2013-05-18T09:32:43-04:00 Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=dave-snyder Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Dave Snyder Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.873908 2011-06-09T15:22:48-04:00 2011-08-09T05:12:01-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
A week or two ago, all us Chicago growers were asking when it was going to warm up. May was, overall, gray and rainy, and while the average temperature for the month was only slightly cooler than average, these numbers were buffered by a strange heatwave at the beginning of the month. 17 days out of the month were below average and it rained 21 days, too.

To a degree, every growing environment, whether patio garden or large orchard, has its own climate. Growers have to get used to that climate and adjust their growing to suit its idiosyncrasies. Up on the rooftop, we have additional exposure and generally brisker winds than our neighbors with backyard gardens. Furthermore, with our growing in elevated planter boxes, the soil temperature isn't stabilized by the mass of the more soil around it, meaning our soil temperature fluctuates even more than at ground level.

By the end of May, our greens were taking off while our tomatoes looked beleaguered and sad. The lettuces in particular looked beautiful. Back in January, Chef Chris Spear and I selected three specific varieties that he wanted to use: Spretnak, a dark green, tight head of upright leaves; Sylvesta, a lighter, fluffier head of more delicate leaves; and Forellenschluss, a German red-streak variety (more on Forellenschluss can be read herein a blog post I did for the Neighborhood Writing Alliance.) We've been harvesting them at the end of the week and running them as a single-varietal salad special on Friday or Saturday nights. And they sell out quick!

But the cool spring was short-lived. In the last couple days of May, it began to heat up, and Chicagoans thought we might have a summer after all. Then, just this week, the mercury shot up. At an official 96 degrees, Tuesday was the hottest day in four years, not even a full week into June, and Wednesday was about the same.

And of course, the micro-climate on the rooftop quickly responds to this change. Just as the cool, windy weather in May was exacerbated by the rooftop environment, the same is true with the heat. Now, all of a sudden, the heat-loving plants are perking up and the lettuces are looking stressed out. We're crossing our fingers for rain, both to break the heat and bring a much needed influx of water to our babies.

The farmers' market in my neighborhood, Logan Square Farmers Market, just got going last week and I swung by to look at the goods. The first market of the season is always exciting and I stopped to say hi to the folks at City Farm. Their collards, chard, kale and chioggas were beautiful. And even though there was tons to talk about, of course, we talked about the weather.

You should come by and see how our veggies are doing. We offer tours for $5 every Wednesday during lunch. We also are starting our summer gardening class series this Friday. We're starting off with sub-irrigated planters this Friday, June 10th.


More information and complete schedule of rooftop farm events, click here." target="_hplink">here.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.863959 2011-05-19T12:43:14-04:00 2011-07-19T05:12:01-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
Last year I wrote about the swarms difficulties and harvests successes of growing on a rooftop but in the end we felt pretty good about the season.

Of course winter gives most growers a little bit more time which we use not only to prepare for next season, but also to reflect on the previous one. I took a little time off, visited my family and started looking back through our farm log.

And how was the season? With my time off, I started crunching the numbers and here's what I found out:

• Last season we harvested a total of 659 pounds, essentially two-and-a-half times the harvest from the previous season.

• Tomatoes were our MVP (Most Valuable Produce) weighing in at 177 pounds which, at average market value, is worth about $485.

• About 1600 visitors checked out the roof in 2010, including 350 students from 20 schools, from as close as our neighborhood and as far away as the Netherlands.

All in all, we rate this a success. In particular, managing our fertility, coordinating with the kitchen and educating our interns seemed to work especially well.

But not everyone has the luxury of spending the winter cozied up, working on spreadsheets. While I was inside, our bees were up on our roof all winter long. This isn't unusual, actually.

Honeybees are hardy, and given good conditions, such as a large population, no disease, and plenty of honey storage, they generally make it through the winter. They do this by making a tight ball (think a rugby scrum, several thousand strong) inside the hive and shivering to create heat. The queen stays in the middle of the ball where even on the chilliest of January nights, it stays summer-warm.

At least that's how it's supposed to go. Inevitably some hives don't make it, since winter is a tough time for any animal. To encourage survival, we insulate the hives with tar-paper on the outside and a layer of natural fiber insulation on the inside, allow some ventilation, and construct a windblock around the hives.

One warmish day in February, I lit my smoker and headed up to the roof to check out our hives. Last year, looking after the bees was one of my favorite tasks and I was excited to see how they were doing. To my deep sadness, none of our hives made it through the winter.

And it was a tough winter. The combination of cold weather, wind, and an overabundance of moisture was too much. Indeed, bee keepers all over the US, from Michigan to Virginia had a very bad year. This is small comfort, of course. I called Liam, the beekeeper, and he was more philosophic about it, "Well, it is agriculture after all."

Now we're in the process of repopulating our hives (more on this in future posts) but, even more productively, we're planting the rooftop. This year we're doing some stuff the same, like tomatoes and beans and herbs. However, we're not doing peppers this year, in favor or salad greens like lettuces. You see, once I sat down and crunched the numbers, we realized that greens, which turn around relatively quick and are always usable in salads and sides, were a much more valuable use of our small space than peppers, which take most of the summer to produce.

