the apples and handles the oven part), it has long been a gateway recipe in my family.

My mother, Lee Botts, has a vivid memory of learning to make apple cake in the middle of a huge dust storm in Oklahoma in 1936 or 1937 (drought summers are not a new thing), stirring it in a bowl with a wooden spoon, with sheets covering the windows and dust blowing in under the kitchen door. We think my great-grandmother probably brought the recipe when the family moved from Missouri to homestead in Oklahoma at the turn of the 20th Century.

The recipe has changed a bit: We no longer peel the apples – the bits of peel add flavor and color and maybe even some vitamins -- and we've reduced the sugar.

Use firm, not-too-sweet, flavorful apples, not candy-sweet 'Red Delicious' or mushy 'Macintosh.' I use 'Jonathan' apples whenever I can get them. Jonathans are my favorite all-purpose apples for their perfectly crisp texture and intense flavor, bright and spicy and not too sweet, but they are not the best keepers. Sometimes I use a mix of apple varieties.

It's a good idea to make this in a heatproof glass pan if you're not going to eat it all right away, because if you make it in a metal pan and it sits a while, the acid in the apples will cause both the pan and the cake to discolor.

The recipe doubles just fine in a 9-by-13-inch pan. I've also been known to bake it in paper-lined muffin tins, like cupcakes; that's a good way to take it to the office or for potlucks. Also good for breakfast.

Apple cake

From Lee Botts and her Rutledge family forebears

Preparation time: 45 minutes

Baking time: About 30 to 40 minutes

Yield: One 9-inch-square cake pan

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon each: baking soda, ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon each: freshly grated nutmeg, salt

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, softened

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups unpeeled, cored, diced apples

1. Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and salt in a bowl; set aside. Beat sugar and butter with a mixer on medium speed (or use a wooden spoon and a large bowl) until creamy. Add the egg and beat until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla.

2. Add 1/4 cup of the dry ingredients to the mixture, beating just until mixed. Repeat with remaining dry ingredients. Stir in the apples. The batter will be quite thick. Spread the batter in a buttered 9-inch-square pan. Bake until cake is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 to 40 minutes, usually, depending on your oven. Cool in pan on a rack. Cut in square or rectangular pieces to serve.

Scant on space? try container tomatoes

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 20 May 2012 17:59:00 +0000

had a story in the Chicago Tribune today about growing tomatoes in containers. That's how I grow all mine. I don't have enough ground-level sunny space for vegetables, so I grow tomatoes in pots on the third- and fourth-floor porches.

It would be easier if I really had full sun, but there's a roof over the porch and railings that cast shadows, so my personal situation is even more complicated than I mentioned in this story. I do a talk called "Vegetables Anywhere" in which I go into it in more detail.

I just checked my tomato seedlings and they're ready to plant. Whoo-hoo! I'll wait till it cools off, though. Did a full day of gardening in the heat yesterday and felt like I would die. In May I'm not ready for 85-degree gardening. I'm not too cool with it in July, either, comes to that.

See you on the radio tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sat, 12 May 2012 14:53:00 +0000

While you are preparing (or waiting for someone else to prepare) the Mother's Day brunch, you might as well turn on the radio. I'll be co-hosting the Mike Nowak Show on WCPT 820-AM from 9 to 11 a.m.

If you're taking your annual Mother's Day trip to the garden center, listen on the car radio, and don't forget to wear your shin guards and football pads. (Also, take cardboard boxes so you can minimize the plastic trays, etc., you have to take home with your plants.)

Mike and I will be talking about gardening, taking gardening questions, etc., and also discussing the latest University of Illinois Extension funding crisis, and checking in with Rick DiMaio about weather for gardeners. The call-in number is 773-763-9278 or you can Tweet Mike at @mikenow or me at @chicagogardener.

The show can also be heard, to varying degrees in various places, at FM 92.5, 92.7 and 99.9. For those of you who don't bother with anything as primitive as a radio, the show streams live at the WCPT website.

See you there and happy Mother's Day.

Cook County Extension needs your help telling its story to fight new funding threat

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:19:00 +0000

Once again, the University of Illinois Extension is facing a huge funding cut. This time, it's in Cook County. And I'm told the basic problem is not that Cook County Board commissioners have it in for the Extension; it's that they have no clue what the Extension is or what it does.

If there ever was a time for all those who have ever been helped by the Extension in Chicago and beyond to step up and explain why it is useful and valuable, now is the time.

I've been a University of Illinois Master Gardener in the Cook County unit since 2005, one among hundreds. I know there are no volunteers who have contributed more to community gardens, school gardens, urban greening, local food, educating gardeners, promoting sustainability in gardening and using gardening to teach kids who may never have played on grass about nature and science than the Master Gardeners. There is no end to the energy, invention, enthusiasm, curiosity and desire to help people that I see both in my fellow Master Gardeners and in the dedicated educators and other University of Illinois Extension staff who support their efforts.

And the Master Gardeners are just one of the programs through which the Extension delivers the knowledge of the University of Illinois into communities. Extension programs educate inner-city families about nutrition to fight the obesity epidemic. They help teachers make science come alive for grade-school students. They help homeowners fight bedbugs. In the state's largest city, they are addressing urban problems.

But many people don't know that. In the Chicago area, if people have heard about the Extension at all, they may have some dim sense that it has something to do with farmers or 4-H. It seems like a vestige of the agricultural past. In a time when county staffers and commissioners are trying to close to close an estimated $427 million shortfall in the county budget, they see funding for what they think is an anachronism as an expendable frill.

So board president Toni Preckwinkle is planning to eliminate Cook County's entire $411,000 contribution to the Extension budget. Since state and federal matching funds and grants are based on local funding, Cook County Extension director Willene Buffett estimates that this would end up costing more than $740,000, or about 65 percent of the Extension budget in Cook County. It could end Extension programs in the county. "How can you say that the largest populated county in the state will not have an Extension program? How can you say that?" asks Buffet.

These are tough times. Cook County truly is under terrific financial stress, caused not just by the recession but by decades of patronage, payroll padding, corruption and incompetence. Preckwinkle has proposed a severe budget that includes eliminating upwards of 1,000 county jobs and many other cuts. She has an awful mess to straighten out and I understand that it requires difficult choices in core areas including health care, policing and law enforcement. I understand that when her budget-cutters came across a $411,000 line item for Account 298-521310 in Department 49 that was simply labeled "special or cooperative programs," it seemed like a superfluous line item they could afford to get rid of. But that line is the Cook County Extension that has been serving Chicago and its suburbs since 1914.

The Extension might be able to withstand a cut in county finding, but if this line item is eliminated altogether, I'm told, it will be difficult if not impossible to restore it.

Buffett says part of the problem is the total changeover in county administration, as well as major changes in the membership of the County Board. The new people simply have no clue about the Extension and have other things on their minds.

The staffs of George Dunne and the John Strogers, father and son, were less than admirable in many respects. But they did grasp the value of the Extension, and they supported Cook County's contribution to its funding -- just as counties contribute to their local Extension offices all over the state and the nation.

Since Preckwinkle's reform administration took over in 2010, Buffet says, she's been unable to get a meeting with anyone to acquaint them with the Extension and all the good work it does. At her request, Preckwinkle appointed two commissioners, Robert Steele and Bridget Gainer, to the Extension's Cook County advisory council. But neither commissioner has ever attended a meeting.

So now, the friends of Cook County Extension need to step up and clue these people in. If you know how much concrete good the Master Gardeners and other Cook County Extension programs do in the communities you know, write to the County Board -- to Preckwinkle, Gainer and Steele, and to your own commissioner as well. Tell them how the Extension is important to you, your community or your organization. Tell them if educators or Master Gardeners have come to your school or your institution to help. Tell them how you learned about composting or got help setting up a community garden. Tell them how the Extension identifies pests that could cause significant economic harm to the landscape and landscape businesses. Tell them how Extension training programs support landscape and horticulture businesses and help reduce pesticide dangers and pollution. Tell them how it would affect you or your organization if Extension programs were eliminated. Ask them to give the good work of the Extension in Cook County fair weight as they consider what to save.

