May 26 Chicago: 44 Degrees, 24 mph Winds

Can't recall spring temperatures ever fluctuating this much. After a few temperate days last week, during which I thought it would be OK to plant some SIPs on the roof (erroneously, as you'll see below), today's just raw. Windy, cold, and raw. But I love the radishes up there, pulled a couple days ago from the raised bed. They're Hudson Valley Seed Library Radical Radish Mix and they're sweet.

Here's a tenacious white borage plant pushing up through a crack 

in the cement out front. Our bees love these blooms.

I pulled it to plant in the front window boxes, where we get full south sun and like to have herbs of all sorts, most started this year by Bruce under lights. Talk about through the wars--when I picked up the herb starts last week it was warm, hot even. Then came the winds and the cold and currently many of the basils are raggedy.

We're hopeful they'll perk up

 Also seeded some nasturtium, cosmos, and poppies

in the herb boxes

Yesterday we picked up these robust-looking tomato starts from Bruce, who's been keeping them through all this rough weather. I promptly placed them inside on the second floor, with southern exposure.

While I was up there I clipped some more food from these portable microgardens. Who loves this weather?

 Cool-weather greens

Now to the roof. My ill-advised early planting of a couple pepper starts resulted in their being sheared off by the wind last week. Even though I thought I'd sheltered them effectively by placing them against the greenhouse wall. Clearly they should have been inside. I'll get some more starts in these SIPs once things calm down.

Note the tied-up Jimmy Nardello pepper 

in the foreground. It's hanging on.

Now this I'm not proud of, another weather-beaten example, but it does speak to the resilience of some plants, in this case the lovely patio tomato gifted us by Debbie. Though it won't win any beauty pageant, it's got flowers. Stay tuned.

The peas are up...and flowering.

Here's a beat-up tomatillo whose Earthbox mate got snapped in half last week, and a hot pepper. They make me think of the lyrics to NY NY: if you can make it here, you'll make it anywhere.

Tatsoi from Hudson Valley has been a superb producer, offering a bounty of daily greens for salads. I love this green, round and beautifully formed.

We might be able to plant tomatoes and eggplant this weekend, a full 10 days later than last year. We'll see what Saturday brings.