After such a rough winter, it's nice to see the greenery on the roof. Spinach, peas and lettuces are going great. You should come by and see them!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.676875 2010-08-11T10:40:00-04:00 2011-05-25T17:20:22-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/ Rooftop Farm Report: Demeter Is In The Details

When I was coming up as a young nerd, tests in school were greeted with a weird mixture of anxiety and thrill. Now, lo these many years later, the feeling of being assessed can still cause a reflexive tinge of worry. Today an inspector on behalf of the Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA) came by to make sure we were following procedure, which would determine our certification.

On this blog, I've already talked about about organic certification and as I mentioned, the ethic of organic growing was very familiar to me but this was my first year being responsible for certification. The paperwork we filled out earlier in the year was very detail oriented and as the day approached, I became nervous that maybe I wasn't doing enough. Were my log entries detailed enough? What if I had improperly recorded a fertilizer application? Was my crop rotation plan reasonable?

The folks at work teased me.

"What are you worried about?" asked Anna, one of the hostesses. "That you have to hide all the DDT bottles before the inspector shows up?"

Even my boss, Helen, told me to calm down. In fact, she said that the previous inspections hadn't just gone smoothly, they'd been fun and interesting. Of course, I knew they were right -- we were following all the rules -- but test anxiety is hard to overcome, especially when the bragging rights of the farm are at stake.

Mary I. Wilson, Accredited Organic Inspector, showed up this morning at ten minutes to 9:00 AM. We hit the books, going through all the paperwork we'd submitted earlier in the year looking for discrepancies and invoices for all the seeds and inputs (an input is anything other than a seed or plant that goes into the soil: fertilizers, amendments, pest control, etc.). Mary had to see the seed packets for anything we planted and checked them to see if they were organic or treated. She went through our log books to see how we'd been addressing pests. At one point, she even tallied up how many pea plants we'd grown and compared it to our harvests to make sure we weren't making up our planting or harvest records. (For the record, Mary's formula estimated that our number of pea plants should have produced 20 lbs of peas and our recorded harvest was 24.25 lbs.)

I know, I know. It sounds about as interesting as an IRS audit. But actually Helen was right, it was fun. Before becoming an inspector, Mary had run an organic vegetable farm in Wisconsin and was filled with good farming stories. As she sorted through our field plan, Mary chatted about good farming practices and she was a wealth of good information.

And of course, once the paper work was done, we went up to the roof. Being up there with a farm inspector made me see the space with new eyes. Mary was used to inspecting large acreage farms and here she was strolling through our 0.015 acre, up on a roof in Chicago as garbage trucks rattled down the alley. It's a small and loud farm. But now, in the hot and humid Chicago summer, it looked glorious. The beans, still heavy with pods, shoot high into the air; the peppers and one bed of tomatoes (read about our afflicted Earthboxes) are verdant and dense; arugula and radishes are popping up; and pollinators flirted with the herb blossoms.

In the end, Mary said that we were doing an great job and offered no concerns. I guess we passed with flying colors and all the colors were green.

This week we're harvesting tomatoes, peppers, greens and beans. Come by to see how the chefs are incorporating them into the menu. And if you make it by during our Farmer's Market on Friday afternoon from 4-8pm, I'll show you around the farm. All 0.015 acres of it.











]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.659371 2010-07-26T12:17:58-04:00 2011-05-25T17:10:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
"Those beans!" he gasped.
"What beans?" I asked, still unsure if I was in trouble or not.
"The ones in the kitchen! Chris said they were from the roof. They're HUGE!"

Whew. And Mike was right, too. The Italian Pole Beans we're pulling off the roof right now are as long as my forearm, an inch wide, and sweet enough to be eaten raw. We're harvesting almost every other day and working them into a bunch of dishes on the menu. I've been pleased to say that the chefs have been very positive about the produce I've been delivering to the kitchen this season. Indeed, it would be easy to get cocky on occasion, like when the chef said the sugar snaps were better than any he was getting from the local farms.

But the truth of the matter is, it's an unfair contest. At Uncommon Ground we get to let our veggies vine ripen as long as we can and when it comes time to transport, all we have to do is walk it down to the kitchen (of course, by way of our washing station). Around here, sometimes the amount of time between the moment something is harvested and the moment a customer bites down on it could be under an hour.

To me, this is at the heart of the heart of the urban agriculture movement. Few people believe that urban agriculture can significantly replace rural farming as the primary mode of food production in America. Instead, it seems that urban agriculture has the opportunity to play a significant role in improving food security and nutrition, while saving urbanites money and building community. I believe very strongly in many of these ideas but they can be hard to communicate, especially when the discourse is peppered with terminology like "peri-urban," "phytoremediation," and "bioregional ecologies."

To me, the most compelling argument is food itself, the snow peas and pole beans. That the food you grow nearby is inevitably the tastiest. For almost every vegetable, the best it's ever going to be is the very second you pluck it from the vine, and every minute after that it's becoming a lesser version of itself. If you want to make someone a believer of urban ag? Let 'em pick a tomato and eat it right there. But then step back: the converted are generally the most zealous.

