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I am not sure if we have hit the peak of artichoke season or not. The artichokes that I have planted have been flowering for a month or so and also the cardoon I have planted on the sidewalk. We certainly have been getting lots of them left over from the farmer’s market and handing them out.  We have also been getting artichokes from Alemany  Farm. Some of those have been a small beautiful purple variety. Yesterday Zack brought  large  round globe artichokes  some from his garden and he says there are at least fifteen on his plant in the outer Mission. They were so beautiful and the fact that he shared some of his surplus produce  at the Stand inspired me to whistle for the thistle!  Talking thistles I need to know the best way to cook or eat cardoon. We get them at the stand and I grown them and I have tried  reading recipes, but it still seems challenging. Has anyone got their favorite  vegan cardoon recipe to share?

Zach’s artichoke grown locally

selfie with artichokes

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growing in front of our house

I planted this cardoon just  about 30 feet from the artichoke  plant above

Talk about tough. This plant got too tall before I staked it and it fell into the street and then got run over by a car. It is still making some beautiful flowers.

I love the two descendants of the wild thistle tribe, the artichoke and cardoon, which are member of the sunflower family (I also love sunflowers).  We should all be planting them on our sidewalks and in our parks.  They are a great source of nutrition and the only dilemma is whether to harvest them to eat or let them flower for beautifying a garden or  harsh concrete sidewalk  environment.

Maybe I have a thing for thorny plants. I love stinging nettles too, they are also very nutritious, and I have been harvesting some them from my backyard and bringing them to the stand. Not everyone wants them, but it seems more people are trying them out. I also picked the popular  loquats from my backyard (picking them standing on a 14ft ladder).  Besides the produce mentioned above, we were blessed with more avocados from the 23^rd St. Garden plus someone brought more avocados from his mom’s  backyard   tree. Plus we had local lemons to boot.

Here are more pictures from the Stand:

our hecka local corner with Naomi

fruits from the Andes Pepino dulce and rocoto peppers

non local organic free trade bananas

 If I were not opening the garden on Saturday I would go to this event, since no one is turned away for lack of money. Jason Mark knows a lot about farming!

Join us next Saturday, May 10th, for the first in our series of spring/summer gardening workshops:

It Starts with the Soil:  Composting 101 and Soil Fertility for your Garden
Saturday, May 10th, 11 am – 3 pm
Alemany Farm, SF, CA
Instructor:  Jason Mark
If you want to have healthy plants, you need healthy soil. This workshop will cover the basics of maintaining soil fertility, including annual cover cropping, compost building, and soil testing.
Jason Mark is a co-founder of Alemany Farm and a veteran urban gardener.

To register, send us an email at community.gardeners@gmail.com.
There is a suggested donation of $20 per person; no one turned away for lack of funds.

No matter the size of your garden or level of experience—or even if you just want more insight into what it takes to grow the food we eat—this soil basics workshop as a great place to start. Jason co-led the popular ecological horticulture apprenticeship program at Alemany Farm and has lots of knowledge and experience to share.

Visit us at http://www.alemanyfarm.org/ for more information on our workshop series.  Thank you – we hope to see you there!

Erik Rotman
Friends of Alemany Farm

 

 

 

 

 

I have been slow trying to get this writing out.  This is from last week:

I was thinking about Miracle Grow the other day. I think it is ironic  that such a chemical product  is labeled with the truth that miracles do grow. But not because of their product.  I think miracles grow when you put a lot of love and care into something. The Free Farm Stand miracle keeps growing every week. I just love it how our family of volunteers currently seems to be increasing.   We have gotten to the point where we are now using a calendar and have a schedule of when different people do different tasks and have switched to an industrial grade email program  to manage our emails. At the stand the new “hecka local corner and info booth” looks pretty cool.  A funny story is that my neighbor Jennifer who lives right behind me just starting helping to run the hecka local table and the “tasting table”.  I didn’t know her until she showed up to help a few weeks back.  This week we had a heck of a heck local table: mustard greens, artichokes, and loquats from Alemany  Farm, Persian Limes from a friend who brought the from Santa Barbara, lettuce and stinging nettles from my backyard garden, and lemons from our friend and neighbor Janet. We also had summer starts to give away (tomato and squash seedlings) also from Alemany Farm. 

The previous week we had lemons from our neigbors

 

plus lemons from DPW  that has a gleaning program…they will pick your tree and give us the fruit

(make sure you ask them to donate it to us http://www.sfdpw.org/index.aspx?page=1243)

Someone in line got their hand hennaed

Part of the dream for the Free Farm Stand is to be more than a place that gives away fresh local organic vegetables and fruit to local to low income people.  We also hope to promote urban food production and encourage others to grow a small part of what they eat, so that they can experience the joy and spiritual high from being connected to the earth and soil.  Last but not least we want to inspire people to do their part, whatever it is, to bring more light and beauty in the world and to bring more compassion and generosity also .  

