Posts tagged as:

soil

Nothing better than food from your own garden

by Editor May 30, 2011 Gardening

Share By Nancy Traver Spring is getting on here in northern Illinois, and now is the time to get going on your garden. Your effort will pay off later when you’re enjoying the fresh lettuce, radishes and — much later — delicious tomatoes from your garden. There is nothing better than going into your yard, [...]

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How does your garden grow: Make your own compost

by Cassandra West April 24, 2011 Composting

Share Composting was long sort of a mystery to me. Making soil? Your own dirt? I didn’t get it. Even after driving to Milwaukee and taking a tour of Will Allen’s big composting enterprise, Growing Power, I was still wondering what was the big deal about dirt and worms. Then my friend Nancy told me [...]

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Mixing it up with Erlene The Compost Queen

by Lori Rotenberk October 13, 2010 Composting
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Share One day last October as she readied to pitch a bag of food waste—fruit skins and peels—into the abyss of the trash bin, Erlene Howard had a whiff of an idea. Instead of tossing the bag she dropped her last name, Howard, and transformed herself into Erlene The Compost Queen, and in May launched [...]

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This is what fresh looks like

by Cassandra West July 7, 2010 Local food production
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Share Those of us who are first-time urban farmers are always amazed at what we get from the soil. We go into this food-growing venture hopeful, expectant and not quite knowing what our efforts — and the Earth — will yield. So anything we harvest is a pleasure and a reward. I picked my first [...]

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Crops on the corner: Hull-House farm a model for local production

by Cassandra West April 20, 2010 Community

Share [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi_FO6vG8zk&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x234900&color2=0x4e9e00&hd=1] Standing inside a fenced-in space on the UIC campus, you can see Chicago’s tallest building, the Willis Tower (formerly Sears), a black soaring tube of steel and glass pitched stately against a cloudless sky. Cars, buses and trucks whiz by this barren patch on the corner of Taylor and Halsted streets in a [...]

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Looking for Chicago-area urban ag experts, speakers

by Cassandra West April 12, 2010 Community

Share Seeding Chicago wants to know who are the urban agriculture experts out there. Can you write or speak about various topics in urban farming? Can you discuss soil preparation and testing, growing and harvesting techniques, composting, garden design, pest control, irrigation practices or any other topics related to growing food in the city? If [...]

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"Dirt! The Movie" screens @ Chicago Cultural Center

by Cassandra West March 19, 2010 environment

Share “DIRT! The Movie” explores the wonders of the soil and tells the story of Earth’s most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility. Chicago Community Cinema will present a screening of “Dirt!” 2 p.m. Saturday, March 20 Chicago Cultural Center 78 E. Washington St. In the Claudia Cassidy Theater We hope you will come out [...]

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