Public outcry has helped save Extension funding before -- for example, a year ago when the state legislature was planning to eliminate the special Cook County Initiative funding that recognized the fact that Cook County serves many millions more people than Extension units Downstate. That state funding was cut from $5 million to $2.1 million, and it's always on a razor's edge, but so far, it hasn't been eliminated.

When you write, be sure to include your name and, if appropriate, your organization's name and letterhead. Send your letter by e-mail or fax if you can, because the horsetrading over the budget is going on right now. Cook County commissioners need to hear right away that there are people who aren't farmers -- people right in Chicago and its suburbs -- who value the Extension and its work. The website of the Extension Partners can provide supporting information.

Write soon, if you can; the next county board meeting is May 14. But the budget process will go on after that, so hearing from you after May 14 will help too.

Send your message to:

Toni Preckwinkle, President, Cook County Board
118 N. Clark St., Room. 537
Chicago, IL 60602
Phone: (312) 603-6400
Fax: (312) 603-4397

Commissioner Robert Steele
3936 W. Roosevelt Rd., 1st Floor
Chicago, IL 60624
Phone: (773) 722-0140
Fax: (773) 722-0145
r.steele@robertsteele.org

Commissioner Bridget Gainer
5533 N. Broadway
Chicago, IL 60640
Phone: (773) 561-1010
Fax: (773) 561-1025
commissioner@bridgetgainer.com

To find your local county commissioner's name and address, click here.

I'll be co-hosting the Mike Nowak show this Sunday on WCPT 820-AM from 9 to 11 a.m. and we'll be talking about the Extension funding issue (and other gardening stuff). Call in with questions about the Extension (or gardening). The call-in number is 773-763-WCPT (9278), or Tweet Mike at @mikenow. (I'm @chicagogardener.)

Earth Day present: A new garden TV show

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:43:00 +0000

As if a planet that has not (yet) been entirely consumed by environmental catastrophe were not enough, we have more goodies coming this Earth Day Weekend. April 21 will see the debut of "Dig In Chicago," a new locally-produced cable TV show hosted by my buddy Mike Nowak of WCPT radio fame, along with Jennifer Brennan.

I haven't seen the show so I don't know whether it's going to be any good. Oh, who am I kidding? I'm sure it will be a riot, and it might incidentally even contain some useful gardening information.

Mike is never not entertaining, whether he's proselytizing for natural lawn care, singing goofy Christmas carol parodies, teaching community gardeners or voluably arguing for completely wrongheaded opinions. Jennifer, who is the education manager at Chalet Nursery in Wilmette, is absolutely irrepressible as well as a font of gardening wisdom. There also will be cooking segments with local chefs.

They've been frantically shooting all over the Chicago area for weeks, in between Mike's Sunday morning radio shows.

The TV show will be seen at 10 a.m. Saturdays on Channel 102 on Comcast's Xfinity cable TV system. For those who don't have Comcast, all segments also will be posted on the show's website and YouTube channel, with links from its Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Here's a story about the show on the Chicagoland Radio and Media blog.

Growing greener in an age of climate change

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:05:00 +0000

Next Saturday, the day before Earth Day, I'll be delivering the keynote address at the Spring Celebration of Share the Harvest, a project of Grace Seeds Ministry in which south and south suburban churches and their neighbors grow food for donation to food pantries.

Linda Wygant, who is organizing the event and who knows me as a fellow Master Gardener, asked me to talk on "Growing Green in a Changing Climate." She was inspired, no doubt, by articles I've written recently for the Chicago Tribune on the new USDA climate zone map and on suggestions for changing gardening practices to cope with climate change.

But as I've been mulling over the talk, I've been thinking about climate change not just in literal terms. Yes, the climate in changing, and over the next couple of decades the long-term increase in average temperatures is likely not just to make our growing seasons longer and allow the gamblers among us to try more tender perennials, but create more violent storms and more frequent droughts, foster more invasive species and insects, and cost us some much-loved native species -- without relieving us of the volatility that is the chief characteristic of Midwestern weather.

I also think there's a change in the climate of opinion. Sure, there are still knotheads out there, but most reasonable people have come to agree with the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening and that human beings are contributing to it. And I like to think that more people are sharing an awareness of their responsibilities to reduce that contribution and the help deal with the unavoidable effects. that requires making some choices in our own back yards that are not just about our own enjoyment but about the unseen effects out garden choices have on our communities and the natural areas around us.

One of the visible signs of that is the growth in interest in growing our own food. It has lead to an upsurge of community gardening but also to an upsurge of programs like Share the Harvest, which after just three years now has 18 raised beds at Mt. Zion Lutheran Church in Oak Lawn and donates food to several food pantries. Sharing food with our neighbors is an aspect of understanding that we share our gardens with our communities and with the natural world.

I'll be speaking at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 21, at Mt. Zion Lutheran Church, 10400 S. Kostner Ave., Oak Lawn. My talk will be followed by mini-workshops on beekeeping, composting, choosing plants for our new climate zone designation, and crop succession and interplanting to get the greatest harvest from a small space. There will even be a simple lunch, and it's all free and open to everyone.

It's an event-packed Earth Day Weekend this year, but I hope to see some eager, generous or simply curious gardeners. For vegetable gardening beginners, there's no better way to learn than to volunteer with experienced gardeners.

For more information on the event, call Grace Seeds Ministry at 773-495-7865 or email graceseedsministry@gmail.com.

(And thanks to WCPT 820-AM, where I am a sometime guest on Mike Nowak's greening-and-gardening radio show, for promoting the event.)

Oh, no! Another sunny spring day!

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 05:50:00 +0000

A doomed magnolia blossom

Only a perverse gardener, I guess, could be appalled at the weather guy's prediction of yet another March day of record-breaking warmth. But I'm dreading it.

In Chicago, as in most of the East and Midwest, it's more like July than March, with a five-day string of record temperatures in the 80s. Monday's dip down to 78 was a brief respite; it's supposed to be back up toward 83 Tuesday. All over my neighborhood today I saw shorts and flip-flops and sappy grins and flowers.

So why am I so distressed? What's not to like about magnolias, forsythias, daffodils, scilla, weeping cherries, redbuds, even crab apples bursting into bloom? Because they're not due for another month or more, that's why. We're spending all the blooms of April and the early part of May in a few hot days in March. And then what will we do for the rest of the spring?

Last year, after a winter that I remember fondly for almost constant snow cover, we had a lovely, long, cool, moist spring that kept a splendid tapestry of bloom going for many weeks. This year, I fear the whole spring is about to dry up and blow away.

It's not just us. According to this Washington Post story, it was 94 Sunday in South Dakota and International Falls, Minn., has set records in 9 out of the last 10 days.

Is this the coming of global warming doom? No, it's a weather fluctuation caused by a stationary cold front in the west. As I explained a few days ago in a story in the Chicago Tribune about how gardeners can adapt, climate change doesn't guarantee warmer weather. But it does mean that there will be an overall tendency toward more extreme weather events -- and this awful March sunshine certainly qualifies.

Bloodroot blooming too soon

As a general rule, I expect native plants, evolved for the unexpected, to be less faked out by crazy Midwestern weather swings than imported species from more orderly climates. And sure enough, the Mediterranean daffodils -- all of them, early, mid- and now late-season varieties -- have been blooming like fools for 10 days now. But this heat has pushed even native plants to lose their heads. In 2011, my bloodroot and sharp-lobed hepatica bloomed in the second week of April. This year, the hepatica was in bloom on March 12 and the bloodroot by March 19. The Virginia bluebells, which normally bloom with the daffodils in April and May, aren't flowering yet, but they're 6 or 7 inches out of the ground.

Which brings me to another worry: Everything's out of whack. Things that are supposed to bloom at the same time aren't. Where will the bees get pollen if all the spring flowers are gone too soon? What about all the native insects whose hatching and feeding is precisely coordinated to plants flowering and leafing out? Sandhill cranes are migrating early, and I've been seeing all sorts of unexpected bids. What are they finding to eat, I wonder?

And how will it end? The weather guy promises thunderstorms Thursday (and at least where I live, we need the rain. I had the sprinklers out Sunday for some shrubs I had planted last fall). Behind the front is a sharp drop -- down to 30 at night by the weekend. Which is pretty normal, for March, actually. But it's going to be hell on those magnolias.