Outside of giant beans, the exciting news this week is that we started our tomato harvest. Small at first, the sungolds and the currant tomatoes are the ones coming in. If a fresh tomato isn't the very taste of summer, I don't know what is.

The sobering news, however, is that some of the tomato plants themselves -- in particular, those in our Earthboxes -- aren't doing too hot. We've had a couple different diseases on them this summer but the real tough one is fursarium wilt. Fusarium is a fungus that infects the vascular tissue of the tomato plant, preventing it from passing water and nutrients to the leaves. Slowly the plant dies back and eventually dies completely. Fusarium has no treatment, organic or otherwise, so it'll be a bit of a race against time to see if any tomatoes will ripen before the vines lose all vitality. I'll admit the wilt took the wind out of this gardener's sails.

Worse, the fungus is soil-borne, so if we replant tomatoes in the same boxes, the wilt will just come right back. The sure fire way to prevent this is to not plant tomatoes, of course. But a garden in summer without tomatoes is like a summer without sunshine, so we need a new plan. The plan, then, is solar sterilization . Briefly, it's letting the soil cook under plastic in the sun to kill the fungi. The downside is that the heat will kill essentially all the microorganisms as well, so we'll need to reinoculate the soil with some compost before planting.

But that's the oldest story in the book. Crops grow. Sometimes they fail. You don't have much choice in the matter; the farmer goes on.

Stop by to check in on us and how we're doing. Fridays the nation's first certified organic rooftop farm is open from 4 - 8, along with a bunch of farmer's market stands, country music, and a bar nearby. I'll tell you all the good news and the bad news.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.639583 2010-07-12T18:28:19-04:00 2011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
It was a wonderful few days of family time -- which in mine mostly means eating boatloads of seafood and cracking jokes -- but it was also inspirational. Vancouver is a dense, vertical city and many developers have begun to engage this verticality in a horticultural way. Throughout the city center you see trees and arbors poking their way up from rooftops. Furthermore, in a primary location on Vancouver Harbor you can see the Vancouver Convention Center with what I believe to be the largest greenroof in Canada. The northwest coast is so verdant that I even spied grass and a small tree growing out of the gutter of a warehouse.

But any vacation of course implies a homecoming, and getting back to Chicago was great. The thrill of travel is replaced by the comfort of home and all the excitement for vertical growing that the Vancouver skyline had inspired in me was matched by a new project here at the office.

It turns out that just down the street from us, a couple of neighbors named Ross and Halen have been working on a vertical growing system of their own. They call themselves the City Craftsmen, signing and building vertical gardens of their own. It's pretty sweet stuff. Rainwater is collected off the roof and a solar-powered water pump sends it up to a multi-tiered system that affords several areas for growing. In the spirit of neighborliness they've decided to give Uncommon Ground a system for a south facing wall in our parking lot. They did it up real nice too, with custom wood work and everything. Ross and Halen will be at our farmer's market this Friday showing it off. You should come by, see their work, and check out the rooftop too.

And the rooftop! I got back from vacation (keep in mind, my vacation wasn't even a full week) to find the rooftop practically unrecognizable! While Vancouver delivered 70 degree days and much cooler evenings, Chicago was quite a bit warmer. Quite a bit. And those hot days, periodic thundershowers, and proportionally hot nights worked their Midwestern magic on our roof's crops. Kale, which we'd aggressively harvested a week earlier, had bounced back; beans had been harvested periodically in my absence, yet still kept producing; basil and parsley were thick and full; and even the chard, which I'd almost given up on during our fertility panic a few weeks ago, is looking gorgeous.

I coordinated with our sous-chef Chris Spear as to what he'd need in the next couple days. In addition to the beans (who doesn't love a bean?) he's opting for herbs and herbs in quantity. We decided my interns would harvest a bunch of the woody herbs tomorrow, but just as I was taking my lunch, he stopped by to see if I could deliver the sage ahead of time. I dropped my sandwich, grabbed some shears, and hit the farm. Twenty minutes later, a half pound of sage was in the walk in refrigerator.

That transaction -- the chef asking the grower for a product and the product being available within the hour -- is truly exciting to me. Not only can the chef depend on me for high quality, organic produce, but I can harvest it on-demand. And if he'd run short? I'd just have clipped some more.

Tomorrow we'll finish the harvest: beans, kale, basil, oregano, thyme, arugula, along side a couple onions and garlic. The motion is one of the oldest ones we're familiar with: from farm to plate by way of the kitchen. It's just neat to see it happen all at once. If I haven't offered already, let me extend the invite to show it to you. The farm is open to the public every Friday from 4-8pm. Come by and I'll show you around.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.636333 2010-07-06T11:32:38-04:00 2011-05-25T17:00:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
In my eyes, self-reliance and growing food are deeply intertwined. We grow, not only to have access to fresh vegetables, but to have access to our vegetables, vegetables that we know about. If we grew them, we know what went into and on them, what fertilizers and pest controls were used, when they were picked and how long they've been in storage. And gardeners are glad to know that. Homegrown tomatoes come with wonderful flavor, but they also come with peace of mind. During the World Wars, when America had to be particularly independent, the government encouraged home growing in the so-called war and victory gardens. One statistic I read says that at its peak, 40% of America's produce was coming from these gardens. And today's growers, like so many Americans before us, prefer to do things for ourselves. Hey, grocery store, bug off. We got this one.

