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I now have radish, arugula, collards, kale, chamomile (tiny tiny seedlings!), and mustard greens sprouted inside. The light setup works like a charm.
These are all spring greens that I will transfer to a cold frame in a few weeks. The chamomile and the one sad looking lavender sprout I have will have to be treated very gently. The coleus and viola have shown no life yet. I checked the temperature of the soil in the containers, and they are at a steady 65 degrees Fahrenheit- a suitable temperature for most things to germinate. We’ll see.
I like the way clay pots look. They unfortunately dry out very easily. I watered the seedlings this morning and the top of the soil is already looking crusty. I’ve converted several plastic containers to seed pots. Milk jugs, yogurt containers, berry containers, and all sorts of things. You can make anything a container for plants by drilling holes (vital step!) in the bottom for drainage. I also scavenge the abandonded tupperware at work and take it home to convert to plant containers.
I built the basic structure for raised beds by adjusting the existing raised beds. It’s a much better design because I’m using the space more efficiently. The two tires you see at the west end are the site of the future hop yard. Two hop rhizomes are on mail order. The hops can be planted early spring.
The Middle bed will hold spring greens in a cold frame for a few weeks and then, come Memorial Day, I’ll make the switch over to summer flowers- cosmos, poppy, marigold- perennial herbs- rosemary, thyme, lavender- and some lettuces here and there.
The middle bed gets a mix of sun and shade. I’m going to make a “berm” of sorts and plant prairie plants there-red milkweed, purple prairie clover, and flax. It’s a work in progress right now, but I feel accomplished just having the basic layout done. Over the next few weeks I will be adding compost from the yard heap, worm castings from my worm poop farm, and mulch that I can scavenge from the alley.
I started lavender, dill, and chamomile inside today. Chamomile needs light to germinate and the seeds are smaller than dust particles. It might be tricky with the long germination time.
We got a few inches of snow last night. My winter sowing seed containers now have a fresh layer of snow.
I’m figuring out what I’m going to plant and the timing of starting seeds indoors or in a cold frame.
Here’s the breakdown of the schedule. >>For any gardeners who are out there reading, I am in zone 5 (USDA zones) and the average last spring frost is April 21st. However, most Chicago gardeners use Memorial Day as their big planting weekend. Last year I had cabbage, spinach, and lettuce in the ground in the beginning of April with no protection (except on hard frost nights).<<<
Timeline for seed starting:
Middle February wintersow outdoors: flax, poppy, milkweed
Middle Feb. Start indoors: Coleus, Viola
March 15th start indoors or outside in a cold frame: spinach, kale, mustard greens, lettuce, arugula, radish
April 1st start indoors: impatients, marigolds, lavender, basil, cosmos, chamomile, dill
April 15th start indoors: purple clover, cucumber, eggplant, sunflower
May 1st direct sow outside: swiss chard, amaranth, pole beans, soy beans, black eyed susan
I haven’t posted here in a while. I wonder if anyone still has me on their RSS feed. If you do, a big hello to you.
Yesterday I raked up leaves in the garden and removed old dead things (I never pulled up those marigolds). A wonderful present was waiting for me: sage, spearmint, thyme, and oregano. They all survived the winter. I read that herbs can overwinter if you prune and cover them before it gets too cold. I didn’t manage to do that, so I wasn’t expecting the herbs to last. I pulled back some dead leaves yesterday to find bright green leaves shooting up in the herb section. I also found that the hollyhock is already coming out of the ground- bright green with fringed leaves. Now that I know what hollyhock is, I won’t go around pulling them all up thinking that they are weeds. I will post more pictures of the garden and my garden plans this time around. I have a big mega list of seeds that I am going to winter sow (see www.wintersown.org). I’ve already wintersown flax.
For spring vegetables, I will seed in the ground (or start inside under lights) mustard greens, spinach, radishes, lettuce, kale, and collards. I want to make a row cover or cold frame for the spring vegetables. Living in zone 5 makes it difficult to get a jump start on the growing season. Summertime will have more herbs, prairie flowers, cucumbers, beans, and eggplant. I’ve started exchanging seeds with people on gardenweb.com. Seed saving is important and I feel excited to be a part of this movement.
I finished my dorky-looking collage for the Chicago Bike Winter art show. See details about the show here: www.chicagocriticalmass.org
Rhubarb, Spinach, Cabbage!
I talk about Copenhagen a lot on this blog, but Helsinki is another one of my favorite “green” cities. Check out this live public transit map that they developed. You can see where buses and trains are in real time. The map has some really nice functionality; letting you click on the moving icons and see when a bus will arrive at a stop and so on. It’s pretty awesome.
See it here.
On the long quest towards accomplishing my hopes and dreams for changing the world, I have been painstakingly putting together a reading list of books about urban planning, architecture, green urbanism, urban ecology, and so on. Trying to do this was quite a pain in the ass until I came across this lovely suggested reading list. Thankfully, I’ve actually read some of these books. I post the list here to remind myself that there is work to be done.
From the University of Washington’s Landscape Architecture site:
SUGGESTED READING LIST
The following are “classics” even though some of these are recent books because they are seminal to the profession. Simply, the faculty think all landscape architects should know who these authors are and the basic messages of these books.
