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.

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.

The Forest Park Community Garden was mentioned quite extensively in a column by Stephanie Kuehnert in this weeks’ Forest Park Review.  You can read the column here . We’re always looking for ways to get the word out, and this sort of thing definitely helps that effort along.

If you read about us in today’s column and are checking out the website to see what we’ll all about- Welcome!  If you’re looking for more info about the garden or would like to get involved, just email us at fpcommunitygarden@gmail.com.  We look forward to hearing from you! 

Click here to read the article that appeared in the Review last July.

I went to the park at Harlem and I-290 yesterday to take some soil samples.  We want to make sure there aren’t any toxic heavy metals in the soil that can sometimes be caused by car emissions or past land use on or near the site that would be harmful to us as we work in the soil or eat the food we grow.  To take the sample, I was supposed to dig down six inches in five different spots, gather dirt from each spot, mix it all together, and send it to central Illinois for a lead test.

What’s the problem, you ask?  The problem is, in four of the five holes I dug, the shovel hit gravel about four inches down.  We knew that there were homes in this spot prior to the expressway, so I can only assume that the gravel we’re hitting is the pulvariezed remains of those homes.

What does this mean for the garden?  Well, it means that in order to use this location at all–regardless of what the soil test tells us about soil toxicity–we will have to build raised beds with at least 12 inch high sides and we’ll have to buy clean topsoil and compost to fill them.  This could actually be really awesome.  Personally I like the look of raised beds as well as the control that starting with all new soil gives us.  A lot of the community gardens you can read about on Google use raised beds, so its not an uncommon practice.  Some of them even use raised beds over concrete to create gardens in abandoned parking lots so its definitely technically do-able.  However, raised beds and the soil to fill them will definitely add costs for us.  The beds should probably be built out of cedar boards, since it weathers well naturally and doesn’t contain any potentially harmful chemicals that treated wood or railroad ties can have.  But cedar is also pretty expensive.  And, of course, we’d also have to build the beds, which isn’t too hard in principal, but would be quite an undertaking at this large of a scale.  Building one bed in your backyard is pretty easy but building 50 beds could take a while.

So, we need to decide whether this discovery is going to mean that the Harlem / I-290 location wont work and start looking for another property.
What do you guys think?

Leave comments to this post and tell me what your feelings are.

Thanks for reading!

We had our second ever meeting last night, and although we had about half the number of people come as we did at our first meeting there was tons of energy and good ideas passed around. We met in what is currently our most preferred garden location. It was nice to be in the space. I’m sure its the most use the park has seen in, um, forever? hehe. Here are some pictures of the park (located on the northwest corner of the Harlem Ave. / I-290 interchange).

But, don’t get too excited quite yet. The land isn’t “ours”, and as we move forward in the process, not having a piece of land to use runs the risk of hindering progress toward that very goal.
Gina and I realized pretty early on that there was going to be a question about which should come first: raising the money to build the garden or securing a piece of land to use. How do we ask for money if we don’t know the details of the space we will be using such as soil conditions and availability of water and a fence? How do we convince people that we’re serious if we don’t have a space to point to? But, how do we convince the Village, the Park District, and all others involved that we’re really serious about this idea until we are able to demonstrate that we can really raise the money to pull this off? Which comes first, the money or the land?

After the meeting last night, I think we’ve decided that the answer is: the money should come first. Money is always one of the most important questions that comes up no matter who we’re talking to about the garden. How are we going to raise the money to do this? (Answer: We really have no idea and little other than a feeling that “things will work out somehow” to guide us.) How much money do we have? (Answer: Zero, negative actually if you count the money Gina and I have already spent out of our own pockets on the website, food for the first meeting, and other stuff I’ve already forgotten about.) Also, we are beginning to get the feeling that getting the land situation set is going to take a while. There will be red tape, lease agreements, governmental approval to get through. While all that is happening (most of it is out of our hands) why not spend our time and energy improving our financial situation?

So that’s what we’re doing, folks. At the meeting we came up with several ideas regarding funding sources. They include: fundraising events such as car washes, hot dog stands, and restaurant give-back days; soliciting money and in-kind donations (aka: garden supplies rather than money) from local landscape / garden businesses; and any grant program we can find. I left the meeting feeling very optimistic about the ideas we came up with and the level of energy the group has to put toward pursuing them. We’re also starting to get a more realistic hold on just how much this is all going to cost us.

We found out earlier this week that there is no water access at the park currently and that it will cost $5,000 to have water access installed. This sounded great, since we had been told that the dog park paid $13,000 for their water access. $5,000 seems like a steal, although it pretty much doubles our original budget. Other major spending items which may or may not be in our future include: clean soil and raised beds which would be necesary if the soil tests positive for lead (we’ll have those results in about three weeks); and the cost of a new, prettier and more secure fence, if we decide that the short rickety not-so-pretty fence that’s there right now wont work. We’ll also soon be registering as a nonprofit corporation which will make it a lot easier for us to accept donations and get a bank account and all that stuff.

Thanks to everyone who came to the meeting last night and brought such great energy and enthusiasm. About once I week I get overwhelmed and wonder if I have the time and energy to see this project through. However, all I have to do is meet up with some of my garden groupies and I feel all better again. I hope that the garden itself can serve a similar purpose for all of us once its up and running: give us a place to relax, get away from the stresses of everyday life, and recharge.

Thanks for reading.