catching up on life

I'm doing a lot of work this weekend but also a lot of catching up on the blog (and reading in a hammock). If you've been following the blog, I just published a ton of back-posts that were waiting on photos. See, my four year old computer's 30 GB hard drive is full so every time I have to download photos from the camera it's a bit of an ordeal so I put it off for a long time. I hadn't downloaded pictures in over a month!

I've got more posts planned for next week so stay tuned, and enjoy the photos!

my balcony tomatoes

I have five tomato plants: one Roma, one Brandywine, and three Cherry. My cherry tomatoes have been the best by far- I've been eating them for weeks now and haven't harvested a single ripe Roma or Brandwine. My tomatoes all started somewhat late as transplants in early July.

Three of them are growing in a tub that I got for free when my lost luggage was returned to me (the tub is actually the reason I have any tomatoes at all- I hadn't considered it when I had nothing to plant them in).

Three tomatoes (July 11)

I planted the other two cherry tomatoes upside down in reused grocery bags (photo July 11).

I put one in a black bag and the other in white. I recommend white (absorbs less heat).

I planted basil seed all around the tomatoes and on top of the upside down ones because I love basil and I read that tomatoes and basil are good companion plants.

Here's the basil on top of the white-bag upside down plant.
The upside down plants didn't get very big (I don't think I gave them enough soil), but they have been producing a respectable amount of tomatoes.

The tomato plants in the tub got much bigger.

But the cherry tomatoes did the best. I love the way they look in bunches with varying stages of ripeness.

This is my biggest brandywine.

Although I didn't have this problem with the other two tomato plants right next to it, I've lost nearly every roma tomato to blossom end rot which is caused by calcium deficiency in the developing fruit.

I think I might manage to get a couple without blossom end rot. After doing some research online I trimmed a lot of the foliage and put crushed eggshells around the bottom of the plant.

I still have lots of flowers on my tomato plants.

I expect to have tomatoes until frost!

The cherry tomatoes seem to be sweetest when it is hot and sunny.

Losing the battle with powdery mildew

After several weeks of trying to rid my cucurbits (squash, zucchini, & cucumbers) of powdery mildew, I cut my losses and put basil in their place.

I have to admit my plants didn't have an easy time. My squash started late (from seed in May) on the north side of the building (we moved to a different apartment on the south side of the same building in August).

Here are my plants on June 28.

And again on July 13. The keen squash grower would note that you can already see powdery mildew spots on a few of the leaves, but I didn't notice.

The leaves started to yellow, so we moved it to the south side of the building on our kind neighbor's porch. There are also beans growing in the box (July 26).

But the plant finally had a female flower! I had hopes of squash!

But the leaves got worse...

...and worse (July 26).

But I had some beautiful squash flowers

And my little squash was growing (August 2).

In the meantime, I'd also planted some late zucchini and cucumbers that were in close proximity to the squash once I moved it to the porch (far right by the bike tire).

And I even had some female flowers on my zucchini! (note powdery mildew on stems)

Meanwhile, the squash was only making male flowers, probably because it was terribly stressed.

But the zucchini and cucumbers got powdery mildew too.

And so did my bee balm (Monarda) that I bought at the first Pilsen farmer's market.

You can see the dead and dying zucchini leaves (Aug 25).

This is the same squash from the earlier picture, but this is as big as it got. The vine leading to it is all dried up (August 25)

So with my one hope at a squash squashed and the other cucurbits dying...

I decided to yank them out (cucumbers shown)...

And transplant some basil in their place (September 3).

So ends my attempts at cucurbits this year. If I plant them again, I'll definitely use powedery mildew resistant varieties. This time I just used some seeds I had lying around from previous years when I lived in a place where I could garden in the ground. I think my squash might have survived if it were in a bigger container (I knew it was probably too small, but I wanted to try...), if I'd caught the powdery mildew earlier, and if it had more ground to put down extra roots off of the vine. Oh well. At least the basil is growing fabulously.

A meal from the garden

I haven't done nearly as much blogging about my garden as I intended and I hope to remedy that over the next few weeks.

We love pesto, so we tried to grow a lot of basil this year. It turns out we didn't grow nearly enough! We want to have more pesto than we know what to do with, but that takes a lot of basil. The recipe we use from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking calls for two packed cups of fresh basil leaves.

Pesto purists probably wouldn't approve, but we have three kinds of basil (one is purple) so we mixed them...

...in the food processor.

The cherry tomatoes from my garden tasted great with the pesto!

Mmmm... pesto.

Car crash at Irv's Bike Shop on 18th St

A getaway car for two bank robbers crashed into Irv's Bike Shop on 18th St around 11:30 am on Saturday, September 13, 2008. Thankfully, it sounds like no one from Irv's was injured in the crash (WGN report).

I was on my way to the Sustainability Road Show around the time of the crash, so I think the several police cars I saw were related to to the car chase.

Seeking shelter in the storm

Roadshow rainout :-(

Well, this weekend wasn't exactly ideal weather for the Sustainable Living Roadshow. I biked over on Saturday morning to see what was going on and they were in the process of packing up. Still, there were a handful of us who braved the rain and stayed for a workshop about the University of Chicago's Civic Knowledge Project. They have a blog called Partnering for a Sustainable Chicago.

The workshop took place inside a cool geodesic dome tent.

Soggy, soggy field.

I met some students from UIC's Urban Planning & Policy program and learned how to request trees to be planted in your neighborhood, so it wasn't a total bust.