I, personally, will be relieved, not just because I sleep better when it's cool but because a return to normal might salvage some spring. Maybe it will even get cool enough for my lettuce seeds to germinate.

Opening day at the flower show

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:26:00 +0000

The Chicago Flower and Garden Show officially opened on Navy Pier Saturday, after a fundraising bash last night. I spent the day with members of the Garden Writers Association -- a critical bunch -- and the consensus was that this year's show was a notch or two up from previous years.

The star of the show is the 12-foot tall steel-and-glass statue of an agapanthus in the entry garden, shipped over from the English workshop of artist-blacksmith Jenny Pickford. Yes, I bought some agapanthus bulbs. The bulb folks in the vendor area were doing a big business.

Another eye-popper is the huge rustic tree-trunk pergola in the Aquascape garden (No. 16). It was sold within milliseconds, I hear. Constructing it (out of real trees from a tree service) was a great ordeal, apparently, but it is undeniably spectacular.

Some of the show garden designers really rocked the "Hort Couture" fashion theme. This garden is from the floriculturists of the Chicago Park District.

And catch the madras-plaid-in-pansies effect here in the "Project Someday" garden of the students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences. The students, under teacher Andrea Briney, really stepped up this year, with a garden that shows some true design sense and professional polish.

The plywood shack in the Aquascape garden (No. 16) that at noon Thursday I saw just starting to be covered with stucco mesh and stone had become a charming turf-roofed cottage by Friday evening.

The White House tribute garden (No. 5) is proving highly popular, especially with folks who want their pictures taken in front of a huge mock-up photo of the White House. But the vegetables have also proven charismatic (provided by the Growing Place in Aurora, which has done remarkable things with zucchini and tomatoes in the middle of the winter, especially considering that I don't even have my seeds sowed yet).

Craig Bergmann did a couple of small but absolutely expert installations featuring plants from his new nursery. Just looking at the careful composition of subtly varying echeverias and the pop of pencil cactus makes you realize what a real plantsman can do.

The Tablescapes exhibit, where florists and other designers riff on the theme of a dining-table setting, is always a hoot, because the designers don't feel the slightest bit constrained by trying to imagine how anybody would actually eat in these rooms. Above, for example, is a breakfast-in-bed theme.

But this (from Zuzu's Petals in Orland Park) is the one that made me laugh out loud. Because most of us don't really use our dining room tables for dining very often, do we? Most of us use the big table mainly for other purposes, and just scoot the projects aside when we absolutely have to eat (or eat in the living room). And who do you think has a sewing machine and a half-dozen sewing projects spread out on her dining-room table right now, instead of getting her seeds sowed or her talks prepared or any of the other things she ought to be doing? Much less dining. I love the rueful humor on top of the nod to a fashion theme.

And of course there are tulips! Lots of other great gardens too. For kids, the kids' activity garden is a great, colorful free-for-all this year. Most people don't realize how much kids love this show.

I'm on my way down there again today for a seed swap (whoops! gotta get out of here). The show runs through March 18. I'll be speaking there twice on Wednesday. At 2:45 p.m. my topic is "I Though You Were Sleeping: "How Winter Becomes Spring in Your Garden." At 6:15 p.m.the topic is "Start Here: Basic Steps for the new Gardener." If you're a beginner, do come. Ask all the questions you want. My aim is to get you off to a good start. All the seminars (and there are many great ones) are free with the price of admission.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Sneaked peak at Chicago Flower & Garden Show

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 06:36:00 +0000

Tulips are ready to become a garden

I sneaked in Thursday to get a peak at the construction site that is the forthcoming Chicago Flower & Garden Show, opening to the public Saturday at Navy Pier and running until March 18. One of my recent projects has been writing and editing the show guide, and I'm also speaking twice at the show next week, so I had an in with the management.

It takes expertise to turn plywood into stonework

It's always amazing to me that something as complicated and elaborate as a flower show can be conjured out of the concrete floor of a convention hall in just a week. When I arrived -- less than 36 hours before there is to be a fancy fundraising gala Friday night -- some of the exhibits were still piles of sand. Others were nearly finished. Mulch and dust and beeping forklifts were everywhere. People were still laying stone and arranging plants and decking out mannequins to suit this year's Hort Couture theme, and some exhibits were barely started. And Friday at 5 p.m. it all has to be done.

But there was enough evidence to make me confident that this year's display gardens will surpass last year's. I'm not allowed to give much away -- Sue Markgraf, who handles PR for the show, has me firmly muzzled. But I did snap a few pix.

Lots of atmosphere in this garden

I will be speaking twice on March 14. At 2:45 the topic is "I Thought You Were Sleeping: How Winter Becomes Spring in Your Garden." Of course when I agreed to do this I thought we were going to have more of a winter. At 6:15, I'm speaking especially for beginner gardeners. The topic is "Start Here: First Steps for the New Gardener." Of course I'm only one of many speakers at the daily seminars and demonstrations, all of which are free with show admission.

There's also a gathering just for bloggers on Thursday evening, put together by Mr. Brown Thumb, with a panel of Chicago Now bloggers. Bloggers who would like to attend should get in touch with Mr. Brown Thumb (he's @mrbrownthumb on twitter) or e-mail Sue Markgraf at smarkgraf@greenmarkpr.com.


Teacher Andrea Briney and students from the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences at work

I'm on Team Basil

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 19:13:00 +0000

I just voted for basil in the One Seed Chicago election to choose the plant of the year. The other choices were chamomile and cilantro (yuck!). Here's my statement of support for basil:

Versatile and flavorful. Easy to grow even in small-space containers (although very tender, but it can be given head start from seed indoors). There are many interesting cultivars. Can be made into pesto or frozen in ice cubes and enjoyed all winter in sauces and other dishes. My favorite sandwich in the whole world: rustic whole-wheat bread, a hint of mayo on each slice, razor-sharp aged white cheddar, slices of homegrown tomatoes, a sprinkle of salt, a lot of freshly plucked basil leaves. Yum yum yum yum yum yum yum.

I have a new website. Actually, two.

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:57:00 +0000

One of the things I have been doing lately instead of blogging is creating a new website. Two, actually. The garden writer/speaker/coach aspect of me is now based at The Garden Beat. The communications consultant aspect of me is now based at bethbotts.com.

Poscast of March 4 Mike Nowak show

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 05:53:00 +0000

I was on Mike Nowak's gardening/greening radio show this morning, discussing whether environmental groups should take corporate money, why I have been invisible on social media since October, whether Chicago should lift its landfill moratorium, whether you should run out and buy annuals the minute they go on sale at the garden center (not!), the fact that the Chicago Flower & Garden Show is coming up next weekend and I am speaking there March 14, how to get rid of a stump, whether Virginia silverbells is a good tree to plant in Chicago, and some other stuff that is kind of a blur right now.

We failed to get around to talking about seed starting, but that's not my fault. I was passing notes and waving signs and nagging, but Mike was driving, and you know how he is.

Here's the podcast.

Back from winter dormancy

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Astute observers of this blog, if there are any, will observe that my last post was Oct. 9. Yes, I went dormant. I became too preoccupied with writing for, like, newspapers and magazines, as well as other work, and setting up anew website, thegardenbeat.com, and also trivia such as family and friends, and following "Fringe" and the demise of "One Life to Live," and the blog posts I was planning to write any day now somehow slipped to the bottom of the list and failed to get themselves written. This sloth was reinforced by the bewildering introductions of changes to Facebook and Google that I couldn't summon the strength to attempt to comprehend.

This is finally coming back to kick me in the ass, because today--this very morning -- I am appearing with Mike Nowak on the Mike Nowak Show from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT, 820 a.m. This morning Mike says to me accusingly, "your last blog post was, like, October." So I have been shamed into resprouting.

Amoing the topics we may or may not be discussing today will be the forthcoming Chicago Flower & Garden Show, Chicago's Sustainable Backyards program, tomato seeds, my social media collapse, the race for the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (woo hoo!), various other green/gardening topics and of course any garden questions people may call in with.

