Author: Tree

This past Sunday was the first Free Farm Stand we have had with no rain in several weeks and the park was filled with people enjoying the sun. We had so much food (more than I could fit on my wagon), so I had to make two trips moving it to the park from my house. By 2:30pm we had given out almost all the produce and bread, and by the time we were all packed up and ready to leave there was absolutely nothing left (a couple came and took what little there was, and they seemed to really appreciate the small bag of greens and the few small pumpkins we had left).

The day was extra busy and crowded with the garden work day happening at the same time. Kids were planting strawberries and adults were weeding and distributing mulch throughout the garden.

On Friday we had a great turnout for our workday at 18^th and Rhode Island garden. I was a bit concerned that we were not going to move all the mulch we had gotten from Bay View Green Waste Management (20 cubic yards!). I was wrong to worry because it was all spread out at the end of the day. Here is how we sheet mulched the entire rocky hill: We had 9 energetic volunteers who showed up. They moved two tons of cardboard and spread it over the remaining bare earth where ivy, oxalis, and fennel grew. The cardboard was watered down. There was a pile of mushroom blocks from Far West Fungi in the garden when I arrived. The blocks were crumbled up and then spread over the cardboard and mulch. The mushrooms will help break down the mulch. We also had some aged horse manure that was spread at the same time over the cardboard. Then the mulch, ground up wood chips and brush that has been ground up really fine, was dumped on top of the cardboard.

This Friday we will be ready to build and plant potato towers and some sunchokes. We also have more strawberries to plant and carrots.

Tuesday we were rained out and I didn’t get to garden with the Jamestown kids in the Secret Garden. On Saturday there was a small cleanup day there and we got rid of a lot of garbage and took down the play structure to make room for more planting. This Tuesday we will plant a lettuce lawn and some kale and other greens, and maybe another potato tower.

My big goal this week is to pot up all the tomato seedlings we have started and hopefully plant more seeds. I love growing seedlings. We have the goal of helping our neighbors start their own gardens if they have room and seeing more food being grown everywhere there is sunny space to plant. We are promoting the idea of sharing the surplus produce and eventually having our neighborhood being a true Pasture of Plenty as Woody Guthrie wrote in a song. A neighborhood that is known for the food it grows, isn’t that a trippy idea? The famous Mission grown tomato or apricot… Propagating lots of seedlings (and other edible plants) and distributing them for free is part of the dream. Recently someone sent me a link for a interesting project in Portland http://www.eatyouryard.com/services/plant-starts/ that has a similar vision, though they charge for their services, a CSA growing starts rather than food. What we need are some people to help me grow starts to give away at the Free Farm Stand and to neighbors that are planting gardens. I can teach people the basics of planting and growing starts, and what I need are people with some sunny space to put a cold frame or shelf (or greenhouse) and some motherly care to grow the starts until they are ready to give out.

Along this same train of thought, I recently rejoined the Seed Savers Exchange (http://www.seedsavers.org) and their newest catalog arrived in the mail. I now have access to seeds of thousands of heirloom vegetables. I am excited just reading about all the different kales we can try growing or tomatoes and then we can save the seed for the ones we like. I also got a copy of a book that Kevin highly recommended called Cornucopia II: A Source Book of Edible Plants by Stephen Facciola. It says in the introduction of this book that “There are approximately fifteen thousand plants recorded in literature as having been used as food by man. One hundred and fifty or more of these have been cultivated on a commercial scale…Yet today, most of the world is fed by approximately twenty crops…” The author is making the point that we should be utilize more of the food crops available. Kevin told me the other day he is excited because he finally found a source for a perennial broccoli he has been looking for forever and he wants to share some seed with me when he gets it. This is really what makes growing our own food so much fun and valuable. And it all starts with some form of propagation, planting seeds and growing starts or grafting or rooting cuttings.

There is an invisible gardener tending his/her garden which we are all a part of. I am so excited right now with the love that is planted in this garden and that with a little tending and care is growing so abundantly. And this crop is available to all to harvest for free.

To speak more plainly this is almost like the summer of love cycling around again. What is cool is I keep meeting people whose hearts and ideals are very beautiful and they are doing such great work to make their dreams come true.

