Ask yourself if you will tend a garden plot. Will I have time to water and weed? Start small. It’s best to start out with a few pots or maybe one bed. Starting with these vegetables from seed can be very rewarding: carrots, lettuce, kale, cucumbers, beans, squash. Take a long look at the light [...]
Every gardener, hobbyist or professional, gets excited about plants. Be it talking about plants, planting plants, getting new plants, looking at plants, but the success of a garden all starts with the soil. Be kind to your soil! Use compost over fertilizers to build healthy organic humus rich soil. Try to work the soil as [...]
Tulips have a somewhat famous history. Originally from the mountains of the Middle East, they grow wild in about 150 different types. Once they were brought to the Netherlands, Tulip mania ensued. Used as currency, a bed or even a single bulb, was enough to buy house. The bubble of this economic boom was very [...]
This past Easter Sunday, I hiked the trails of the Japanese Garden and bird sanctuary at Jackson Park. The Japanese Garden is a reconstruction on the original site of the Japanese Garden from the Chicago World’s Fair 1893. In the background you can see the Museum of Science and Industry, which is the only building [...]
Believe it or not, there are vegetables that like the soil temperature to be a little cool, around 50 degrees. So when you get in the gardening mood this early, these little guys are ready to join in. Beets Broccoli Carrots Collards Kale Lettuce Peas Spinach Swiss Chard Turnips Follow the seed sowing depths and [...]
Spring, and there is always something to do in the garden. This past weekend, I added compost to my pots, in which some still had flowering pansies from last fall! With about 4 weeks til our supposed frost free date, I decided to plant some cold crop seeds: carnival carrots ( in very loose and [...]