Bacon, Edmund. 1974. Design of Cities. Penguin Books, NY.
Hester, Randolph T. Community Design Primer. Ridge Times Press, 1990.
Hough, Michael. 1995. Cities and Natural Process. Routledge Press.
Itten, Johanes. 1975. Design and Form. Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY.
Jackson, J. B. 1994. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. Yale University Press. New Haven.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989 or any edition
Kaplan, Rachel and Stephen Kaplan, The Experience of Nature : A Psychological Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989.
Kellert, Stephen R. and Edward O. Wilson, The Biophilia Hypothesis, Island Press, Washington, D. C., 1993.
Leopold, Aldo, Sand County Almanac, 1949 or any edition
Marcus, Clare Cooper, House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, Conari Press, Berkeley, 1995.
McHarg, Ian, Design with Nature, The Natural History Press, New York, 1969. recent paperback editions are ok.
Nabhan, Gary Paul and Stephen Trimble, The Geography of Childhood : Why Children Need Wild Places, Beacon Press, Boston, 1994.
Nash, Roderick, Wilderness and the American Mind, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1973 revised edition.
Spirn, Anne Whiston, Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, Basic Books, New York, 1984.
Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
These are books every first year BLA and MLA student should try to read as soon as possible.
Appleton, Jay. The Experience of Landscape Revised Edition. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1996.
Anderson, Eugene N, Ecologies of the Heart : Emotion, Belief, and the Environment, Oxford University Press, New York, 1996.
Beardsley, John. Earthworks and Beyond: Contemporary Art in the Landscape. New York, Abbeville Press latest edition
Ching, Francis. 1996 Architecture: Form, Space, and Order. Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY.
Condon, P. M. Ed. 1996. Sustainable Urban Landscapes: The Surrey Design Charrette. University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC. Canada.
Francis, Mark and Randolph T. Hester, Jr. The Meaning of Gardens. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990.
Hough, Michael. Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
Kaplan, R., S. Kaplan and R. Ryan. 1998. With People in Mind: Design and Management of Everyday Nature. Island Press. Washington, DC.
Moore, Charles W., William J. Mitchell and William Turnbull, Jr. The Poetics of Gardens. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1988.
Nassauer, Joan Iverson, Placing Nature, Culture and Landscape Ecology, Island Press, Washington, D. C. 1997.
Orr, David. Ecological Literacy Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World, SUNY Press 1992
Potteiger, Matthew and Jamie Purinton. Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
Thayer, Robert L., Gray World, Green Heart, Wiley, New York, 1994.
Trieb, M. Ed. 1993. Modern Landscape Architecture: A Critical Review. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
Van der Ryn, Sim and Peter Calthorpe. Sustainable Communities: A New Design Synthesis for Cities, Suburbs and Towns. San Francisco.
Eager, aggressive students should also try to become familiar with the material in these books as soon as possible
Abram, David, The Spell of the Sensuous, Pantheon, New York, 1996.
Calthorpe, Peter. 1993. The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community and the American Dream. Princeton Architectural Press, NY.
Creese, Walter L. The Crowning of the American Landscape: Eight Great Spaces and Their Buildings. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, Press, 1985.
Doppelt, B., et. al. 1993. Entering the Watershed: A New Approach to Save America’s River Ecosystems. Island Press. Washington, DC.
Dramstad, W. E. et. al. 1996. Landscape Ecology: Principles in Landscape Architecture and Land Use Planning. Island Press.
Gunderson et al.. Eds. 1995. Barriers and Bridges to the Renewal of Ecosystems and Institutions. Columbia University Press. NY
Harrison, Robert P. Forests The Shadow of Civilization, Chicago U Chicago, Press 1992
Hawken, Paul. 1993. Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability. Harper Collins, NY.
Jacobs, Allan. Great Streets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993.
Kostof, Spiro. The City Shaped. Boston, MA: Bulfinch Press, 1991.
Nabhan, Gary Paul, Cultures of Habitat, Counterpoint, Washington, D.C., 1997
Riley, Ann L., Restoring Streams in Cities : A Guide for Planners, Policy Makers, and Citizens, Island Press, Washington, D.C., 1998.
Sanoff, Henry. Integrating Programming, Evaluation, and Participation in Design. Hong Kong: Avebury, 1992.
Schama, Simon. Landscape and Memory. New York, Alfred A Knopf 1995
Thompson, George F. and Frederick R. Steiner, Ecological Design and Planning, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1996.
Stein, C.S. Towards New Towns for America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1957.
Walker P., and M. Simo.1996. The Invisible Garden: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape. MIT Press. Cambridge
Zeisel, John. Inquiry by Design: Tools for Environment-Behavior Research. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
It is unreasonable for me to buy all of these books. I hope that my student status at SAIC will ease the financial burden since I know that some of these books exist in their library. I also happen to live in the city with the greatest, most expansive architecture and urban design bookstore in the country, Prairie Avenue bookshop. I’ll have to do some price comparing with Amazon before I put any money down. Only time will tell if I am, in fact, both eager and aggressive.
Hey, kids. I’m organizing the Park(ing) Day this Friday! We are setting up a temporary park in a metered space on Hubbard St. between State and Dearborn. I’ll be getting there early (6am!) and I need help setting up. Please comment if interested.
www.parkingday.org