Jonathan is one man that I have just become friends with who really blows me away. He works at the Pe’ah Garden in Colma (http://www.emanuelsf.org/events_gi_peah.htm). Here is what their website says: By growing food for those in need at our cemetery in Colma, Congregation Emanu-El members perform the mitzvah of feeding the hungry. “Our garden name, Pe’ah (corners), derives from Leviticus 19, which commands us to not harvest the corners of the field but to leave them for the poor and the stranger…Our harvest is donated to the San Francisco Food Bank.” He recently has gotten involved with SFglean and has already hit the streets, flyers in hand, looking for neglected fruit trees that need picking. I actually got the title of this blog from the movie he made about their garden project.

The Free Farm Stand this week was also a love fest in the rain. Three people came up to me to tell me how much they appreciated the produce, that it made a big difference in their lives. I also got a number of sincere hugs from people that felt the same joy I was feeling. It was raining, not hard, during the entire farm stand, but I swear there was an incredible sunshine from most everyone that came by. I can’t really explain it, but I think I felt so blessed to have such a great crew of friends to work with and people to serve.

The produce on the table was doing its part to send out a bunch of vegetable love to those who came by. I had the biggest amount of salad mix that I picked from two gardens (the Secret Garden and Treat Commons). Three people from San Francisco State helped me cut the salad mix and some greens and we were all impressed with how much food we got from such a small space. The lettuce lawns are producing a lot of salad right now. We also had more fava bean leaves from 18^th and Rhode Island. I tried stir frying some with olive oil and garlic and they are a lot like spinach…maybe a bit fibrous or chewy. But very tasty. Steve and his friend (I am having a senior moment and am forgetting her name) from Potrero del Sol brought some various herbs from their garden plot and more tree collard cuttings for me to root. Tom came down from Santa Rosa with two crates full of the most beautiful Meyer lemons. The farmer’s market leftovers included young onions, turnips, arugula, cilantro, stir fry mix, fennel, radicchio, small Savoy cabbages, leeks, small cauliflower, and various herbs. We had a lot of bread too and almost all the food was given away.

On Tuesday night Jenny and I went over to San Francisco State and talked to the Eco Students club about the Free Farm Stand. I wound up getting a list of 14 students that want to volunteer sometime with the stand. Then the fun started on Friday when we had a great work day at 18^th and Rhode Island. I enjoyed working with everyone who showed up. We got the “ivy hill” shaped and ready to sheet mulch next Friday. We also, cleaned up our storage area and now have various piles of manure, compost, mulch, and soil all stacked up under a tarp. Things are looking good. We also planted two varieties of short day or June bearing strawberries (Camarosa and Chandler).

‘ivy hill” ready for sheet mulching next Friday workday

organic materials for making potato towers

some of the great crew on Friday

On Saturday I had three people who helped me plant seeds. The cold frame is full and I am ready to pot up seedlings to make room for the new seeds that will sprout soon.

SF Glean has a redesigned web page (http://sfglean.org/) and yesterday Page and Margaret walked around our neighborhood with flyers and looked for fruit trees that needed harvesting. Another project to get excited about.

For a while there hasn’t really been a lot to say about the Free Farm Stand. The organic, sustainable produce is mostly coming from the two farmer’s markets, the Noe Valley Farmer’s market and the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market. The table is filled with cool weather crops that have been harvested, brought to the market, probably most of it sold, and some left over that goes to us bottom feeders. And this week it felt like winter for sure. Our crew got pretty wet with the constant rain which we are celebrating. They say more is on the way.

The rain didn’t stop a lot of people showing up and collecting some vegetables: A few carrots and radishes, lots of leeks, Romanesco broccoli, purple cauliflowers, celery, collards and mustard greens, spicy watercress, and some various herbs in (all from the markets). We had a nice selection of bread too. There was about a pound of baby lettuce that I cut from our beautiful lettuce lawn at the Secret Garden and a bag of fava bean leaves from 18th and Rhode Island.
We also had two or three pound of lemons gleaned from unpicked Oakland trees. Despite the weather and feeling cold and wet at the end of the day, it was a nice scene, great volunteer help, wonderful neighbors and friends dropping by, and even a few of the local homeless dropped by because we were more visible on the sidewalk (and we offered some hot tea and cocoa). Again most of the food was given away and by the time I got home it was all gone.

