We will be completing the second half of our garden build project this Sunday starting at 9AM. We’ll be filling the garden beds we built last week with soil. Bring shovels, wheel barrels, and gloves, if you have them.

Also, we’ll have tulip bulbs to plant as well as some flower seeds. We’ll also have some tomato seedlings that need to be re-potted.

Finally, we’ll be painting signs to go in our new Help Yourself herb and cutting flower gardens.

Hope to see you there!

In order to meet increased demand for garden space and to provide better amenities to our gardeners and the community at large, we have some exciting garden improvements planned.

Firstly, we will be building additional raised beds this year.  We have quite a long waiting list, but we will do our best to create a garden space for everyone who’s interested.

GARDEN WORK DAY PLANNED:  We will be building the new garden beds and filling them with soil during the weekend of May 15th-16th, time TBD.  If you’d like to help, e-mail us or leave a comment below.  This is a great opportunity to learn how to build raised beds and to get to know your gardening neighbors!

Secondly, as most of you know, we struggled through last year with no water source at the garden.  We all had to tote water from our homes in milk jugs and buckets to water the plants.  Thank goodness last year was a relatively cool and wet year.  However, this year we are VERY happy to announce that we have received a donation of rain barrels that we will be installing in the garden.  Since we don’t have a structure to pull the water from, we’ve received a generous offer from someone who will bring water to the barrels and fill them on a weekly basis.  No more toting water! YAY!

Lastly, as was mentioned in a previous post, we will be offering “Help-Yourself” herb and flower gardens.  We invite everyone, whether you’re involved with the garden in other ways or not, to head on over to the garden and harvest your own culinary herbs and bouquet flowers.    He herbs and flowers should be ready for harvest starting in July.  Look for the semi-circular beds near the garden entrance that will be labeled “Help-Yourself.”

We also hope to expand our free gardening lecture series as well as to develop a gardening program for the schools in Forest Park.  For more info on the lectures see the “education” tab above.

Its sure to be an exciting year.  Thanks to everyone who has helped us get this project off and running.

-FPCG

I am happy to announce a new feature of our garden this year.  We will be offering two “help yourself” gardens, one with culinary herbs and one with cutting flowers.  These gardens will be located in the two semi-circular beds near the entrance to the park.  We will label all the plants and give instructions on how to harvest and use them.  Thanks to the volunteers who came out last weekend and helped build the herb bed.  As the weather warms up, we’ll be adding more plants and signage.  Flowers and herbs should be ready to start harvesting sometime in June.  Anyone in the community is free to harvest from these beds at any time.  I hope you enjoy!

Spring is finally here and the garden is coming back to life.  The tulips we planted last fall are looking great! Happy Spring everyone!

During the 2009 growing season, FPCG’s volunteers tended three raised beds, the produce of which was donated to area charities.  We got a late start this year–didn’t get planted until early July–but we managed to make three decent sized food donations.  Next year, we hope to expand this aspect of the garden by planting early and planting more.  Thanks to Clover’s Garden Center who donated a couple flats of veggies for these beds.

Here are a couple pictures of the donated harvest

October 28: cilantro, broccoli, cauliflower, chard, lettuce, parsley, Chinese cabbage, and tomatoes.

October 12th: Peppers, tomatoes, chard, broccoli, lettuce, cilantro, radishes, basil and collard greens.

Sept 22: Tomatoes, peppers, collard greens, broccoli, radishes, and kohlrabi.

Today I attended the ribbon cutting ceremony for the first Certified Organic Rooftop Farm in the country located right here in Chicago atop Uncommon Groundrestaurant in Edgewater. 

Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA) certified this organic rooftop farm and a representative was at the ceremony today to discuss the certification process as well as the importance of urban agriculture and organic gardening methods.  It’s nice to know we’re doing our part by growing some of our own fruits and vegetables in this urban garden right in our own village.  I think MOSA would be proud!

Forest Park Community Garden is profiled in a very nice article in  this week’s issue of the Forest Park Review.  Click here to read the story.

Dead tired

OK – can I just say that building raised beds is WAY easier than filling them with dirt? At some point I really thought I was going to faint. This was made worse by Nick’s seemingly limitless energy when it came to hauling dirt. At some point we were all just sitting at the picnic table watching him and feeling like losers.

We did finish all 10 beds but there’s still dirt to haul. We planted a few flowers at the entrance of the garden then we all hobbled home.

It was a busy, rewarding day.

Thank you to all the volunteers, McAdam Landscaping, Good Earth Greenhouse and Larry at the Park District of Forest Park.

Finished Beds

It took us about two hours to build all ten raised beds which I think is pretty darn impressive. We had a handful of volunteers and we even rented two plots to a guy who lives in the area.

Community Garden before breaking ground

Today we finally broke ground at Forest Park Community Garden. We arrived around 1:00 to find the dirt and all the cedar wood we needed to make ten 4×8x12 raised beds.