I will try to remember how Twitter works (I am, or was, @chicagogardner) and maybe even Facebook.

So here we go!

Links from Mike Nowak Show of Oct. 9

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:39:00 +0000

Here are links for more information on topics that came up Sunday when I was guest hosting the Mike Nowak Show on WCPT.

Mike's website

Organic Gardening magazine

Chicago Tribune compost story

Chicagoland Gardening magazine

Landreth Seed Co. saga

Growing Home building a new farm

Bike the Calumet 12-mile bike tour Oct. 16

Garfield Park Conservatory

Conservatory events, including Plant Rescue Sale

Open House Chicago, and its Green Trail

Report: The Future of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore

Ways to discover the nearby Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore:

Learn (official national park site)

Volunteer: National Parks Conservation Association, Save the Dunes

Paddle: Lake Michigan Water Trail

Fantastic Fall Orchids Show at Chicago Botanic Garden

My take on houseplants

Kilbourn Park Organic Greenhouse vegetable gardening class

Chicago Botanic Garden's Windy City Harvest and Green Youth Farm

Mike will be back next week, from 9 to 11 a.m. Sunday on WCPT, 820 AM in Chicago.

What's in store for the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore?

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 22:45:00 +0000

One of the things I've been working on this summer was writing a recently released report for the National Parks Conservation Association on the future of the Indiana Dunes National lakeshore. I'm just the wordsmith, not the policymaker, but I do have a close and longtime interest in this national park just an hour from Chicago. I knew it before it was a national park: My mom, Lee Botts, was one of the activists in the Save the Dunes Council who pushed for the park until it was finally established in 1966. She wasn't the kind of mom who left the kids sitting in front of the TV.

My parents discovered the Dunes shortly after they came to Chicago from Oklahoma as newlyweds in 1949. I have many memories of the Dunes and the campaign to save them and shape a new national park around Northern Indiana's steel mills and other development.

Assigned to sit at a card table at the Hyde Park Shopping Center Saturday mornings, at the age of 8 or 9, collecting signatures from shoppers on a petition to urge the passage of federal legislation to establish the park (passed in 1966). Riding in a DUKW (the WWII-era amphibious vehicle) in which my mom was touring around a bunch of congressmen, with sand blowing through my hair.

Staying in a friend's creaky cabin on stilts right on the beach at Porter Beach, with a potbellied stove and sand blowing against the rattling windows, part of an artists' colony that had been a retreat for Chicagoans since early in the century. Long gone now. One of many cabins and old tourist inns and campgrounds where we spent a week or a month in the Dunes in the summers of my childhood, my brothers and I free to roam through woods and swamps and dunes, bitten by bugs and encountering snakes, turtles, herons, raccoons.

Singing around the campfire in 1969 at the farewell celebration picnic at the patch of precious woods and marsh owned by our dear friend, artist John Hawkinson, the last holdout who had fought hard to keep it and the best remaining part of the Dunes from being bulldozed for what is now an Arcelor Mittal steel mill.

Carrying a picket sign at the dedication of the Port of Indiana in 1970, one of a handful of women and children from whom the Indiana National Guard had lined up troops in force to protect the guest speaker, Julie Nixon Eisenhower. She gave a speech all about jobs. We were mourning the precious dunes and woods that had been lost forever to build that port.

Long days spent lazing on the beach, and many hikes through Cowles and Pinhook Bogs, the Inland Marsh, Miller Woods, and all the other marvels away from the beach that are now in the park. Illicit winter toboganning outings down dunes in the snow. Sweeps of trillium and lupine in springtime.

The two summer homes we enjoyed for a few years each, leasebacks, which owners had sold to the National Park Service for the park but were allowed to use for up to 25 years before they were torn down. One was an oddly constructed hovel of pink-painted concrete blocks in the middle of the woods near a trickling creek, hand-built by a guy who sold us the lease, and who proudly told us he had cut down 200 trees to make space for a three-hole miniature golf course in a lawn in the middle of the forest. We would rather have had the trees, and we gradually let the woods have the lawn back.

A later leaseback had been the home and clinic of a quack doctor in the 1920s, who had fled to the Dunes, when it was still regarded as something of a wilderness, after losing his medical license in Chicago. He had a large organic vegetable garden on top of a dune (that's not what he was a quack about) and what my mom called her million-dollar view, over a small wetland and the first dune ridge to the broad expanse of Lake Michigan where the sun set behind the distant skyline of Chicago. We enjoyed that view and the nearby beach for a dozen years until the lease was up.

Both those houses are gone, torn down to let the sites return to nature. My brothers and I have hiked back to find scarcely any evidence there ever were buildings there. That's good. The whole point of all my mom's efforts, and those of all our friends who fought to save the Dunes, was to salvage as much as possible of the unique landscape, even where the land had already been developed, for the public and the future.

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has its troubles: budget cuts, transportation issues, invasive species, arguments over how it should be managed. One of the big problems is that though Chicagoans and Illinois Sen. Paul Douglas fought hard to establish the park, Chicagoans nowadays don't have much sense of connection with it. Many people in the Chicago area today don't know there is a national park an hour away, or lump it together with Indiana Dunes State Park.

But the park also is a triumph and a wonder. It didn't all get bulldozed for steel mills and industrial ports. There's far more support for it today, even within industry in Northwest Indiana. There's a lot more support for conservation in general in the region today. I'm hopeful for the future of the park.

Lynn McClure, Midwest director of the NPCA, will be talking about the report and the park with me Sunday when I guest-host the Mike Nowak Show (all about gardening and environmental issues in Chicago) from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north), 92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). It's also streamed online. Other guests will be talking about the Garfield Park Conservatory, Open House Chicago, and fall and winter vegetable gardening. Give it a listen.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

It's dry out there. It's still important to water

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:15:00 +0000

I know it's hard to focus on gardening when we're busy enjoying what will surely be the last summerlike weather of the year. But these warm, sunlit days with no rain clouds in view mean: No rain. And that's bad news for our gardens. We're in a real dry spell -- Tom Skilling says it's our longest for seven months -- and the plants aren't done for the season. They're working hard on their roots and they need water to do it.

Trees, shrubs and perennials need to store water in their root systems as they go into winter. For evergreens, it's a special problem: They must have their needles full of water to avoid drying out in winter winds, and they do photosynthesize a little bit on warm winter days and need water to do it. So it's especially important to keep watering evergreens right up until the ground freezes.

I have a whole mess of perennials and shrubs that I just divided or transplanted so I need to be especially assiduous about watering. These plants only have a few months to grow enough roots to make up for what I whacked off, and they can't do it without water. So my soaker hoses aren't going in the basement any time soon.

If you feel the need for a refresher course after our rainy August: When it was dry this summer I wrote long posts on how to water and what to water with.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

On the radio Sunday: the conservatory's future, cool green places to visit, our neighborhood national park, fall and winter veggies

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 18:58:00 +0000

Once again, I'll be hosting the Mike Nowak gardening-and-greening radio show this Sunday while Mike goofs off. Actually, I think he's going to his high-school reunion. One of the big ones. Multiple decades. I hope his Twitter and Facebook friends won't waste the opportunity this presents for commentary and discussion.

Meanwhile, a lively group of guests will join me Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north), 92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). And of course, streamed online to the world. I last hosted the show a couple weeks ago; here's the podcast.

This week, I'll be chatting with Mary Eysenbach, director of conservatories for the Chicago Park District, who will fill us in on the state of the hail-damaged Garfield Park Conservatory and plans for its future. "One Pane at a Time" is the theme for the fundraising campaign (donate online here) and parts of the conservatory are open for visitors. We'll find out from Mary what we can look forward to visiting this fall and winter while the repair work proceeds. And she'll give us the scoop on the Plant Rescue Sale Oct. 22.

The conservatory is one of the stops on Open House Chicago, an all-weekend free event Oct. 15-16 ("100 sites, 48 hours") that allows visitors behind-the-scenes tours of important and historic buildings and other sites in the city. We'll talk with somebody from the Chicago Architecture Foundation about the event's Green Trail, which includes 17 sites of special note for their environmentally-aware architecture or their interest for landscape design and architecture or gardening. The trail is one possible way to winnow down the choices in this great (free!) opportunity to see the city from new angles.