What was going on during the past week before Sunday was perhaps a bit more exciting. On Friday and Saturday we had two good workdays at 18th and Rhode Island (and there was no rain). Friday a few of us worked on the hill covered with ivy and rocks. We have created an area to put a beehive and below that will be potato towers and below that will be Jerusalem artichokes (I just got a red kind in the mail), and finally below that an area for some various perennials. And above the beehive we will plant more avocados. We are getting the area ready for sheet mulching and there is more shaping of the hill to do and removing the larger boulders and rocks. Next Friday we will do that and then the following week we will get a load of cardboard and mulch to lay down before planting. On Saturday we planted more fruit trees: two varieties of fig (Black Jack and King), a weeping mulberry tree, two varieties of Asian pear (Hosui and Korean Giant (or Olympic), and one European pear (Seckel). Some of the fruit trees we planted last time are starting to bud and leaf out. A few remain dormant and we are waiting patiently for them to spring to life. As soon as we can get to it we have more things to plant, including strawberries, carrots and beets, potato towers, various perennials, and annual seedlings.

I also continue to be eager to plant more potatoes. I just got about ten pounds of potatoes in the mail, five or six different varieties, and am letting them sprout before I plant them. I have recently gotten inspired by reading about how the English grow potatoes (they plant small whole tubers about the size of a “small hen’s egg” and don’t cut them, the way I used to grow them years ago). This one English garden book I read (The Vegetable Expert by D.G. Hessayon) writes about chitting your potatoes (inducing them to develop small shoots before planting). This other site on the internet is also pretty good http://tinyurl.com/ckt7uq. This place says the sprouts should be an inch long ideally but the more important thing is that the sprout is green not white (though I noticed some of mine are red). Maeve who helps out at the Free Farm Stand talked to me about potatoes in Ireland where she is from. She says the potatoes are very different tasting there and it sounds like a lot of people grow them in Ireland, they know potatoes. I was especially excited about these “potato shows” they have in the UK. It sounds like the Dahlia tuber sale I used to go to every year where people can buy different dahlia tubers, but these shows feature potato varieties and the tubers are sold at good prices. I was thinking it might be fun to organize a tuber swap this year like a seed exchange. We need people to start growing potatoes. I probably will have extra seed potatoes and wil give some away to people serious about growing potatoes and sharing the extra and maybe bringing some to our own kind of potato show.
The other big activity going on is that I have been planting lots of seeds and rooting trees and kiwi vines. Tomatoes and peppers plants are slowly growing and I am running out of cold frame space. The sticks of wood that I got from the scion wood exchange are rooting it seems thanks to bottom heat. I also have trees that I purchased to go in the park that I need to put temporarily in pots.

About the project of planting fruit trees in our local park: The park staff, the guys sort of at the top, do not want to deal with having fruit trees in their park that they think they will possibly have to maintain, so they are pushing for the community garden to expand to include this neglected space, and then it is not up to them to think about it, it will be part of the community garden. This was going to be brought up at the meeting of the park commission to change the land use, but apparently the whole meeting was taken up with who they are going to fire because of budget cuts.

It is fun to imagine all these things growing someday and producing fruit and vegetables, especially the fruit trees. I plan to give away the trees once they are big enough.

I forgot to mention that there won’t be any Magnolia trees cut down in front of General Hospital. I think because there was a big show at the neighborhood meeting about the proposed tree cutting, the contractor figured out a way to get around cutting the trees (though there will still be over 100 trees cut in the construction of the new hospital). Someone sent me these photos they took in Hong Kong in 2007, an example of saving trees when they do construction. I put this on my blog here only because I value tree so much.
The gleaning project is moving ahead. We now have two flyers (one a general handout letter about the project and the other to leave at a door if you knock on it and nobody is home, both in English and Spanish). We are ready to start gleaning fruit (my guess is that there are lemon and orange trees that could be picked). I already know of trees to be checked out. I am hoping this year I will be able to pass on the fruit picking to others and that the surplus can go to the Free Farm Stand. If you are interested in getting aboard the fruit picking train go to http://sfglean.org/ and sign up to be in the email communication loop (sfglean is a Google group and has a website that is being revamped). At some point soon the fliers will be available to download from the sfglean website.