Green Tomatoes and Plant Trucks
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Sometimes, life–and radio–don’t go exactly as planned. Like when you expect ripe tomatoes and you get green tomatoes. Or when you’re trying to have some fun on the East Coast. In fact, if you were on Cape Cod, Massachusetts on Saturday morning, you would have heard me making a guest appearance with “The Garden Lady,” aka C.L Fornari, who has been on this show a couple of times. Out there, she has weekly radio show called GardenLine, on Newsradio 95 WXTX.
That was all the radio I planned to do this week, and I was looking forward to a little Sunday morning R&R. But, like I said, things happen. Peggy Malecki was suddenly not available for duty, so I find myself at the helm of my show from a friend’s backyard in Hartford, Connecticut, a thousand miles away. We’ll see how this works out.
Fortunately, we have some great guests and some great topics. It all starts with longtime friend of the show LaManda Joy of Peterson Garden Project fame, who will be in studio this morning. I won’t be, but she will.
Peggy wrote the bulk of this blog post, so I’ll let her pick it up from here.
Green tomatoes…in September?
In her own words, LaManda says that she “believes the world would be a better place with more gardeners in it.” She is an Illinois Extension Master Gardener, author of Fearless Food Gardening in Chicagoland (with Teresa Gale) and Start a Community Food Garden: The Essential Handbook (Timber Press), national speaker, blogger, founder of the award winning nonprofit Peterson Garden Project and owner of City Grange, the country’s first education-based garden center whose mission is to remove every barrier to your gardening success.
Back in April of this year, on Easter Sunday to be exact, we took The Mike Nowak Show on the road for the grand opening festivities of City Grange at 5500 N. Western Avenue, on Chicago’s northwest side. “United We Blossom” is City Grange’s motto, and as a socially focused business, they’re working to support local organic farmers as well as environmentally responsible and USA made products through their supply chain.
They offer many varieties of locally grown, organic veggies and herbs as well as pollinator-friendly natives and annuals. They are creating jobs, hiring and training at-risk youth. And as we told you in April, they support local, nonprofit gardening and environmental organizations, such as Peterson Garden Project, Get Growing Foundation, SlowFood Chicago, Green City Market, Urban Beekeeping Lab and Chicago Market.
City Grange has a mission to educate gardeners of all skill levels through events and classes covering the gamut from planning a backyard landscape, gardening with natives, growing in containers and the upcoming “Fall Veggies from Starts-part 2” class taking place next Saturday, September 7, from 2-3:00 p.m.
The jury is still out on the success of 2019 growing season, especially in the Chicago area. Some listeners reported great success and have abundant red tomatoes and a summer bounty many of us are still anxiously awaiting. We’ve also heard lately from folks asking if their tomatoes will ever ripen. Others say the harvest has been pretty low and their gardens are just about done—or are they??
The good news. Now’s not the time to give up on your garden, as there are still ways to get a second season harvest, even if you missed the midsummer window to plant fall seeds. In the Chicago area, our first fall frost is typically October 15, but it varies based on the year and your location. For instance, areas near Lake Michigan and in the City of Chicago might not see frost for weeks after it hits some western suburbs. And many crops can take a light frost and still keep producing well into October, and potentially even November.
We will be talking about what you can plant in the next week or two to extend the growing season well into fall. One key, says LaManda, is to use “starts”, which are established young plants that will do well in our variable late season weather. Here is a list of some varieties she recommends, which include as Asian greens, beets, kale, lettuce, mustard greens, peas, spinach and Swiss chard.
Early September is also a perfect time to freshen containers with fall blooming plants, many of which can benefit both migrating pollinators like monarchs and our native bees. You may even want to tuck in some kale with the fall flowers. Joining us in the studio this morning is Joan Murray, “Plant Boss” at City Grange, and an Illinois Master Gardener. Joan specializes in creating gardens for small spaces, and she’ll discuss ways to design fall containers that match our home and personality.
Plant Truck rolls in
Tony Abruscato is another friend of The Mike Nowak Show, and in his role president of the Chicago Flower and Garden Show, he joins us every March to review the upcoming show. He wears many hats, including being a part of the alliance of organizations that present the Chicago Excellence in Gardening Awards. This morning, Tony puts on his chapeau as Founder and Executive Director of the Get Growing Foundation GGF), a Chicago non-profit that they say is “growing the next generation of gardeners.” According to Tony,
The Get Growing Foundation is a 501c3 creating gardens, educational programming and year-round outreach to the public, with a particular focus on today’s youth. Get Growing Foundation has a mission to inspire, educate, and motivate the next generation of gardeners through community outreach and education, experience based learning, and horticultural job skills training and placement.
GGF’s mission includes the United We Blossom initiative of career path development and job placement in floral and container design, food gardening, product creation, retail and event opportunities. In 2019, some of their job training participants found employment at City Grange. (In full disclosure, LaManda Joy is a member of the Get Growing Foundation’s Board of Directors.)