At Uncommon Ground, our contribution to this movement, our rooftop farm, is having a resurgence of its own. Followers of this blog (shockingly, I've been told that there are some) will remember a few weeks back that we were facing some significant fertility issues. Kale and parsley were particularly stunted and showed purple exterior leaves. Soil tests revealed a few mineral deficiencies and we swung into action with some soil amendments. We've started adding a pelletized amendment called Pre-Plant Plus as well as doing foliar feeding with fish and kelp meal. While we'd prefer a more permanent solution to what we're perceiving as mineral leaching, the plants seem to be responding to our amendment regime. Almost all the plants in our beds are becoming full and lush. Earlier today we harvested both the kale and parsley for our kitchen.

I can't tell you what a relief it is seeing the garden bounce back from what could have been a dismal season. Not to count my tomatoes before they ripen, even pulling in the several pounds of kale felt like a real victory. And the timing was opportune: last Monday, Uncommon Ground's all-staff meeting was held on the rooftop, and I introduced the whole staff to what was going on this year. Several people took me aside to tell me how good it looked. I admit I was proud. I was proud of the land, our little portion, and what it could produce for our restaurant independent of refrigerated trucks, distributors, packaging, and marketing. If veggies are a sign of the American spirit, I'm the staunchest of patriots.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.624227 2010-06-25T09:44:51-04:00 2011-05-25T16:50:20-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
The produce served at, say, a McDonald's may have traveled hundreds of miles and been stored in warehouses for days at a time both before and after processing and packaging. By comparison, this seems ploddingly slow. So why is McDonald's called fast food when it takes the food so much longer to get to the customer?

Questions like this reflect a healthy skepticism about our food systems that seem to be growing from the Slow Food movement.

As an idea, Slow Food began with a small but passionate resistance to the proliferation of fast food (initially, the opening of a McDonald's in Rome) and has grown into a worldwide movement supporting and promoting small, local, and traditional foods and food producers. Since then it has become an international organization with 100,000 members in 132 countries. In their words: "We believe that the food we eat should taste good; that it should be produced in a clean way that does not harm the environment, animal welfare or our health; and that food producers should receive fair compensation for their work." Well said!

All this has been on our mind this week for a couple reasons, you see. Our annual Brew Masters dinner is thrown as a benefit for our local chapter: Slow Foods Chicago. But even more exciting is a piece of news that came across the transom: owners Helen and Michael Cameron were accepted as delegates to Terra Madre.

Terra Madre is Slow Food's international conference held every other year in Turin, Italy, convening thousands of farmers, chefs, educators, scientists, and activists from all over the world. Furthermore, Slow Foods assists all the delegates with the costs and logistics of attending the conference so that people who may not be able to travel on their own budget can still come. It's a model that helps to build an exceedingly diverse community all together in the same place to share their knowledge and passion for traditional foods. Can you imagine? A friend of ours who went to the last Terra Madre confessed that it brought him to tears.

The way we see it, Uncommon Ground behaves as a miniature model for this ethic. We grow food for ourselves on our microscopic farm, where the grower (myself) and the consumer (chef Brian Millman) work together to plan and plant. Moreover we use the farm as an educational and outreach tool, inviting hundreds of people to our space to introduce to how a food system works, start to finish.

The Brew Master Dinner is a food example. Weeks back the chef asked me to grow him some microgreens, and I obliged. A week ago, I let him know we'd have some snap peas for him to use; he incorporated them into the menu. On the night of, we invited everyone up to the rooftop for a pre-dinner reception where we talked to folks about the ABCs of what we're doing up there: from amendments to bee swarms to certification. We raised our glasses to it all: growing, cooking, eating, and educating.

As always, you're welcome to come by and see our little model of a food system. Fridays, from 4-8pm the roof is open during our farmer's market. Hope to see you then!

3rd Annual Farmer Friday Farmer's Market Every Friday 4-8pm from June 4th through September 24th.

Featuring Kids Music at 5pm followed by the Honky Tonk Happy hour from 6-8pm

Located in the parking lot of Uncommon Ground, Devon.
Tour the nation's first certified organic rooftop farm.
Rooftop Farm Tours Every Friday 4-8pm.

Vendors through the summer:

Harvest Moon Organic produce and CSA
Bark Bark Club Pet Services
Recycle Me Organic T-shirts
Robinson's Beef
Goose Island Brewery
Rain Organic Vodka
Casa Noble Organic Tequila
Girasole Vineyards (the organic wines of Charlie Barra)
360 Vodka,
Half Acre Brewery
Templeton Rye
Hum Botanical Spirit
Metropolitan Brewery
North Shore Distellery
Slow Food
and more...]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.616223 2010-06-17T15:07:47-04:00 2011-05-25T16:50:20-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
For regular readers of this blog, you'll know that the rooftop farm at Uncommon Ground is on its third growing season, but its first with yours truly as Farm Director. This blog represents a report on how we're doing this year but is also a journal of my experience as I figure out how to grow food 30 feet up in the air.

