Nearly 90% of Chicago’s parks are managed without the use of weed control chemicals. We’ve got tips for how to follow suit.
Gardening
With temperatures expected to dip below freezing, gardeners who jumped the gun might want to consider covering tender vegetation, according to experts.
It’s easy to forget the cruelest April Fool’s joke: The season’s last frost is likely several weeks away, meaning it’s far too early to put most plants in the ground.
Sales sponsored by Openlands and the West Cook Wild Ones chapter are now both taking orders online for native plants, including some that are hard to find at area garden centers and nurseries.
The ongoing battle to legitimize native gardens in Chicago is about to go another round, with the introduction of an ordinance to establish a native garden registry. But gardeners want to know why they’re bearing the burden of erroneous weed law enforcement.
Like a lot of urban growers, Stephanie Dunn of Star Farm sells her produce at farmers markets around Chicago. Now she’s about to start up a different kind of farmer’s market: her own food co-op housed in a building she is preparing to renovate thanks to a grant from the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund.
El Paseo Community Garden is hosting an open house Saturday to celebrate its achievements in 2020, which include the city handing over a half-acre vacant lot that neighbors feared would be developed into luxury condos.
Each week, 200 South Side households receive a free delivery of fresh produce, thanks to a collaboration between Star Farm and Experimental Station. To keep the program running through October, organizers need to raise $20,000.
Community gardens and urban farms were left scrambling to comply with a new city policy related to hydrant access that left some without water throughout the entire 2020 growing season.
Everyone could use a little sunshine in their life right now, so a Wisconsin farmer decided that’s what he was going to do, and planted more than 2 million sunflowers in his fields.
The Chicago Excellence in Gardening Awards has shifted to a video format for 2020, due to the coronavirus pandemic. Submissions are open through Sept. 30, so get those cameras rolling.
Voting is open through Wednesday for the annual Chicago Bungalow Association’s garden contest.
People have been spending a lot of time in their yards, and it seems that’s led to plenty of folks jumping on the native plant bandwagon, if a sold-out series of webinars is any indication.
The dandelion — a once-prized plant that gardeners used to exhibit at county fairs — now holds the title of Public Lawn Enemy No. 1. But is this reputation deserved?
Star Farm in Back of the Yards makes up for in ambition what it lacks in size. Founder Stephanie Dunn’s mission is to use urban agriculture as the means of creating a healthier, more resilient community.
The nonprofit Urban Growers Collective operates community farms on Chicago’s South Side, providing fresh produce to underserved neighborhoods with few to no nutritional food options.