Did you know there's an important national park an hour from downtown Chicago? A lot of people don't, which is one of the things I'll be talking about with Lynn McClure, Midwest regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association, who will remind us of the wonders of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I wrote a recent report for the NPCA about the future of the national park and one of the needs identified by the group's policy wonks is for more Chicago folks to discover, enjoy and support their neighborhood national park. Lynn will be able to talk about all there is to enjoy, including the first stretch of the Lake Michigan Water Trail, which leads from Chicago right there. Got a kayak? You also can take the train or even drive.

Angela Mason, director of community gardening for the Chicago Botanic Garden, will talk to us about fall and winter vegetable growing. Is there anything you can still plant? How long can you leave root crops in the ground? How do you extend the season for greens? When should you harvest Brussels sprouts? She'll also talk to us about the garden's Windy City Harvest and Green Youth Farm programs, which train workers for urban agriculture and work with teenagers to raise crops for farmer's markets. She'll let us know what they are harvesting and what are the good sellers this time of year.

And of course we'll have Rick Di Maio to tell us what to expect in the weather department (this balmy weather is getting me nervous about my houseplants).

Call in with your questions about fall and winter vegetable gardening or other topics during the show to to 773-838-WCPT (9278).

You also can tweet your questions and comments to my Twitter feed (@chicagogardener) or Mike's (@mikenow) and, of course, there's Facebook.

Valiant producer Heather Frey and I will try desperately to keep up with all this social media while she pushes all the buttons and makes the sound effects and music and stuff happen and I try to remember which microphone I'm supposed to talk into.

After the show, a podcast will be posted on Mike's web page, Mikenowak.net.

See you on the radio ....

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Time to move houseplants indoors

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:45:00 +0000

We're being suckered by a stretch of balmy weather in Chicago right now. Temperatures in the 70s, flirting with 80s, are predicted for the next several days, until about Tuesday, it looks like, with nothing but sunshine. For those of us who move our houseplants outdoors for the summer, this sort of weather in October is really dangerous. The temptation is to leave the plants out to enjoy the warmth and sunshine as long as possible, but that's a major risk: At any moment the weather could turn and overnight we could have a houseplant massacre. After all, our typical average first-frost date is about Oct. 15.

I have gotten about halfway there: I have the houseplants repotted (yes, I know it's better to do it in spring, but for logistical reasons I always end up doing it in September) and waiting on the back porch landing. I haven't been able to bring myself to haul them indoors -- it seems so cruel. Also, indoors is three floors up, and hauling pots upstairs is work.

I don't have any exotic orchids in my collection, any signed-first-edition houseplants. My houseplants are more along the lines of the battered paperbacks you pick up from the freebie box outside used bookstores. Most were grown from cuttings from other people's houseplants; some, despite their plebeian geneaology, are precious to me because the cuttings came from people I loved.

But even common-as-dirt houseplants like mine -- spider plants, pothos, Tradescantia zebrina (the plant otherwise known as wandering racial slur), purple heart vine, athyrium, peperomia, Moses-in-the-cradle, Chinese evergreens, begonias, jade plant, Ficus benjamina, asparagus ferns, snake plant (a.k.a. mother-in-law's tongue), a couple of kinds of true ferns, prayer plant, a few others I can't bring to mind right now -- are mostly of tropical or subtropical origins. I'm trying to overwinter some coleus and tuberous and flowering begonias this year too, to save money on annuals next spring.

The majority of these plants are native to the shady understory of tropical forests. That's why they can tolerate the darkness and warmth of living rooms. They have no defenses against a Chicago frost, and even the nighttime temperatures we've often had so far, in the 50s and occasionally 40s, are probably stressing them.

Repotting and dividing houseplants in fall is another stressor, although my plants love it outdoors and many grow to lanky or unmanageable proportions. Houseplants do go dormant, although it's a more subtle dormancy than you see in, for instance, a sugar maple that abandons its leaves to hunker down or a hosta that lets its top growth wither to preserve its roots. Houseplants just slow their growth in the autumn and rev up again in spring. Dividing and transplanting them in fall, when they are trying to start taking it easy, and forcing them to grow new roots when they're getting sleepy is a challenge. I'm glad they get a few extra days in the sun, and I've given them a mild shot of fish emulsion (another reason to leave them in the open air until the perfume passes).

When I repotted them and divided them, I checked the plants carefully for bugs, especially the undersides of the leaves, where lurkers often lurk. I gave them a hard shower from the hose to wash off any tiny insects or eggs. I watered them good, but I'm letting them dry out well before I water them again to avoid the saturated soil that leads to fungus gnat problems.

Some leaves were a little tattered from being munched on during the summer. All my houseplants serve as somebody's food supply outdoors, and they end up with holes and raggedy leaf edges. I simply cut any unsightly leaves off. Outdoors is actually the healthiest place for plants, pest-wise; whatever insects may munch on them become food for a wide variety of carnivorous insects, and the plants rarely sustain significant damage. Indoors is far riskier because there are no predators to control the populations of plant-munchers. That's why I try to be really careful to check for insects before I bring them in.

In an ideal world I would have a place to quarantine houseplants that have been outdoors for a few weeks to make sure they aren't bringing in pests. Also in an ideal world, I would gradually bring them in for a few hours each day to acclimate them to the much harsher conditions they will have to survive indoors -- far less light, for example, even in my sunniest windows (outdoors there is no roof). But I am not going to haul 25 plants up and down three flights of stairs each day. So my plants are just going to have to tough out the shock. Usually the ficus loses a lot of leaves before it recovers, but a ficus will lose leaves if you give it a hard look.

This rugged treatment explains why I only bother with common, sturdy houseplants. I don't have the conditions or the temperament to baby anything.

I do hedge my bets: Every fall I repot the divisions and give them to friends and family. That way I can go back and beg a cutting if something goes wrong with my mother plant (had a begonia near-death experience last winter). I also have a steady supply of backup cuttings in glasses of water on the windowsill. Over the years the old pool of friends and family has become largely saturated with spider plants, pothos and prayer plants, so I've had to make some new friends to soak up the annual surplus. Worse things could happen.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

What I did in the garden today

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 06:58:00 +0000

Today (well, technically, yesterday) I:

Spent 7 hours in the garden.
Got totally wet, thoroughly muddy and blissfully happy.
Filled with shrubs and perennials the spaces created Thursday when, in my first experience with a chainsaw (vroom vroom!), I single-handedly removed 6 immense gnarly yew shrubs at least 50 years old with 6-inch trunks.
Was able to spend 7 hours in the garden Saturday because I had 48 hours to recover from the agony of middle-aged muscle aches created by whacking, dismantling and disposing of 6 immense gnarly yews.
Transplanted 1 large 'Limelight' hydrangea paniculata, 1 large aronia, 1 small Meyer lilac and 1 young 'Juddii' viburnum.
Planted 2 'Blue muffin' viburnums, a boxwood, a dwarf fir, 2 dwarf spireas, 1 substantial 'Little Lime' hydrangea, and 3 golden barberries that I hope are a sterile cultivar and not invasive.
Planted 6 other small hydrangeas of various species, most to incredibly shady spots on the north side of a 4-story building where they are unlikely to thrive, but what the hell, they were free.
Created a rose garden, double-digging in compost and consolidating all the poor shade-ridden roses from around my garden in the only reasonably sunny spot, which had been wasted on a yew for 50 years.
Gave away a Meyer lilac and 27 hostas, the last four of them by stealth since my neighbor thought he already had enough hostas.
Gave away a large clump of pink Japanese anemones to a fellow gardener I met at the Garfield Park Conservatory County Fair last Sunday where we were both volunteering, and whom I ended up driving home to the North Side with a large plastic garbage bag full of fresh pony manure for his compost pile in the back seat of my car, because a Master Gardener would never let pony rides go to waste.
Planted a nice clump of irises given to me by said gardener which he swears will bloom in shade, an assertion that I believe with the faith of a child.
Started a hedge with young yews to screen the compost bins since I realized the huge gnarly hedge I whacked down used to screen them.
Wound a soaker hose all through my newly planted shrub plantings only to discover I had severed said soaker hose with a shovel while planting said shrubs.
Annoyed the neighbors in the condo association, especially the tidy ones, by completely slathering the front walk with mud and plant debris on a Saturday when they were coming and going all day
Divided and transplanted brunnera, pulmonaria, Japanese anemones, chelone (yes, I know you're not supposed to divide things while they're blooming, but that's when I had time to divide them) and Canadian wild ginger.
Pruned spicebushes, boxwoods and yews.
Did not lose any garden tools, a rare achievement.
Cleaned the mud off the walk, mostly.
Neglected to pay bills, write anything I could get paid a noticeable amount for, shop at yard sales for a used VCR to replace the one that just died at the age of 13, file, organize, tweet, post anything to Facebook, clean house, wash dishes, do laundry or get a manicure.
Almost forgot to get organized to host the Mike Nowak Show, all about gardening, tomorrow morning -- well, today, technically -- from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT 820 AM and 92.5 FM, 92.7 FM, and 99.9 FM.
Realized I better go to bed.