Over the last 2 years, Uncommon Ground has delivered food from roof to kitchen, supplementing other local, organic, sustainable or humanely raised ingredients. Talking to the owners and to the previous Farm Director, however, the second season seemed to be less productive than the first and a worrying trend has begun to develop here: many of the plants are slow to grow while others are stunted or discolored.

Any hopes this slow start being related to anything else were quickly dispersed after a few pieces of data. The first, a soil test conducted by our interns, showed nitrogen depletion. Second, a trip to my community garden showed me direct comparisons of certain plants I knew were planted within days of each other. Kale at Uncommon Ground was perhaps a third the height of kale at my community garden. Third, our earthboxes are going gangbusters (more on these in a moment). Finally, our beans and peas are doing just fine as well.

In times like this it pays off to mobilize the finest minds around you, and in my case, that means my interns. On Thursday we field tripped down to the Chicago Center for Green Technology. We met with the resource librarians who introduced us to a whole range of innovative materials design, primarily for green roofs.

(A side note: I want to take a moment to reiterate the difference between a green roof and a rooftop garden. Perhaps this seems obvious, but the two often seem to be used interchangeably. Green roofs are engineered systems that create a living, growing surface to a roof which helps insulate, manage water, and reduce heat reflection. In green roofs, the soil profile is usually only a few inches thick. Rooftop gardens, however, are spaces designed to actually grow crop plants and as such require deeper soil depths and more irrigation.)

Our understanding of what's happening is roughly this. Our planter boxes are made from cedar planking and lined with weed cloth, a semipermeable plastic fabric, to allow drainage. Both rain and our irrigation system are watering from the top. Nutrients that enter solution (which would be easy for the plant to pick up) will be flushed out the bottom as the net solution movement is always down in our system. The earthboxes are bottom watered and therefore retain nutrients in their water reservoir and, hence, are doing great. Furthermore, the peas and beans are legumes that self-fertilize nitrogen with a symbiotic relationship with fungi that grow on their roots.

What we saw down at CCGT was fascinating and exciting, getting our creative engines running. The interns loosely designed 3 systems for improving our growing system. In essence the three systems are this: a) replace our soil volume with a whole bunch of earthboxes, b) convert our large planter boxes into super-sized sub-irrigation planters, c) figure out a water catchment and recycling system, so water (and by extension, nutrients) is retained.

As I type the interns are researching materials and costs. We'll finish these designs over the next couple weeks and install them in a couple of test beds upstairs. Of course, the proof is in the produce, so we won't know how well these work for many months. In the meantime, we're working on figuring out amendments to help improve the plants already in the ground.

Make sure to come on by during our Farmer's Markets to see how we're doing and how we're trying to address the age-old farming dilemma: how to keep soil fertile. The roof is always open on Fridays from 4 - 8. Hope to see you then!]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.607562 2010-06-10T15:52:59-04:00 2011-05-25T16:45:26-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
Not only would they, they would become the first organically certified rooftop farm in the country (possibly the world -- if you know of another certified organic one, please bring it up in the comments below). And now, three years later, peas and beans are popping up on that farm and the tomatoes in the EarthBoxes are looking great, showing-off a couple blossoms.

The idea behind certifying is to standardize exactly what we mean by "organic" so consumers know what they're getting and how it was grown. On our farm, all the produce we grow goes to the restaurant but, even though Uncommon Ground emphasize organic ingredients, we don't advertise it as organic. So why get certified? When I started working here, I asked that very question of Helen who answered "It seemed like the right thing to do." That right thing is what I was up to this week.

Even though I have seven years experience growing organically with Ginkgo Organic Gardens (an organic food bank garden in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood) this is my first time involved in the certification process. Ginkgo has been growing organically for 16 years but wouldn't benefit from spending the money on certification.

Oddly, this mimics the same kind logic of many farmers in America. Certification can be an expensive investment if a farmer has to change equipment, techniques, or supplies and, I found out this week, it can also be a good bit of paperwork. We have to keep complete records for every input on the farm: seeds, fertilizers, even the inoculant we use on our legume seeds. Some farmers decide that certification isn't worth it for their farm and for their products, even if their growing techniques are the same as certified farmers.

In the USA, organic certification is conducted by local agencies overseen by the USDA. Our local agency is called the Midwestern Organic Services Association and when I had a question in filling out my form, I gave them a call up there in Viroqua, Wisconsin.

If the forms I had to fill out seemed cooly meticulous, the MOSA folks on the phone were warm and generous. I spoke with Mary who knew exactly who I was (it turned out we'd met at the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service conference earlier this year) and immediately answered my question but, not satisfied with being a solitary opinion, gave me the number of another certification organization with whom I could verify her answer. We chatted for a while and before hanging up, I made Mary promise to come visit us here in the city.

