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Garden in the City: Already Off to a Roaringly Stupid Start

By Patty Wetli | May 19, 2015 8:42am | Updated on May 20, 2015 8:48am

ALBANY PARK — Welcome back readers.

Are you psyched for another summer of bug-slaughtering, corn-hugging fun?

Let's grow some stuff.

Download and listen to the "Garden in the City" podcast each week:

My garden grows itself. These onions were waiting for me, having sprouted over the winter. [All photos by DNAinfo/Patty Wetli]

This is my fourth year at Peterson Garden Project's Global Garden and I've definitely gotten wiser about some things — soil preparation — while remaining astoundingly stupid about others — soil preparation.

I'm also returning as my condo association's landscaper-in-chief, a title I believe my fellow homeowners have granted me for life. I'd complain about my neighbors' lack of interest/participation in yard work but frankly dictator-hood becomes me.

Here's where things stand at the season's starting line:

Vegetable Plot

A bit of knowledge I've actually retained over the years: Decent soil is literally the foundation of a decent garden.

So after I gave my plot's dirt a good turn — and watered it with Neem Oil to kill the beetle larvae that were too numerous for me to slaughter one by one with my bare trowel (though I tried, believe me, I tried) — I picked up a bag each of compost and mulch at Matty K's Hardware in Lincoln Square.

Whoever said gardening was a wimpy pursuit never visited my beetle larvae killing fields.

Oh, did I mention that by "picked up" I mean I walked to Matty K's with the intention of carrying the bags home ... by hand? And that each bag weighed 40 pounds?

That's two toddlers, I thought. No biggie.

I barely made it out the door and into the parking lot before I had to drop the bags, which, unlike toddlers, don't wrap their arms and legs around you to make themselves less heavy. After catching my breath, I hoisted a bag under each armpit, football-style, and, if you're familiar with Matty K's, got as far as the McDonald's drive-through lane before collapsing again.

And so it went for maybe the next 50 feet: Take a few steps, dump the bags, stretch arms, pick bags up and readjust grip in fruitless effort to find a position that might miraculously result in weightlessness. Repeat.

At this rate, my house might as well have been in Detroit instead of a half-mile away for as long as this schlep was going to take.

"What'd you do, leapfrog?" my husband Dave asked, as I recounted my adventure to him that evening.

Well, yes, spoiler alert, that's exactly what I did. Frankly, the fact that he instantly hit on a solution I thought was ingeniously all my own was this/close to infuriating.

"Leapfrogging": I hauled the bag of compost a dozen or so yards, dropped it, walked back to retrieve the mulch, carried it past the compost, dropped it, went back for the compost ....

The whole process took close to an hour or about twice as long as it would've taken for me to walk home, get the car and drive back to Matty K's for my compost but, I am gardener, hear me roar.

Honestly, I'm not even sure our soil needed all that much improving to start with. It's already chock-a-block with worms, including some that are, in worm terms, boa-constrictor sized. I'll take that as a good sign unless they start to choke my beans to death.

This year's garden, in seed/seedling form.

What I've planted by seed, largely based on previous positive experience: Five-color silver beet swiss chard, paris market carrots, scallions, pencil pod golden wax bush bean, dragon's tongue bush bean, bronze arrowhead lettuce and Yugoslavian red butterhead lettuce.

What I planted via seedling: celebrity tomato, blond kopfchen yellow cherry tomato, scotch kale and a mildew-resistant basil.

Also king of the north red bell peppers, on which many hopes are riding. A reasonable person would have given up on red bells years ago — Chicago's comparatively short growing season simply isn't conducive to their long growing cycle — but as regular readers of this column can attest, reason isn't my strong suit.

Also potatoes, which I'm attempting for the first time and am fairly certain I shall screw up royally.

Also corn — two-inch strawberry popcorn, to be precise.

"It is a strange fate we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing." — JRR Tolkien

I know, I know. Corn broke my heart and very nearly crushed my desire to ever garden again.

But I gotta give it one more shot. I've armed myself with various squirrel-combating weapons — including VHS tape and red Solo cups, I kid you not — and if I manage to eke out a single poppable kernel, I'm declaring victory.

Landscaping

This is the year, I've decided, that I finally make good on a vow to convert a good portion of our parkway grass into native planting areas.

I have zero budget for the project — our condo association is forever prioritizing expenses like garbage collection and tuckpointing — so I'll be half-assing things at best.

I made the tiniest of starts in the tiniest of patches, moving transplants from other corners of the yard. So far, it appears the parkway is rejecting these organ donations.

Dave is worried I've bitten off way more than I can chew, telling me I barely have time to keep up with everything I've already got on my plate.

"I think this is going to cause you stress," he said.

Well of course it is. Watch for that column sometime in July.

What's New With Garden in the City

Look for a couple of new features this year.

Along with my personal gardening adventures, which will appear every Tuesday, I'll also be writing occasional GITC Extras on gardening and green-related happenings around the city.

I'll also be posting photos that will show my gardens' progress from one week to the next, hopefully using a nifty new side-by-side comparison feature.

Week 1 garden overview: Carrots, potatoes, greens in front; kale, peppers, chive, basil, beans (buried seeds), tomatoes in center; corn in rear.

Week 1 landscaping overview: Phase 1 of an ill-conceived effort to convert parkway from grass to planting areas.

Oh, and this thing happened. "Garden in the City" recently won a Peter Lisagor Award from the Chicago Headline Club.

I didn't get to deliver an acceptance speech at the ceremony, so here goes: Thanks to all the readers who've come along for the ride. If you've laughed at my trials and tribulations or learned something, even if it's just "what not to do," that means everything.

Thanks to my editors at DNAinfo for giving this column a home. Thanks to Jon Hansen at DNAinfo Radio for enthusiastically shooting the bull about gardening week in and week out.

Mostly thanks to Dave, my garden sherpa, who unwittingly married the kind of crazy lady who hugs corn and calls him at work, sobbing, when her flowers inadvertently get weed-whacked. To be fair, he does get two square foot of kale as reward.

Listen to last year's Garden in the City podcasts here:

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