Community impact projects and educational programming make up GGF’s educational mission, and here’s where their cool new PLANT TRUCK comes in! This summer, the organization took ownership of a custom designed mobile plant boutique designed, created and donated by artist Jason Verbeek. Since July, the truck has been making the rounds of various city festivals and markets, educating visitors and selling unique plants to benefit GGF programs.
A GoFundMe Campaign for Plant Truck has been started, with the goal of
- educating special needs students
- employing at-risk individuals
- providing access to plants in communities that currently don’t have access to them
- developing a horticulture curriculum in conjunction with special needs schools that will teach their students how to grow and care for the plant material that will be made available
- providing job training and practical experience for apprentices of the career path development program United We Blossom
Changing the culture of meat production
Create Free Ilinois is a not-for-profit with a stated mission to reduce the suffering of animals on factory farms. Back in March of 2018, we covered their Change.org campaign to grocery chain Trader Joes. Signed by more than 370,000 customers, the campaign urged the company to stop sourcing pork from producers that use gestation crates. The campaign was successful, and the company agreed to change its supply chain to obtain its pork products from crate-free suppliers, a process that should continue through 2022.
Now, Crate Free Illinois is urging the grocery chain Aldi, which operates more than 1,800 U.S. stores in 35 states, to commit to 100 percent sourcing of its pork products from crate-free suppliers by 2022. They launched an online Change.org petition to Aldi in June 2019, which begins:
Many of us are loyal Aldi shoppers who appreciate the grocery chain’s quality, low-priced foods, commitment to sustainability, and desire to serve its customers in meaningful ways. That’s why it is especially disheartening to learn that unlike almost every other major grocer in the U.S., Aldi still has not committed to stopping its pork suppliers from locking up mother pigs in tiny “gestation crates” for virtually their entire life.
The petition adds:
Almost every leading company in the food industry has listened to public opinion by adopting a policy to phase-out purchasing from operators using gestation crates —from restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy’s, Cracker Barrel, and Quiznos to other cost-conscious retailers such as Costco, Trader Joe’s, Kroger, and Walmart. As one of the largest grocers in the U.S., it is time for Aldi to do the same and acknowledge that animals ought to be allowed to move.
So far, says Crate Free Illinois president and founder Jessica Chipkin, the petition has about 300,000 signatures to urge the Batavia, Illinois based Aldi to change its policies. She adds that Crate Free Illinois is planning to meet with Aldi representatives later this month, and that she is very hopeful about the outcome.
Many food companies have committed to eliminate gestation-crate pork suppliers by 2022. But public efforts expand to other large-scale meat suppliers, including chicken. And one of those is the ongoing I’m Not Lovin’ It campaign led by The Humane League. According to its a press release, the campaign launched in March 2018 to urge McDonald’s Corporation to adopt new supply chain policies as part of
a nationwide effort to convince the fast-food giant to produce a comprehensive policy to address the basic welfare for the chickens in its supply chain. Among other important welfare issues, more thoroughly described in The Truth Behind Chicken McNuggets reference guide, the “I’m Not Lovin’ It” campaign highlights the fast food chain’s failure to address the practice of selectively-breeding chickens to grow unnaturally large at a rapid rate, approximately six times faster than chickens grow naturally.
Although McDonald’s rolled out new standards to its suppliers in October 2017 (scheduled to be in place by 2024), the Humane League and others say these policies have not addressed some of the commitments made by other restaurants chains. According to this 2017 Reuters report,
Animal activists said the mandates fall short of commitments made by other restaurants, such as Burger King and sandwich chain Subway, and failed to address their primary concern about chicken production: birds bred to grow quickly to large sizes.
The group is asking McDonald’s to source healthier breeds of birds, allow more space for the birds, and provide environmental enrichment to their living conditions, say Josh Richards, Chicago Field Organizer for The Humane League. In addition to active online, social and grassroots efforts throughout the US and UK, the group’s Change.org petition has gathered more than 300,000 signatures.
This past May, several animal welfare groups joined The Humane League at the annual McDonald’s shareholder meeting in Chicago to launch a new campaign alerting customers and investors about the company’s chicken supply policy. According to Josh progress is being made with many major companies that are joining the growing list of food suppliers adopting a more humane supply chain, and he is optimistic about this campaign as well.
Jessica Chipkin and Josh Richards join us this morning to discuss these animal welfare campaigns.
Evanston Streets Alive returns
Evanston celebrates its annual Streets Alive “open streets” event next Sunday, September 8, from 1-5 pm on Main Street (between Chicago Avenue and Wesley Avenue). As part of this event, the 13th annual Green Living Festival will be held on Main St. between Ridge and Asbury avenues. The Mike Nowak Show is proud to be a media sponsor again this year.
Event organizer Rick Nelson joins us this morning to preview the event.