Yesterday at the Stand my friend Mr. @ showed up and graciously helped out. I told him I missed him and haven’t seen him for a couple weeks at least. He said he got another job  helping a friend with a food truck on Sundays and Saturdays. I jokingly said  I stilled loved him even though he had become a working stiff.  These days more people are lured into becoming more than full time working stiffs so they can pay their increasingly high rents and bills. Starving artists and freaks are having a hard time living here. Who is going to carry on the dream work if we all march like stiff zombies lining up to punch the time clock? It is ironic because Mr. @ was recently interviewed in Mission Local (http://missionlocal.org/2014/04/mission-rooftop-garden/) with his inspiring work at Mission High gardening with special ed kids on a rooftop. In the interview he got me excited when he mentioned the idea of mutual aid. I never thought about that term before. I guess I need to read Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin. I like to think that we need to promote and nurture an economic system centered around mutual care (rather than aid) and love for each other.

This week we had two new volunteers at our Hecka Local Corner (Blanca and Naomi).

 I have started to call this part of the Free Farm Stand the Hecka Local corner to balance out the Local Mission Market, the Locals Corner, the  Local Mission Eatery, and the newest  Local Cellar.  It is my gentle reaction to this local mess. Apparently there was going to be a  a local walk of shame directed  towards these local stores, but it was called off  for now (missionlocal.org/2014/04/locals-corner-protest-postponed/). I think it is better that we direct our energy to creating a Hecka Local community of folks gleaning the local trees and growing food and sharing it with each other, especially with those in need.

If you are a working stiff or not, perhaps you can help me with my newest project that I see as connected to the Free Farm Stand. I have started working at  an overgrown established garden on 23rd St. (hence the 23rd St garden). Right now I am there and the gate is open to the public on Saturdays from 9am- 2:30pm and also on Tuesday from 1-4pm (this Tuesday I will be out of town but I think a friend will be there to open the gate). I am trying to get the garden in better shape, set up a greenhouse,  increase food production in the sunny area, and a lot of other fun projects. If you are coming on a Saturday please let me know by Thursday so we can make enough lunch for the volunteers. Eventually I would like to pull together a core group that helps run this project,  sort of like the way that the Free Farm Stand operates now or the way we ran the Free Farm . 

I am also looking for people to help me harvest produce for the Free Farm Stand and work in the greenhouse at Alemany Farm on Friday starting around 12:30  and going until 3pm. I can give volunteers a lift there and back to the Mission.

 

 

 

 

Here is the dream. Every neighborhood has some places to grow food and flowers. Especially backyards. How about every neighborhood having some thing like a free nursery and garden resource center to help neighbors who have some space and want to grow a garden? A place that shows how to grow  a lot of food in a backyard. Add to that a secret but not too secret garden where a person can wander in from off the street and be transported to another world and dimension.

At the Free Farm Stand we have been trying to encourage urban food growing as a way to make sure no one needs to go without some good quality fresh organic vegetables and fruit in their diet. We are always looking for ways to encourage people to grow some of their own and share the surplus with others in need. Our latest idea is to create that dream of a magical space in the neighborhood that will inspire people to grow something if they have even the smallest space.

Now that dream is taking shape. We have a space on the same street as the Free Farm Stand. On Wednesday March 26th from 9am until about 3pm or 4pm we plan to take the first step in just cleaning the place up. It has become over grown and jungly since I worked there at least five years ago.

The large lot is like a blank canvas, but instead of being a vacant spot, it is a well established garden that needs a lot of work and redesign. We have a great need for people who can help us plan how to best use this spot and create a resource center. Some current ideas are to build raised beds to grow food more intensely in the sunny area, figure out where to put a greenhouse,  find the best space to hold work shops and to eat, improve the irrigation and perhaps install a grey waster system, figure out how to landscape the shady areas, incorporate art in the garden, create a meditative spot for visitors to sit, perhaps have tea, write in a journal. There are so many things that could be done. We also need to find people who commit to being there at least once a week so we can have regular hours. When we closed the Free Farm our  crew and volunteers  dispersed.

If you want to be part of this exciting new project please contact me by email right now.

In the meantime the Free Farm Stand continues rocking every Sunday. Besides the free produce and bread, a lot of other things go on there. It seems that the “free” table is becoming a permanent fixture. This week someone brought a really great bee costume (see one of our volunteers below modeling it).

The information booth which was established with the some of the same goals as our dream for the free garden resource center gave out nice seedlings and starts thanks to Alemany Farm. I have been going there to help harvest on Fridays afternoon and that is fun too if anyone wants to join me. We continue to be so grateful for their support now that we aren’t growing food for the Stand ourselves.

Also, this Sunday was really busy at the Stand because the First Mennonite Sunday School kids returned and they were great. They and their parents have become regular crew members!

We also had a special event, the planting of the garden tower. The idea behind the garden tower is to demonstrate how you can grow  a lot of food in a small space. I am eager to see how the plants grow. Unfortunately I don’t have any good photos from the event, although there seemed to be many photographers around.

My almost favorite thing that happened at the Stand this week is that one of the kids who came to volunteer loved to turn the compost (with his mom’s help). He is also the boy who said he likes planting kale because he likes the kale chips his mom makes. We got the most amazing black finished compost on the bottom of the pile, so beautiful I had to take a picture. Creating rich compost and feeding it to the garden is one of the most satisfying things one can do. We love the carbon cycle!