And you should too! Stuff is growing up here on the farm, the beans and peas are working their way up their trellises. The bees, oh the bees, tried to swarm again but beekeeper Liam -- who apparently has the magical power of interpreting bee communication -- had anticipated they would and had put a queen excluder (a wire mesh small enough for the worker bees to squeeze through but not the queen) at the entrance of the hive. When the queen couldn't follow the swarm, they moseyed back to the hive, so we added an extra honey super to give them some more room.

Remember you can always check out the rooftop farm on during our Farmer's Market on Friday afternoons, 4-8pm. The first one was last week and it was a blast. At one point, sitting up on the roof with my interns, listening to the honky tonk drift up from downstairs, I surveyed our tiny plot of land atop a restaurant and thought, "Indeed, this is the right thing to do."

Uncommon Ground presents Green Room Sessions, a FREE monthly eco-awareness series featuring local environmental organizations along with FREE appetizers featuring the product of a local farmer or producer: June 10, 2010 'Alternative Transportation' 6-8pm

Come view the amazing Tesla Roadster, Zero electric motorcycle, hybrids, bio-diesel vehicles, veggie oil vehicles, transportation & cargo bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters & many more.

This Green Room Session will take place in the parking lot of uncommon ground at 1401 West Devon Avenue. Don't miss this event. Outside the auto show, you will never see a more eclectic group of vehicles!

Also, come visit Uncommon Ground's 3rd Annual Farmer Friday Farmer's Market Every Friday 4-8pm from June 4th through September 24th. Located in the Devon parking lot. Featuring Kids Music at 5pm followed by the Honky Tonk Happy Hour from 6-8pm. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.599669 2010-06-03T15:33:09-04:00 2011-05-25T16:40:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/ Uncommon Ground this means we close off our parking lot, set-up a bunch of vendors, bring in a country band, and invite all our neighbors. Running from 4-8pm, it's a farmer's market for the happy-hour crowd and whenever the market's on, the farm is open to the public.

Atop the roof, it's equally festival. Tomatoes, peas, peppers are all starting to move into high gear. The beans would be taking off now (indeed they are at my other garden) except that we ran into a couple problems. One by the name of thrips the other by cucumber beetle. Thirty feet, apparently, is not high enough to keep the bugs away.

Cucumber beetles (we had the spotted variety, Diabrotica
undecimpunctata howardi in all its eleven-spotted doom) emerge in late spring when the weather gets up to the 60's. It was during this period, that they turned our bean leaves into swiss cheese (see this illustration by USDA illustrator Mary Foley Benson). Hesitant to use any insecticides, even organic ones, unless absolutely necessary we monitored the plants every day and removed any beetles we found. Thank you, interns.

The beetles seem to have moved on, but the worry is that they left behind a few hundred of their future progeny as tiny eggs around the base of our bean plants. If so, they'll soon emerge and, in their larval stage, munch on the roots. While organic control methods emphasize monitoring and cultivation techniques, cucumber beetle larvae are also susceptible to predatory nematodes.

And just when we were thinking it was safe to grow legumes around here, the thrips showed up. Thrips feed by sucking the juice out of the leaves and flowers of plants, like vegan mosquitoes, and cause white emaciated damage (see this illustration of gladiolus thrips, by USDA illustrator Art Cushman). We sprayed them down with water, to get the thrips of the leaves, and had planned on applying an organic soap spray, but we couldn't find a certified organic one over the counter. We opted for ladybugs, who will be pleased to prey on the thrips, hoping that our wind blocks will keep the darlings from blowing away.

Enough doom and gloom. Lets focus on the good stuff. The tomatoes are popping up in our earthboxes. If you're unfamiliar with earthboxes, they're a self-contained, sub-irrigation system -- like a self-watering planter box. They're a great way for urban gardeners to grow vegetables in places where you might not have access to soil: rooftops, fire escapes, balconies, window sills, even parking lots! But of course, since they're sealed on the bottom, they're also usable in places where the soil is infertile or contaminated. They're so efficient and easy that an organization called Growing Connection is sending them all over the world to places where people have trouble accessing reliable sources for fresh vegetables. If they work in Ghana and the Bronx as well as they work here, it's gonna be tomatoes all the world over this August.

If you've been reading this blog, I'd love to show you around. Our farmer's market starts at 4:00PM this Friday. Come on by and I'll give you a tour.

Also, Uncommon Ground presents Green Room Sessions, a FREE monthly eco-awareness series featuring local environmental organizations along with FREE appetizers featuring the product of a local farmer or producer: June 10, 2010 'Alternative Transportation' 6-8pm

Come view the amazing Tesla Roadster, Zero electric motorcycle, hybrids, bio-diesel vehicles, veggie oil vehicles, transportation & cargo bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters & many more.

This Green Room Session will take place in the parking lot of uncommon ground at 1401 West Devon Avenue. Don't miss this event. Outside the auto show, you will never see a more eclectic group of vehicles!