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Cook County Food System Survey

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 05:33:00 +0000

This is something I'll be mentioning on the radio Sunday: The Cook County Department of Public Health is in the process of developing a food system policy for suburban Cook County. They're trying to figure out how current public policy affects what we eat and what is available to us to eat, and how future food policy might be shaped.

They say they are re-examining all the laws and regulations on "the way we eat, grow, transport, store, process, distribute, sell or handle food or food waste." Obviously, there's a lot in that list that is relevant to gardeners, composters and urban farmers. And to gather information for this study they're taking a public survey.

To find out how to take the survey, click here. You can take the survey online or over the phone in English or Spanish. By expressing your opinions, you can have an influence on how the county and other government direct their policies, including policies that could encourage or discourage urban farming, community gardening, composting and other practices that lead to us having good, fresh, local food to eat.

This is a Cook County agency, so it has sway mainly in the suburbs. But Chicago residents of Cook County are certainly welcome to give their input. So please don't hesitate to take the survey.

The radio show in question is the Mike Nowak Show Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT, 820-AM and 92.5 FM, 92.7 FM, and 99.9 FM. I'll be sitting in for Mike. Here's a post about the lineup.

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

See you on the radio Sunday

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 21:35:00 +0000

While you are lolling around in your bathrobe Sunday morning, you might as well turn on the radio. I'll be substitute hosting the Mike Nowak Show this week from 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north),

92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). Mike seems to think he has something better to do.

This will be a heavy gardening show. My guests will include Glenda Daniel of Openlands, talking about the 20th anniversary of TreeKeepers; Breanne Heath of Growing Home, talking about composting and what to do with all those soon-to-fall leaves; and Ed Lyon from the University of Wisconsin, talking about bulbs, especially bulbs that are resistant to animals. At least somewhat resistant.

Call in with your questions to 773-838-9278, or post on Twitter to @mikenow or @chicagogardener (that's me).

TreeKeepers is the highly successful and much-imitated volunteer urban forestry program. (Conflict of interest alert: I'm TreeKeeper No. 973. I have the T-shirt.) Glenda will talk about how the program came to be and about the 20th anniversary celebration to be held Sunday afternoon in Columbus Park, and will also hold forth on the proper care of trees (she doesn't like this) and take questions.

Breanne will help us understand how composting happens, what goes on in the compost pile over the winter, how to make the most of your leaves (and your neighbors' leaves) and what the heck is that thing in the picture. She'll also talk a bit about what Growing Home does, providing transitional job training in urban agriculture.

Ed, who is director of the Allen Centennial Gardens up there in Madison, will discuss which animals like bulbs, what possible defense you might have against them and what bulbs are somewhat less likely to become some furry thing's afternoon snack. He'll also field any other questions might come up about bulbs.

And of course if you have any other garden questions to ask, call in and we'll field them or fake it. Heather Frey, intrepid producer, will be doing all the technical things and bailing me out of whatever rhetorical or legal difficulties I may get into. (Last time I was on the show I got stifled for using about four of George Carlin's seven words and endangering Mike's FCC license. But I'm trying to clean up my act.)

Altogether, we have striven (sorry, lapsed English major) to put together a show that will be sufficiently entertaining and informative to keep you more or less awake on Sunday morning.

So remember: Sunday, 9 to 11 a.m. on WCPT-AM 820 and FM 92.7 (north),
92.5 9 (west), & 99.9FM (south). Call during the show to 773-838-9278, or post on Twitter to @mikenow or @chicagogardener. The show also streams live (find the link here) to a worldwide audience including one guy who called in from Dusseldorf, Germany, last week. If it was worth his time to listen at whatever ungodly hour it was in Dusseldorf, Germany, it might be worth yours.

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

Sharp pruners, fun and fundraising to restore Garfield Park Conservatory, one pane at a time

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:14:00 +0000

Got some rusty pruners? loppers? machete? Bring them to the County Fair this Saturday on Central Park Avenue in front of the Garfield Park Conservatory, and members of the Wicker Park Garden Club will sharpen them for $5 each. Meanwhile, you can second-guess the judges in the vegetable or flower arranging competitions, take the kids for a pony ride or to the petting zoo or to bounce or slide, swap recipes (don't forget to bring one), get garden advice, learn about composting and beekeeping, enjoy live music and wander through the conservatory to the the gardens beyond.

And when you have those pruners sharpened you'll be doing a good deed: The proceeds will go toward One Pane at a Time, the fundraising effort to fix the hail-shattered 103-year-old conservatory.

"It's just been really heartwarming to see everyone who has stepped forward to help us," Mary Eysenbach, the director of conservatories for the Chicago Park District, told me the other day as she was giving me an update on the situation.

Three display houses and 10 propagation houses were severely damaged by a hailstorm June 30 (see heartbreaking pictures here.) That's why part of the conservatory is closed off. But the Palm Room, Sugar from the Sun exhibit (the one with the orchids and bananas) and children's garden are still open, as are the demonstration garden, the beehives and the gardens.

The bad news, Mary said, is that seven of the 10 behind-the-scenes propagation houses, where plants had been grown for the traditional winter and spring flower shows for decades, remain open to the weather. The park district is still trying to figure out how to get them and the Desert House buttoned up before winter.

But the historic and spectacular Fern Room, one of Jens Jensen's masterworks, home to the most delicate and weather-sensitive plants, has most of a temporary roof of polycarbonate sheeting. Some plants were sunburned and dried out because a temporary shade-cloth cover tarp couldn't entirely protect them from the hot sun or hold in the high humidity they need. "We have some replanting to do," Mary said. If all the plants can't be saved, "We'll just have to add to our collection."

So far, the emergency cleanup alone has cost $2 million. Workers had to carefully remove potentially deadly shards of glass that dangled from the Fern Room roof. Then they had to bring in a hydraulic lift to gently remove glass that had lodged in the tops of the spectacular cycads and palms. Large glass pieces were picked out of the plants and the soil around them by hand, and then the soil and plants were carefully vacuumed.

In the Show House, the soil had to be dug up to a depth of 12 inches and replaced. Because this is the site of the yearly flower shows, conservatory staff regularly dig in that soil. No one could take a chance on lurking hidden glass shards. The Show House may not get a roof before winter, Mary said, so of course it will host no flower shows.

Since so much is still unknown about how the conservatory will be repaired, she said, the park district has no number for what the repairs will cost or how much must be raised beyond what insurance ends up paying for. My guess is: a lot.

It's not going to be enough to bring the glasshouses back to the way they were built a century ago. They need to be replaced with double-walled tempered glass, like that which stood up to the hail in the Palm House and the Sugar from the Sun house.

"Our attitude is that we need to fix these roofs so that they give us a 21st Century greenhouse," Mary said. "The items that insurance won't cover because they weren't damaged by the hail are the kinds of things the fundraising will cover."

Things like that extra layer of glass, modern vents to regulte heat and humidity, movable benches in the propagation houses, a misting system in the Fern Room. There's quite a wish list.

The Wicker Park garden Club's tool-sharpening efforts are just the latest of several fundraisers that already have been held. I'm sure there will be many more.

