Plant what you love in a kitchen garden and don't forget to share your bounty
Not so long ago, wild black raspberries grew everywhere in this region.
Nowadays, a teeny store-bought container of red raspberries will set you back a pretty penny.
Growing them, however, couldn't be easier, which makes them perfect candidates for gardeners who crave them.
"If you plant what you eat, you're going to use what you grow," said Connie Bailey, of the Growing Place Nursery in Naperville.
Mixing fruit bushes into a kitchen garden is relatively easy, and Bailey plans to offer insights on such designs at this year's Giving Garden Day on Sept. 10 at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe. She joins a number of other experts from around the region who gather to give gardeners tips on getting the most out of a vegetable patch.
The more they grow, the better able they are to help area food pantries and that's the whole aim of the Daily Herald's Giving Garden program. It encourages gardeners to plant a little extra to donate to food pantries.
This year's goal: gather 75,000 pounds of fresh nutritious food.
Every great garden, though, starts with good information.
One of Bailey's key suggestions: "I think people should plant what they like," she said.
Sounds almost too simple, doesn't it?
Yet gardeners tend to forget that basic concept when looking for items to include in a kitchen garden, one designed to provide useful veggies.
That's one of the benefits of having all those experts gathered in one place for Giving Garden Day - they can offer advice and gardeners can ask lots of questions. Among the highlights:
• WGN Radio's gardening expert Mike Nowak gives the skinny on microbes and other critters in the soil that are essential to growing healthy plants.
• Chicagoland Gardening magazine publisher Bill Aldrich will lead a walking tour through the orchards on the Regenstein Fruit and Vegetable Island.
• Experts from the Chalet Nursery in Wilmette will present Vegetable Gardening 101, an introduction to the basics.
• Learn how worms are a gardener's best friend - and how to use them in vermicomposting.
And then, of course, there's Bailey, who has plenty of wonderful garden beds at the botanic garden to use as examples when talking about kitchen gardens.
The Chicago Botanic Garden planted numerous cuisine gardens this year based on cooking for specific ethnic backgrounds: Polish, French and Indian. Each contains vegetables - and varieties of vegetables - specific to those cultures.
"If you're Polish, it would be really neat (to say,) 'This is the tomato Uncle Phil grew' or 'I'm going to make cabbage rolls and I grew my own cabbage,'æ" said Kristie Weber, the garden's director of interpretive programs.
"It's that whole thing about tying gardening to cuisine," she said.
Yes, most cultures use tomatoes. But different varieties, and heirloom varieties, are associated with each country or even a region within a country, and that's what the designers have tried to focus on.
For example, the French beds feature the Flammé variety, while the Polish beds have the Opalka tomato. The planting designs at the garden give visitors ideas about what they can do in their own kitchen gardens.
"There's so many hundreds of varieties, it blows the lid off the possibility of your creativity," Weber said.
And really, that's part of what Bailey wants to convey to gardeners. Once you get past the basics of constructing the beds, you need to have fun with the items you plant.
Where: Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake-Cook Road, Glencoe
When: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 10
Cost: The event is free, but parking is $12 per car.
Details: Experts talk about ways to make vegetable gardening more fun and productive, and area food banks explain how donated vegetables benefit local agencies.
Information: Call (847) 835-5440 or check out www.chicago-botanic.org.
Giving Garden day events
Noon "Vegetable Gardening 101" - Everything you need to know about getting started, from experts at Chalet Nursery.
12:30 p.m. "What the heck is a Soil Food Web?" - WGN Radio's Mike Nowak talks about what's going on in your soil and how to make it more plant friendly.
1 p.m. "Fun with Worms! Vermi-composting" - Learn how to turn garden and kitchen scraps into vitamins for your soil. Teenagers from the Green Youth Farm will show you how to start your own bins.
2 p.m. "The best fruit trees for this region" - Bill Aldrich, publisher of Chicagoland Gardening magazine, walks you through the botanic garden's orchard to show which perform best here.
3 p.m. "Starting your own kitchen garden" - Connie Bailey of the Growing Place Nursery in Naperville will tell you how to get started on gardening for the kitchen.
Also on hand:
They aren't scheduled to give demonstrations, but other experts and agencies will be there to hand out information:
• Russel Higgins, University of Illinois Extension Service - This man knows his bugs. If it crawls, slithers or flies in your garden, he's seen it. And he comes equipped with bug displays, too.
• Northern Illinois Food Bank - The regional distribution agency works with 520 sites that provide food to families in need.
• The Growing Connection - This program links middle schools across the world. Students working with the University of Illinois Extension Service grow vegetables and conduct science experiments to help combat hunger and obesity while communicating with participants across the U.S., Nicaragua, Ghana and Mexico.
• Chicago Parent magazine - The Chicago Botanic Garden will pass out free starter Bau Sin mustard plants, and Chicago Parent magazine will help get kids started by providing free kid-sized trowels.
• Organic Gardening, Chicagoland Gardening magazines - These guys will be on hand to make sure you can get your gardening fix year-round.
• Master gardener Sam Darin shows how to keep your garden tools in tip-top shape using proper cleaning and filing methods. He'll also make sure you've got the right tool for the right job.
• Eileen Prendergast from the Chicago Botanic Garden will show children and their families which rainbow-colored vegetables are the most healthy.