5 Things I Loved About The Rick Bayless Garden

I'll be honest, I'd never heard of Rick Bayless until a fellow garden blogger mentioned wanting to dine at his Chicago restaurant during the Garden Blogger's Spring Fling.

After a little research, we were delighted to learn that Rick grows a lot of his own produce in his home kitchen garden and even more delighted when we secured a tour of his garden for our group.

Rick's garden is tended by full time gardeners. Bill Shores and his wife Lori (pictured) specialize in small-scale urban gardening. Take a look at those beds (1st picture abov).

During our tour, Bill gave us the blow-by-blow of how he makes the most efficient use of Ricks urban garden space which produced about $20,000 worth of food for Rick's restaurant last year.

Here's what I found most interesting about Rick's kitchen garden:

1. He does not rotate crops. Instead, he uses lots and lots of compost which he adds before every planting.
2. His single compost bin produced 40 wheel barrows of compost last year. We all agreed that that is kind of hard to believe. He adds red wiggler worms. (If those worms will up my compost production to 40 wheel barrows per season, I'm ordering some. Like today!)
3. He plants a new bed of salad greens every 3 weeks through the entire summer. (I had no idea that you could grow salad greens in the late summer here, but if he can do it, I can do it!)
4. He's got a heated greenhouse on-site (pictured below) and between that and the fluorescent lights he uses to start his seeds, his set-up has all the components needed to start and grow all that wonderful food on-site.
5. Bill says they spend about $3000 on seeds every year. $3000! They get most of them from Johnny's. (I will look at my basket-o-seeds in a different way from now on)

Bill says that over the years he's gotten to know the many micro-climates that exist on the Bayless property and he plants accordingly.

They even plant on the roof of the garage and said that the south facing wall that borders the kitchen garden (1st picture above, currently covered with ivy) is the next project. I can't wait to see what they grow there!

I also really loved that, even though Rick is probably pretty darn well-off, he still chooses to live in the city in a rather modest house for somebody like him.

I was so inspired by Rick Bayless' kitchen garden that I wanted to jump in a cab and go right home to finish working on mine. In the end, I'm glad I didn't because I would have missed another great raised bed kitchen garden on the tour.

Next up, Ginko Organic Garden.

Follow me on Twitter for bonus pictures of Rick Bayless garden as well as progress pictures of my current kitchen garden expansion.

Kitchen Garden Expansion: Before Picture

Yesterday when I posted my tentative kitchen garden expansion plan many of you asked for a before picture.  Ask and ye shall receive! 

Here's the general area where the new garden will be installed.  

You can see one of the existing 4x4 raised beds in this frame.  That'll be removed.  I'm not sure of the dimensions of the new garden yet but it will not take up this entire space.  I'm simply trying to give you a wide view of the general area. 

Check back later today for Day 1 wrap-up.  I've got work to do!

Technorati Tags: DIY,garden planning,kitchen garden,organic vegetable gardening,urban homesteading

Prelude To A Kitchen Garden Expansion

I'm expanding my kitchen garden and tomorrow is the big day! Garden Buddy is coming over first thing in the morning and we'll get to work.

So that you can keep up with our progress, here's some important information.

Goals
Remove big hunk of backyard to reduce grass mowing.
Increase the growing space for fruits and veggies.

Plan

1. Mark off area using strings and stakes.
2. Move established plants.
3. Dig up Spirea Vanhoutte (I'll miss you!).
4. Remove grass in the new garden area.
5. Cultivate entire area.
6. Build raised beds from wood that will last more than a couple of years (bad gardener!).
7. Place weed barrier on paths.
8. Cover paths with pea gravel.
9. Fill beds with garden soil/compost mix.
10. Move rain barrel to new garden.
11. Build 2-3 bin compost system for back of new garden area.
12. Build short fence around new garden area.
13. Build Arbor at entrance of new garden area.
14. Create path from patio to new garden. Material undecided.
15. Wait for Spring!

I do not have a timeline established for this project yet on the count of my real job is sucking the life outta me. But, it's on the way! Stay tuned!

Tomatoes Are In!

Looks like I'll be eating tomatoes from plants instead of tomatoes from seeds again this year. None of my seedlings made it and although I did throw some more in the milk jugs you see in the photo below, I'm almost certain they won't work.

So, I planted Hierloom Brandywine, Black Krim and Sausage Tomato plants today along with hybrid Sweet 100's, Husky Red Cherry, Grape, Early Girl and Roma. I also planted my bush bean seeds and golden zucchini and I'm just praying that the squirrels don't dig them up. It looks like the raised veggie beds are a favorite spot for them as proven by all the peanut hulls I found in there while I was planting today. Question: does anybody know what the plant below is? I thought it was a weed but when I started to pull it out I realized that it was growing from one of the coconut fiber pellets which means I planted this from seed. It is planted in the same square that I thought was either Rappini or Romanesco broccoli but there is no way. See next photo.

This is in the same square and looks a lot more like a Rappini or Romanesco, right? Yes I labeled them but badly and I can't read it anymore.

And here's the other either Rappini or Romanesco. So, then what the heck is the yellow stuff?

And why must everything be such a pain in my ass?

"My Whole Yard"

A while back my best friend Shannon asked me to show some pictures of my "whole yard". Well here they are.