Featuring Outdoor Demos by:
Tesla Motors
Chicago Prius Group
Loeber Motors
Zap Truck
De Fietsfabriek
I Go Cars
Carbon Day Automotive
Audi
Grossinger Toyota North
Chicago Biofuels
Zero Motorcycles Midwest
Zipcar
Loyola Biodiesel Program
Ford Escape and Ford Fusion
Mobile Garden
noisivelvet ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.592740 2010-05-28T15:26:06-04:00 2011-05-25T16:35:20-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/
Chicago is heating up. Every day since my last post, we've had above average temperatures, especially considering the roof runs a little warm. This has coaxed the plants out of their spring indolence and into some more energetic growing. The beans and peas are taking off, making grabs at their trellises. While we're still a ways away from harvest of the legumes, we have been including herbs grown on site in our homemade sausages and meatloaf. And man, are they tasty.

However, the harvest that I'm most excited about right now, is our summer crop of interns. This morning was the first day of our intern program and six young folks -- Sam, Joseph, Sebastian, Julia, Mariah, and Josh -- will be joining us this summer to help out on the farm in exchange for hands on experience with urban agriculture. Something that struck me was the variety of their backgrounds: one is an escapee from the corporate world, another grew-up working in the Hawaiian hotel industry.

The warm weather also means that uncommon ground is ready to set up their outdoor patio. Ahh, patio dining: arguably the finest thing about summer in Chicago. But in keeping with uncommon ground's mix of farming and feeding, we're planning some edible plantings into the patio layout.

To wit, the interns dragged up six empty whiskey barrels from the basement to decorate our patio. One of our distributors had dropped them off for us a few months ago. Now, vacated of their Buffalo Trace, we thought we could find a good use for them. The interns drilled a couple drainage holes, filled 'em up with soil from Lake Street Landscape Supply, and then (this is the best part) planted potatoes in them.

And not just any potatoes, mind you. We planted la ratte potatoes. According to journalist Mary Blume in her book "A French Affair", La ratte first appeared in the Vilmorin-Andrieux seed catalog in 1880. As with many heritage varieties, it nearly disappeared in the early part of the 20th century but slowly began making a comeback in recent decades. It's praised for a chestnut-like flavor and the Seed Savers Exchange avers "we cannot recommend this variety highly enough, an absolute delight to cook with."

According to the weather, it's going to stay warm and, just now, as I'm preparing to leave uncommong ground, thunder clouds are brewing. Tune in next week to hear how the summery weather is affecting the crops and what else we've planted to engage the patio area.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.582738 2010-05-20T17:18:18-04:00 2011-05-25T16:30:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/ Varroa mite infestation? Well. Beekeeper Liam Ford and I were all set to do it this Wednesday, when all of a sudden everything changed.

You see, farming -- like life -- rarely goes according to plan. You think you've got it together and then it hails. Or there's a heat wave. Or a water main bursts. Or a late frost. Or a gagillion aphids. Look at the literature! Farming narratives are stories of bleak fates.

Wednesday one of our hives swarmed. This morning I was sitting with owner Michael Cameron after a local ABC broadcast when a vendor came in and said, "Hey, did you guys see all those bees in the tree out there?" Mike and I ran.

Our northmost hive (not the Varroa infected hive) had swarmed to a bradford pear tree just next to the restaurant. Liam estimated 10,000 bees were forming three big clumps in the tree, the largest about the size of a rugby ball.

Bees swarm naturally when the hive gets too crowded. The attentive beekeeper prevents this from happening by adding "supers" (additional boxes that go on top of the hive boxes) and by eliminating queen cells, if the queen is preparing to split the hive. The cold, dizzly weather Chicago's been having lulled Liam and I into a false sense of security, as we hadn't seen much action from the hives. Today's swarm was a rude awakening.

We spent several hours high up in the tree, trying to collect the swarm. If we could find the queen and transport her back to our roof, then the rest of the hive would follow, but the height of it and the density of the tree made this difficult. Contrary to what you may have seen on Loony Tunes, bee swarms are actually especially docile. Liam would dip his hand into the swarm and remove a cup full of bees to search for the queen. Three times he found her and three times she got away.

Of course it's a busy street in Chicago too. Cars would slow and bicyclers would nearly wreck to try and see what we were doing. Two neighbors and fellow beekeepers, Barbara and Marina, generously put their days on hold to help us out. The funeral director next door lent us a ladder but made a hasty departure after one of our quarry flew up his trousers. And oddly, nobody seemed worried. There we were, trying to corral thousands of venomous insects but nobody freaked out. Invariably, when we told people what was going on, their reaction was: "cool!"

Eventually, after hours of frustration trying to isolate the queen, we cut the limb that the bees were on, boxed the whole swarm up, and transferred them to an empty hive we'd set up. So, even though our northmost hive has a whole lot fewer bees in it, now we have a fifth hive. You lose some, you win some.

Ten thousand bees and after it all, we only got three stings.

Finally, Chicago has eased out of a dreary spell in early May. The planting will begin in earnest now! Check in next week to hear how the bees are doing, how planting went, and how the little seedlings are doing.


]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.575615 2010-05-13T17:28:41-04:00 2011-05-25T16:30:24-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/ Chicago's official frost free date: May 15.

Don't giggle at this, either. It's dropped down to 34 degrees on May 15th before (1937), in recent memory it's snowed (2003), and most Chicago growers have ended up on the weather gods' bad side before. All that said, up here at the rooftop farm at uncommon ground, we're trying to get ahead of the game.

