Organic gardener Jeanne Nolan stops by to help tend to our Chicago Tonight organic vegetable garden, where we’ve already begun to harvest some of our early starters.

Nolan says that so far it’s been a great growing season.

“The spring crops like lettuce and spinach were just excellent and bountiful,” Nolan said. But she pointed out that there’s been at least one downside to the fine weather: “Because we have had so much rain and often the rain has been followed by intense heat there have been a lot of weeds in the garden.”

There is a “bank of seeds in the earth at all times,” she explained, and when you have the perfect storm of rain and fine weather, the weeds can really take off.

Nolan harvests some of our broccoli and arugula, demonstrates how best to prune basil and shows us the best way to tame some runaway plants.

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First Planting of Spring in the Chicago Tonight Garden