Now, I'm sure everybody noticed that my kitchen garden is in a very awkward spot. The reason for this is that nothing had been done in my yard until I decided to plant some veggies. Since I'm a lazy bastard and so inclined to lose interest in things as fast as I begin obsessing about them, I decided I should plant this stuff immediately in front of the patio so that I couldn't ignore it. This also happens to get full sun for most of the day. Well, after I planted here, I decided to do the whole damn yard. Boy, do I regret putting it right there! Not only that but I put down the black fabric so as soon as I pull it up, I'll have a nice big brown spot there that I'll have to fight to get grass to grow. I'm planning to have three 4x4 raised beds next year and I'll move them over to toward the south fence more.

For those of you that remember the out of control Spirea, do you see it over there by the fence? The Rock Star landscaper trimmed it into a ball. UGH! Casualties of war, I guess. I would like to publicly state that I did NOT ask him to do this, nor did I ask him to make the front shrubs look like poodles. I'm not into that! Now I know I should give explicit instructions on that sort of thing.

This Really Cracked Me Up!

I was browsing through garden pictures that I took back in May and I ran across Day 1 of the Kitchen Garden. It really tickled me because you can hardly see the watermelon that is now attempting to take over my patio. And of course I got another good laugh out of my upside down tomato cages. Imagine how my poor tomatoes would be choking right now if I hadn't fixed that!

I won't re-post the current picture but you can see an updated one that I took a few days ago in the right margin of my blog.

My next project that I'm obsessing about (after sprucing up that patio table) is building a couple of raised beds which I'd love to do by Labor Day so I can plant lettuce. Now, if I can just find the perfect sized untreated free lumber!

The Cicada wants to be my boyfriend

In case you haven't heard, Chicago is presently infested with the "17 year Cicadas." In my area, they have been manageable but today I had a fatal altercation.

After battling with my weed wacker for weeks I finally threw it in the car and drug it to Ace Hardware. Thank you bald Ace Hardware guy in Forest Park for fixing me up! I'm officially boycotting Home Depot! Anyway, I took it home, cranked it and started working and then I noticed a few Cicadas in my yard. The next thing I know, the things are dive bombing me! I think they thought my weed wacker was another Cicada tryin to get it on! So one of them comes flying at me and my reflex reaction was to use the weed wacker as a sword or some other weapon, and, you guessed it, the Cicada was chopped to smithereens! I feel bad about it! Sorta. I kept trying to tell myself that the news people said they will not hurt me but it didn't help. Every time one came at me I tried to fight it off with the weed wacker. At one point I hit my grill and a everything on it went flying. I was screaming like a 5 year old. I don't care what they say, these things ARE dangerous! I thought about asking Mr. Wonderful to fight them off me while I finished trimming the backyard but they freak him out as much as they do me. At some point I just gave up. These things are only suppose to live for 3 weeks. The weeds will just continue to look like crap for a bit longer...

Here's a few pictures from today. I think my favorite thing in my garden these days is the watermelon. I think the leaves are so pretty! I had to redirect it because it was headed for the patio. I didn't realize that these things actually grab onto whatever is in it's path. Am I suppose to have a trellis or something?

Rose Garden after straw. It actually doesn't look so bad and the roses are all doing pretty well, even the sickly one that I thought wasn't going to make it.

Garage garden with straw. I think I've killed the grass around these beds by letting the crap that I dug up lay on it for too long.

Foundation bed

I finally decided to try my hand at composting! Since I have no container whatsoever but lots of stuff to compost, I decided to throw it over beside the garage and see what happens. I don't plan to leave it there because I'm worried that it will damage the fence or the garage. I also won't be putting any food there because I'm way more afraid of rodents than I am of Cicadas.

One final note on Cicadas. I googled them and I think it's actually the male that makes the noise so I guess those were girl Cicadas attacking me.

What I'm worried about in my garden today

First off, ignore the long shaggy grass around this bed. The backyard is in such a shambles with piles of sod and bricks I've dug up from prior gardener's' beds that we just bypassed the backyard this mowing. Plus, my stupid weed wacker string is stuck inside it and I can't seem to unscrew the cap to fix it. All and all the kitchen garden looks pretty good. All tomatoes have blooms which I'm enjoying gloating about to garden buddy who teased me for spraying them with "aspirin water". She's using Miracle Grow and we are comparing notes. Anyway, the watermelon suddenly has this big long stem that shot out from it and I'm thinking either its some mutant like "big pumpkin" that is growing in Michelle's garden over at http://www.mygrandpasgarden.com/ or maybe this is just what they do we they are ready to bloom. So far, the only things with actual blooms are the tomatoes.

After reading a few blogs that mentioned "pinching basil" I freaked out this morning and ran out to the garden to pinch off basil and oregano so they wouldn't "go to seed" - whatever that means. I have no clue if I did it right, or at the right time, but it sure smelled good on my hands.



Anyway, take a look at my poor jalapeno pepper plant in the next photo. It's getting worse and worse and I don't know what is going on or what to do to save it. SOMEBODY CALL A PLANT DOCTOR!

How bout this next picture. Is it my imagination or does that look like a random robin egg laying in the middle of the dirt of the recently cleared (this past weekend) garage bed? I only know this because I think one of the garden blogs I've been reading had a nest full of these on a picture. There is no tree close to it and I have no clue where the nest could be or what the hell I'm suppose to do with this thing. SOMEBODY CALL A BIRD DOCTOR!

My Clematis arrived today from Springhill Nursery. They don't look dead, thank goodness. They will be living in the garage bed which has the unamended-lilies-wouldnt-bloom-here soil. I purchased a bag of humus and manure to try to add a little to the dirt when I plant them. I was thinking today that I feel like a woman who suddenly adopted a bunch of toddlers. I have no clue what to do with them or if what I'm doing is what they need, but I'm doing my best and learning as I go.