Meanwhile, if your family tradition requires a visit to the conservatory's holiday flower show with its azaleas and poinsettias, Mary assured me there still will be a flower show at the Lincoln Park Conservatory. It's smaller, but charming, with lovely collections of orchids inside and dwarf conifers outside. It should help us get our winter-day plant fixes while the fix goes on at Garfield.

I'll be at the Garfield County Fair Saturday, answering garden questions in my capacity as a University of illinois Master Gardener. I hope to see you there, with your pruners and your $5.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

When not to water, and how to cope with flooding

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 16:00:00 +0000

OK, so immediately after I spent hours watering and wrote long posts on how to water and what to water with it rained 4 inches in my yard. And I got off easy: In some places it rained 7 inches, and it was officially the rainiest day in Chicago since they started keeping records in 1871. I realize that remembering to water tends to make it rain, but this is ridiculous.

So, when should you not water? When it rained 7 inches.

But that doesn't mean we're off the hook. At some point it will quit raining, but it will stay hot. We're only in July. Water will continue to evaporate from your garden soil and transpire from your plants' leaves, sucking water out of their root zones. One good soaker storm doesn't take care of the garden for the rest of the season.

Probably, both you and I will behave like we did after the wet spring; we'll think, "Oh, we just had that big rain, I don't have to water." Except by then the big rain will have been two weeks ago and the soil will be bone-dry and the plants will be desperate. So we need to continue checking so we know what the actual moisture content of our soil is, and apply as much water as the plants actually need.

But not more. Too much water is as much a problem as not enough. Plant roots that sit in waterlogged soil are deprived of oxygen; they literally drown because the air can't reach them. They can simply rot.

That's why drainage is so important in soil. Basically, good drainage means that the soil particles are large enough to have generous spaces between them. Water can flow through those spaces and so can air.

But we also want the soil to hold enough moisture so that plant roots have a chance to snag some as it flows by.

Sandy soil, with big mineral particles, drains superbly, but the water flows by so fast many plants don't get a chance to soak any up. Clay soil, with small tightly-packed particles, doesn't allow water to drain away well.

Either way, the solution is adding large particles of absorbent material -- organic matter, a.k.a. former plants, a.k.a compost. Good soil will be in the neighborhood of 5 percent organic matter. Doesn't sound like much, but it can take many years of adding decomposed plant material to get poor soil to that level.

A big rain is an opportunity to check the drainage of your garden. Walk around and look for places where water pools, where it stands for several hours, where it feels squishy under your feet. Try and figure out why: Is the soil sticky clay? Is it a low spot? Is there a downspout or other water source you haven't thought about?

Recently some neighbors consulted me about what was making their raspberry bushes turn yellow. I led them through a long series of questions about sun exposure, fertilizing, pruning, soil and watering -- at which point my neighbor said, "Well, we don't have to water much because our next-door neighbor's sump pump discharges right there." Oh!

Our neighborhood has a high water table. A sump pump keeping a basement dry is likely discharging hundreds of gallons a day. Those raspberries are living in conditions better suited to frogs. My advice: Move the raspberries, or persuade the neighbor to move the discharge pipe.

The hours after a big rain are a good time to look around for situations like that and figure out how to address them: perhaps by moving plants, by adding organic matter, by leveling out low spots or by creating a gravel-filled drainage pit for a sump pump discharge.

Keep an eye on your plants for the rest of the summer for signs of disease, and for signs of root rot. If you have a plant that seems to stay wilted after you water, its roots may be unable to absorb water because they are rotting. Dig down (or gently pull it out of the pot) and check soil moisture and look at the roots. If they are brown and soft, they're rotting. You may be able to save some plants by pruning off all the disease roots and repotting in fresh, sterile potting mix with excellent drainage. Only the most prized plants will be worth that effort. But you will have learned to watch out for overwatering.

So, what if you are in one of those places that got downright flooded? As long as the water drains away in a couple of days, trees and shrubs and perennials should avoid drowning. Annuals that stand in water may suffer more. The best thing to do is wait and see. Avoid walking on your garden soil until it thoroughly dries out to keep from compacting it. And don't dig in wet soil either.

Keep good watch for diseased foliage. Floodwater can redistribute disease bacteria and spores very efficiently. And since many plant diseases thrive in humid conditions, foliage diseases often follow floods. Diseases or root rot may take a while to show up, so keep an eye out all summer.

I wouldn't bother trying to spray fungicides on diseased plants or otherwise try to save their season; just prune out anything that looks diseased and dispose of it in the landscape waste, not your compost pile (your compost pile probably won't get hot enough to kill disease-causing organisms). You may have to discard entire plants. Shrug off the losses and start dreaming of next year.

In the Chicago area, with combined storm and sanitary sewers, floodwater carries something especially nasty: sewage -- with fecal coliform bacteria and their equally unpleasant friends. That's why, if your vegetable garden got flooded, you have real problems.

Immediately discard anything that was below the waterline -- greens, root vegetables such as carrots, tomatoes or peppers or beans that hung low enough to be in contact with floodwater. What flooded your garden is why they close the beaches -- and if you wouldn't swim in it for fear of disease, you probably don't want it on your food.

Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers or other plants that were staked high enough to be clear of the water are probably salvageable. But I would get the hose and wash off all every plant in the garden thoroughly. And I would plan to wash anything that comes out of that garden for the rest of the summer with plenty of soap and water before eating it.

And that compost pile? If it was flooded by sewage-tainted water, you may want to get rid of it (in the landscape waste) and start over. A home compost pile can absorb a lot of water, and it is not likely to get hot enough to kill sewage bacteria. Which means that you could be spreading them around your garden with the compost for years to come. Don't take the chance.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.

What to water with

noreply@blogger.com (Beth Botts) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 12:15:00 +0000

Successful watering is putting the right amount of water in the right place to plants' roots can soak up what they need without being drowned. I have strong opinions on this topic, which I will be discussing on Mike Nowak's radio show on WCPT Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m.

I also have a small arsenal of chosen weapons for putting water where it needs to go. I find they make the task much easier.

Here are some of my favorite watering tools. This is the straight dope; I really use all these tools. Nobody suggested these product endorsements to me and only one of these tools (see swag alert below) was given to me by a marketer.

Finger. Best moisture sensor made. Insert into soil of bed or container up to second knuckle. If fingertip does not feel moisture, water. Wash finger after use.

Black rubber hoses. These were one of my best-ever investments. It's not that they don't kink -- there is no such thing as a kink-proof hose. It's that when they do kink, they don't keep the kink and develop a kink-prone spot like vinyl hoses do. The black hoses are also much less conspicuous than green or tan hoses, which is important to me since I have no hidden place to store my hoses (and I have never found a hose reel that is not hideous). And they last. In the winter I disconnect these contractor-grade hoses from the faucet and let them drain but I leave them out in the weather.

Hose guides. These keep hoses from crushing plants when you drag them around. In my experience plastic hose guides and any guides that require you to thread the hose through something are annoying and ineffective. What you want is basically a post, ideally more or less decorative and not sharp so if someone barks their shin on it they won't need stitches. Hopefully you would place it where the risk of shin-barking is minimal.

Brass Y-connectors. These are on all my faucets. As with all hose and watering parts, I insist on metal; I've had too many pieces of plastic crack or leak or explode and soak me. The Y-connector allows me to leave the hose connected to one side and use the other side to fill watering cans or rinse pots, or to attach another hose. The levers allow me to switch the flow from one side to the other. My ideal Y-connector (which I haven't found yet) would have larger, easier-to-grasp levers.

Shutoff valves. I have these on the end of every hose, between the hose end and the quick connector (see below). The shutoff allows me to stop the water flow while I switch sprinklers or set a timer without have to trudge back to the faucet. It also allows me to fine-tune the flow to a sprinkler so it covers just the area I want to water. I'm allowing plastic here because the lever on this one is easier to turn than on metal ones I've seen.

