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.

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.

First, the good news.  We received word on Monday November 3rd that we CAN use the Harlem site for the new community garden.  This has taken much longer than any of us imagined, although I’m not sure why I would imagine anything dealing with the State of Illinois would take less than like a million years!

The bad news is that the site is basically a big ole pile of rubble.  (As a side-note, I think the word “rubble” is seriously under-used and under-appreciated and I personally plan to use it every chance I get for a while.)  As Jessica described in her post about taking the soil test samples, there is only about 4 inches of dirt, then she hit rubble in every spot she sampled.  I know it’d be much easier if this site was pure rice dirt just waiting to be planted, but that’s usually not the reality of community gardens.  The idea is usually to take a spot that nobody wants and turn it into something beautiful for the community to enjoy and to create a place where folks who might not have the space to garden can grow their own food.  This is just that sort of space.  We’ll just use raised beds (which many people prefer, anyway) and plant right on top of the rubble.

Bonus good news: Jessica also finally received the results of the soil test and the lead levels were fine for planting.

So, moving forward, our new best friends are the folks over at the Park District of Forest Park.  They currently maintain the property and are very excited to work with us to make the Forest Park Community Garden a success.

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!