CityDiggity.com
A green space for urban gardenersArchive for Heirloom tomatoes
Quick pasta dish with heirloom tomatoes and freshly cut basil
If you’re like me, you have countless stories of all-day prep-a-thons, followed by the all-day cook-a-thons that precede a big sit-down dinner for family and friends.
And when a holiday meal is in the works, the pressure increases with the number of place settings.
The rest of the time, though, most of us are just looking for tasty meals that don’t eat into busy Read the rest of this entry »
The survivors: three heirloom tomato plants still standing
While reading accounts of bountiful harvests by garden bloggers around the world, I’ve waited patiently, hoping my day would come.
Well, despite the setbacks I’ve faced this year in the cultivation of my small-space balcony garden, I can at last proclaim: I have tomatoes!
Not as many as I anticipated when I began this year’s gardening adventure, but the fact that I was overambitious has perhaps paid off, since half of too much turns out to be quite enough. Wild cherry, rosalita and isis candy heirlooms endured Read the rest of this entry »
Tomato rites of passage: hoops and hoopla as first fruit emerge
The proudest moment for an heirloom tomato parent arrived in recent days with much pomp and circumstance: my plants had graduated to the point where it was time for the ceremonial “presentation of the hoops.”
Hoops being those wire support systems that, when inverted, look like the framework beneath all those crinoline skirts of a century ago.
I’ve learned the hard way that if you wait too long to slip them over the tender stems of your tomatoes you can damage the plants trying to squeeze them in later.
If you haven’t been following the evolution of my Read the rest of this entry »
Progress report: Hey, there’s actual progress to report!
The 4th of July was the kind of day every garden needs — to my mind, at least once a week or so. It rained all day, not a hard, raucous rain, but a soft and gentle one. A rain that caressed the plants — from leaf to root — encouraging them to new heights.
And, of course, it gave the weary container gardener a day’s reprieve from having to hoist the watering vessel.
By Sunday morning the rain was a misty memory, and by the afternoon I was able to get out on the balcony and take advantage of the last day of the three-day hiatus from workers doing their best Spider-man impressions on the south face of our building.
I surveyed the planters and pots and took stock of what needed to be done to fill in the thin spots. I think I’ve mentioned before that I had extra plants in a flat that I held on to in case I needed to replace Read the rest of this entry »
Lots of places where gardens could take root in cities
Blue wildflowers suggest there's a garden longing to bloom on this undeveloped site.
There’s a conspicuously vacant lot on my block.
Its original low-rise buildings were razed some time ago in anticipation of the coming of a condominium tower. But that work ground to a halt a few months back — perhaps another casualty of these tough economic times.
Despite the building boom of the last 10 years, it’s not the only undeveloped plot of land I spied while driving through my downtown neighborhood. There was even one that seemed to be spontaneously becoming a garden, with pretty blue flowers popping up on its perimeter.
I immediately switched into “what if” mode: What if Read the rest of this entry »
Plants – and temperatures – go from one extreme to another
Downtown Chicago’s weather went from zero to 60 seemingly overnight. Or, more accurately, from 60 to 90 — degrees that is. A great time to get my plants back outside, right?
Not necessarily… While sun and heat would appear to be the perfect prescription for perking up plants that had been sentenced to home confinement for days on end, it proved too much of a good thing for some. Here’s a recap:
On the upside, despite their time indoors (after work to the facade of my building forced me to clear my balcony garden), my flowering plants boxes still looked pretty good. [The lobelia pictured is a prime example.]
But, my herb/edibles planters were a different story. The marigold foliage had gone from bright Read the rest of this entry »
Oh, my aching back: More stress than calm in garden this week
Sometimes you have to wonder if your garden is serving you or if you are serving your garden. The rhetorical question reared its head this week as I played musical chairs with my balcony garden plants.
Let me explain: Work is being done to the facade of our building and the dreaded stage was finally slated for my elevation on Tuesday. So, by 3 a.m. that morning I had painstakingly brought in five railing planter boxes, cell packs of flowers that I haven’t yet made room for, and too many clay Read the rest of this entry »
Make no small plans: use time inside to enhance time outside
Lantana is one of the ready and waiting small plants I've bought to go in my balcony boxes.
My sprouts and plants are lined up like soldiers next to the balcony sliders, my cat has taken to staring wistfully through the glass while making his little bird sounds, and the empty terra cotta pots outside are stacked and waiting to fulfill their destiny. But Zone Five summers won’t be rushed, despite the impatient champing at the bit to shift into full garden mode.
When the bird sounds start, summer is on the way.
With the sunshine battling the chilly air and bouts of icy rain for dominance, we won’t get the green thumbs up until total victory over the fluctuating elements is claimed in this seasonal smackdown.
Of course, when you don’t have California weather, a good portion of your garden work is spent California dreaming — better known here as Read the rest of this entry »
Mother of all cleanup days: time for dirty job that has to be done
You can only put off garden cleanup for so long before the day of reckoning arrives.
Those of you in warmer climes probably spent Mother’s Day Sunday winding down colorful garden paths and smelling the early roses, while here on Planet Chicago I tackled the dirty job of cleaning up the debris from last year’s garden.
I promise the wooden duck and bird will stand proud again.
I know, many people choose to pull out the old plants in late fall, but for me it’s a pretty sad process at that time, since there always are a few flowers struggling to live on — if but for scant days more. I just can’t bear to deprive them of their extended moment of defiance. Cleaning up now, when I know the best Read the rest of this entry »
Four dollars and a dream: is a windowsill lettuce crop possible?
Here's hoping this leaf lettuce will survive and thrive on the windowsill of my Chicago condo.
We’ve talked about growing heirloom tomatoes as an entree into recession gardening, well, now dare we dream of cultivating a companion crop of lettuce, too?
I recently read somewhere in cyberspace that it was relatively easy to grow lettuce on your windowsill — and to keep it going! And while I always assumed lettuce required lots of space, who am I to argue with the Worldwide Web.
So today, when glancing at the plant offerings on flats outside my local grocery store I stopped and took notice of the lovely cell packs of lettuce and thought: I have an empty windowsill, so why not Read the rest of this entry »