Brass quick connectors. The greatest invention! They save me countless hours of hose wrestling. There's a female connector that fits into a male connector (yes, I know, this terminology was invented by guys). You pull back a collar on the male connector and the female connector slips in; let the collar go and it locks. It takes a fraction of a jiffy and makes it so much easier to connect and disconnect hoses, sprinklers, nozzles and timers, with no twisting. Because it's so easy to switch, I'm more likely to use just the right tool for each job. The male connector automatically shuts off the water supply when it's disconnected. There are plastic quick connectors, but I scorn them. I have developed a large collection of brass ones, which I use on every tool. (It's a good idea to stick with one brand, though, so there's no risk they won't fit. Most of mine are Nelson.) If quick connectors leak, it is nearly always because they aren't screwed in tight. Taking a minute to tighten any hose connections saves a lot of water.

Pattern nozzle with angle setting. (SWAG ALERT! I got this nozzle free at a trade show a couple of years ago, so you have a perfect right to be suspicious of my motives in praising it. However, lots of other marketers have given me tools I have not seen fit to praise on the internet.)
In general, I like simplicity in my tools. And there are simpler hose-end nozzles. But this nine-pattern metal nozzle from Dramm is very sturdy and replaces several single-purpose nozzles.
My favorite setting is called "angle." It shoots a fan-shaped spray downward at about 45 degrees, allowing me to hold the nozzle over my head and water high hanging baskets and wall pots. This setting isn't common in pattern sprayers. I find that by switching between spray patterns I can water a lot of pots around the patio and new plants without dragging the hose all over.

Fan sprayer. I have one bed that is 50 feet long by 18 inches wide. This sprayer is just perfect for putting down a gentle, even spray that is just wide enough. It is one tool for which I have not found metal sprayers to be superior to plastic. The distinguishing characteristic of a fan sprayer is the breadth of the spray, and unfortunately you can't tell about that until you get it home and try it. I accumulated several fan sprayers on the way to finding one that fits my bed just right.

Metal pattern sprinkler. Pattern sprinklers are versatile: They send out a steady spray in several different shapes, which can be fine-tuned by controlling the water pressure to fit into various nooks of gardens like mine. But I have a love-hate relationship with this particular sprinkler (from Orbit). On the one hand, it's all metal and has lasted four or five years. I bought it (and paid some staggering price, I think $30) after one too many cheap plastic pattern sprinklers broke on me halfway through the season. The problem with this well-engineered tool is that it's maldesigned. Unlike every other sprinkler I've ever owned, the spray comes out toward the hose, not away from the hose. This is counter-intuitive and awkward, and makes it absolutely impossible to set up the sprinkler without crushing plants with a bend of the hose and getting soaked. I expect to be moistened when I set up a sprinkler, but I don't think I should have to be downright soaked every time. Still, I have $30 sunk in this thing and I can't bring myself to replace it until it breaks. I almost wish it were plastic.

Metal-stake pulsating sprinkler. For covering large areas, such as lawns, it's good to use a sprinkler that has a pause in its action, so that one burst of water has a chance to soak in before the next burst arrives. Otherwise a lot of water will just run off. An intermittent sprinkler (the kind with a wide fan that gently waves back and forth) works if you have a large rectangle to cover. But I find that a pulsating sprinkler (which has a mechanism that swings it in a circle or part of a circle and then snaps it back) is more adjustable to the irregular spaces of my garden. It took me a while to learn to tinker with the distance, force and the extent of arc, but with those skills I find this a very useful tool. For large lawns you can connect several pulsating sprinklers in series between lengths of hose, though the pressure will decline toward the end. As with so many tools, I broke several plastic versions of this before I invested in one with a metal stake. If you push that wide blade part down into the soil (I wanted to show it in the picture) it anchors the sprinkler, which will otherwise tend to work itself out of position as it pulses.

Soaker hoses. Made of porous material so water can slowly seep out along the whole length, these are a great way to deliver water right where plants need it -- at the root zone -- without flinging it through the air to evaporate on the way or get leaves wet and encourage fungus disease. I use soaker hoses especially for trees and shrubs in their first two years; I twine the hose on the ground among the shrubs and cover it with mulch. Many people use them in vegetable gardens. Soaker hoses are invaluable for get water right to the root zone of evergreens, whose branches can shed rain right away and leave their roots dry. Of course, I always use a quick connector so I can easily plug in the water supply. Since they can easily be moved around and don't require emitters to precisely aim the water, soaker hoses work much better in a constantly-evolving home garden than drip irrigation (been there, done with that). But they are not perfect. For one thing, they lose pressure along their length, so with normal household water pressure, a long connected series of soaker hoses usually isn't worth it. Most soaker hoses are made of recycled rubber and, though durable, are stiff and hard to manage. They are best laid out early in the season when the perennials are just sprouting or before you plant the vegetables because it's almost impossible to wriggle a stiff hose down between grown plants. And they usually need to be staked down with wire garden staples. The effectiveness of soaker hoses is limited by the soil: In absorbent soil, capillary action will spread the moisture a foot or so on each side of the hose, but in sandy, well-drained soil the water will only go straight down.
My favorite soaker hose right now is a "flat weeper" hose from Gilmour. It's stitched from nylon fabric, so it is extremely flexible when it's not engorged. It can be laid -- not neatly laid, but laid -- between established plants if you forgot earlier, and at the end of the season the dry hose is easy to roll up and put away.

Two watering cans. I like to leave one can filling at the tap while I use the other for pots or specially thirsty plants. Then I bring it back and swap. A can should have a wide fill hole at the top to capture a stream from the faucet.

Hose timers. Time is how you control the amount of water you send through a sprinkler or soaker hose. You figure out how long it takes your sprinkler to deliver 1 inch of water (or what you have decided is necessary) and at the end of that time you are supposed to turn it off -- if you remember, and if you don't get distracted, and if it's convenient. A timer disposes of all those "ifs." You set to go as long as you choose and at the appointed time it shuts off the water. You can set up a sprinkler in the morning on your way to work. Or you can set a soaker hose to ooze through the small hours of the morning. (Since soaker hoses don't get the foliage wet and invite disease, there's no reason not to use them at night. And that's when there's least demand on the water supply.) Or you can set up a timer to allow a sprinkler to barely dribble into the root zone of a tree for an hour or so. I prefer simple mechanical timers. Fancy programmable digital timers can turn the water on as well as off at multiple intervals, but they require batteries and a Ph.D. They also can lead to the same destructive sprinklers-in-the-rain syndrome as in-ground irrigation systems: the tendency to set it and forget it, regardless of changing weather conditions. That syndrome is responsible for vast amounts of wasted water.

Mulch. Among its many virtues, mulch reduces the amount of water that evaporates from garden soil. I use wood-chip mulch for trees and shrubs and finer mulch (usually shredded leaves) in perennial beds. (Note that this mulch is spread properly: in a wide, even circle, not piled against the tree trunk. The mulch is kept a couple of inches clear of the bark so it does not invite rot and insects to eat at the tree. And yes, I should have weeded before I took the picture.) Mulch is also effective in containers, which tend to dry out even faster than garden soil. I find that cotton burr compost, available at some garden centers, is a nice, fine mulch for pots.

Rain gauges (plural). Like that finger test, rain gauges provide real data to guide watering. Just because the weather guy predicted rain doesn't mean it did rain. Just because a crack of thunder disturbed your sleep doesn't mean it rained in your yard. Just because the sidewalk was wet in the morning doesn't mean it rained enough to help your plants. Just because it rained an inch out on the open lawn doesn't mean a useful amount of water reached the ground through the dense foliage of your maple tree. I have several rain gauges around the yard and I am often amazed at how much their readings vary in different places. For example, our building is four stories tall, and a gusty storm out of the north that soaks the lawn may leave the beds in the lee of the building bone-dry. You can use a rain gauge to figure out how long it takes your sprinkler to deliver the 1 inch of water that is needed to keep a lawn actively growing. (Or you can quit watering and let the lawn go dormant in the hot summer and save some mowing.)

Flip-flops. Entertaining when worn with shorts while watering, especially with a hose-end nozzle on a hot day. The sober adult's approach to playing in the sprinkler.

Got a garden question? I recommend you call or e-mail the Plant Clinic of The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the Master Gardeners of the University of Illinois Extension or the Plant Information Service of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe .

All contents of this post are copyright Beth Botts. Feel free to link or share a brief excerpt with a link, but please do not reproduce photos or any other part of this blog without my express permission.