Some plants are sowed directly into the ground. Snow peas, for instance, can be planted before the last frost date as they're pretty hardy. Beans don't take too well to transplanting but aren't as cold-friendly as peas, so we'll plant these from seed in a few days.

Other plants do a bit better with being moved around. We started tomatoes, peppers, kale, basil, cilantro and parsley inside from seed in special starter trays under fluorescent lights in our basement (since we're a restaurant, these are kept separate from our pantry and food storage). Once they're big enough that they start looking like real plants, we pot them up into larger containers and, soon after, begin hardening them off. Once you're past the frost free date, you're clear to start transplanting your seedlings outside.

Well, we couldn't handle it. We already started transplanting a few days early. Tempting fate, we transplanted a bunch of tomatoes and a few flats of kale on Wednesday. And in the next couple days, we'll start moving out the rest of our seedlings. Before long, our rooftop will start looking green again.

Also this week, our friend Liam Ford (Chicago Tribune reporter and blogger at Chicago Bee Blog)stopped by to show me some beekeeping skills. The good news? We added a super (an extra hive box for honey storage) atop the southmost hive, which was already packed with bees. The bad? We've discovered that another hive is afflicted with a parasitic mite with the terrifying name Varroa destructor Next week we plan to treat them with formic acid, an organic chemical control.

Lastly, a few toasts are in order. First to our comrade-in-arms up at Growing Power, Will Allen, who was named one of Time magazine's Time 100: The World's Most Influential People. His category? Heroes. Congrats, Will, we couldn't agree more.

Also, I'm proud to say that Uncommon Ground was awarded the 3 Star Green Restaurant Certification designation by the Green Restaurant Association. Kudos go to the owners Helen and Michael Cameron for their long-term commitment to being a green business.

Tune in to the Farm Report next week to find out how planting went, how we're dealing with our Varroa problem, and more. Things should be warming up by then.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.566311 2010-05-06T14:18:12-04:00 2011-05-25T16:25:21-04:00

Dave Snyder http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-snyder/ Uncommon Ground, a restaurant on Chicago's north side that grows food on a 2,500 square ft. rooftop. For many years I've helped run a community garden in the spare time around my desk job, and now I enter the small cadre of people who do professionally what they would do on their own time anyhow.

But I also get to join the expanding ranks of people growing food on rooftops. A recent Bon Appetite listed Uncommon Ground among the 10 best restaurants around the US growing food on their roofs.

Entering into uncommon ground's second growing season - and my first season on the rooftop - the Huffington Post has asked us to keep a blog of our season: its successes, its disappointments, its labors, and its harvests.

It's meant to be a kind of urban agriculture Farm Report, and it's hard to get more urban than our micro-farm. Buses roar past, cars honk, kids shout on their way to school and there I am, on a 2500 square ft. farm 30 feet up in the air.

So here's the update.

I started at uncommon ground on the first week of April. The first order of business was taking inventory and setting up a planting station.

April 5th, we planted California Wonder Sweet Pepper, Wonder Bell Sweet Pepper, Jalapeno, and Habenero.

On the 7th we planted Lacinato Kale and Genovese Basil. April 8th was tomato day, and we planted Green Zebra, Brandy Wine, Zapotec, German Queen, Costoluto Genovese, Siletz, Speckled Roman, Oregon Spring, Silver Fir, Japanese Trifele, Wapsipinicon, Chadwick Cherry, White Currant, Red Currant, Prize of the Trails, Sun Gold and Purple Calabash.

Upstairs we also have direct sowed peas, pole beans, bush beans and arugula. We'll probably be harvesting these in a month or so.

We have gotten some small harvests of mezuna greens from our hoop houses. This has made it into the salads and sandwiches at the restaurant.

Uncommon Ground also has four bee hives. We've checked in on those ladies. All four hives made it through the winter. For the first few weeks we fed them some sugar syrup until Chicago's flowers started blooming. Now we're in full bloom and all four queens seem to be laying nicely.

Chicago's "frost free" date is May 15th but the outlook seems good. Hopefully we'll be transplanting in the next several days.

I'll be posting a Farm Report each week. So come back, see how we're doing and, if you're in town, visit us at Uncommon Ground. Starting in June, we'll be offering tours of the rooftop farm every Friday evening during our farmer's market. I'd love to show you around.

Coming soon to uncommon ground, Devon:

Wed. 5-19:
Dinner and Movie Night with 'DIRT!' The Movie
Dinner at 6:30, movie at 8pm

DIRT! The Movie-directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow-takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth's most valuable and under-appreciated source of fertility--from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation. $35 per person includes a 3-course meal. Gratuity not included. Limited seating. Reservation required. Call 773-465-9801

Coming June 4th:
2nd Annual Farmer's Market at uncommon ground, Devon: 4-6pm
Every Friday at the Devon Parking Lot
Featuring live music with THE HONKY TONK HAPPY HOUR, Harvest Moon Organic Produce, CSA, Bark Bark
Club Pet Services, Recycle Me Organic T-shirts, Robinson's Beef, and many, many more.]]>