Today at the Garden

Today at the garden, we opened 18 boxes that had been delivered since last Monday with items from our final Community Challenge Grant purchases. You'll see pictures of many of the items throughout the next month as we set them up and get the projects going. One of the projects we completed todays, was to attach some garden pockets with coconut fiber linings to our fence. Michael (above) and Elizabeth (below) attached 8 of these pockets in the south lot.

Below, you'll see a picture of Michael with his favorite item that arrived - earthworms. He's been telling members of the garden about the soil benefits of having earthworms in our raised beds to aerate the ground, put vital nutrients in the soil and create oxygen. Michael's father used to raise earthworms, so he has taken on the task of multiplying our earthworms so we won't have to order any in the future.

During our garden skill share today, Heather showed us the Belgian diamond shape she was using to train the bougainvilleas along the fence in the north lot. Purchased by the neighbor whose property is just on the other side of this fence, we hope the bougainvilleas will create beauty on both sides of the fence.

While we will be open for our addiction recover skill share and work day on Wednesday, please remember that we will be closed on Friday due to the holiday.

Today at the Garden

Today, Elizabeth planted the seedlings she has been nursing from seeds in the cold frame. These are the first of the seedlings we planted in the frame since it was given to us by our friends at the Free Farm. Elizabeth also made the salad for our garden meeting today. It's really exciting to be able to be a part of the planting process from seed to stomach!

Joseph, one of our peer outreach mentors sweeps up the leaves on the sidewalks around the garden and puts them in our compost bins. Joseph is a great protector of the worms in the worm bins and has great ideas about how to keep our compost compounding.

See the big green sail we put up at the garden today? This, sail will help us to have a shady area where we have our weekly garden meetings and will provide a space for folk to get out of the hot sun. Now we just have to wait for the rainy season to end and for the sun to come back out! You'll notice that we will be getting lots of new things at the garden in the next few weeks. The supplies and materials are from the final disbursement of our Community Challenge Grant.

The oregano donated by the 2nd and 6th grade students of the SF Friends School is doing very where in our painted cans hanging on our fencing.

We put together this garden shelving that has a pvc cover to act as a green house. One of our formerly homeless gardening friends asked for this shelf so he could propagate house plants that could be given as "welcome to your new home" presents for homeless folk who get housing. Stay tuned for updates about how this project goes. The volunteers at the garden are excited to have more projects they can work on during the slow growing rainy season and to be able to provide the health that comes from being around plants with individuals who may not be able to make it out to the garden.

Last week at the garden

Above are some new succulant pockets that were added to the south lot. The succulants and produce bags were donated by the 2nd and 6th grade students at the San Francisco Friends School (SFFS). Unlike the more neutral canvas pockets, they provide some vibrant color to the lot.

We planted these strawberries in a wine crate, last week and they have already started to produce some fruit. Both the plants and the crate were donated by the SFFS students.

Today at the Garden

Our garden recieved donations of 25 blankets, clothing and socks from the members of herchurch. The blankets were a part of an interfaith blanket drive called Project Faith Connect coordinated by Welcome and the San Francisco Interfaith Council. Through this project more than 5,000 blankets will be distributed to organizations who work with the homeless on December 7th and 8th.

Today at our garden meeting, in addition to our regular salad harvested from the garden and soup from the Zen Center, we also harvest some of our medicinal plants to make a tea. We used lemon grass, chamomile, stinging nettles, lemon, mint, verbina and red clover.

At our garden meeting we brainstormed ideas about why two different beds of kale are growing so differently. Believe it or not, the kale on the left was planted a week later than the kale on the right. We're working on changing the way we amend the soil as we plant in the future. The kale on the left was planted by a graduate of the Santa Cruz homeless garden who wanted to show us what he had learned and ways we could maximize our yields.

100 6th & 2nd Graders Visit and Bring Donations to the Garden

100 6th and 2nd grade students from the SF Friends School brought donations to our garden this morning. They brought non-parishables, seeds, tin cans for planting on our fences and wine boxes that will also be used for planting in. Garden manager, Megan, thanked the students for their donations, explained how they would be used in the garden and invited them to watch their plants grow when they come visite or here on our blog.

The members of the 6th grade class had been to our garden before to help with our very first planting day. Many of these students gave their 2nd grade buddies a tour of the garden and identified the plants that were there.

Above, are two picnic tables full of donations from the students. Items donated included non-perishable food items for snacks for those who work in the garden and for our homeless and formerly homeless guests to enjoy. You may wonder why we wanted so many sugary processed foods at our garden that is teaching nutrition and encouraging people to have a healthy diet.

The answer is simple. For many, the craving for sugar and the craving for illegal drugs feels the same in the body. Encouraging people to make decisions that lead to harm reduction, giving people sugary snacks to fight the craving to use drugs is a better choice.

Salads and vegan soups are also available each Monday at our garden meetings, for those interested in an even healthier meal.

If you are interested in helping us increase the number of healthy food choices at the garden, please consider helping us with the following donations that are needed:

• paper or compostable bowls and silverware
• gallon sized bottles of water
• healthy snacks (perishable and non-perishable) that can be enjoyed at our work days

Email: megan.rohrer@sfdph.org if you want to learn more about when and how to bring donations, or just stop by our garden anytime we're open and drop off donations at our colorful garden shed.

Video: How We Built our Garden

We Are Growing Home from NENtv on Vimeo.

Today at the Garden

For our first garden skill share today, Ilyse taught us how to harvest chamomile, which we will be using in oils and teas once they dry.

Our second garden skill share was on how to build a potato tower.

Christopher (left) and a neighbor named John (right) took a tour of the garden. John is a landscaping expert who wanted to provide some expertise and help in the garden.

Joseph, seen above, helped to take care of the worm bin. Above you can see him adding some soil so that the worms have adequate space (worms need about 2 feet of soil). Below is a photo of the newspaper we added to the bin full of soil and food scraps.

Check out what is growing at the garden:

Red mustard

Green and red succlants

Chamomile

Garlic

Last Monday at the garden.

Check out some of the photos below to see what happened at the garden last Monday. I was away the rest of the week, so I wasn't able to get any photos. But, I heard the garden had a great food party on Friday Nov. 26th, ensuring that those who didn't have other spaces to enjoy the Thanksgiving weekend would have a place to relax and eat together. This is just one more way our garden seeks to provide the feeling of home for those who participate.

Above, Finn and Gloria are thinning the green onions. This process helps the onions have more room to grow larger and also provided us with 4 pounds of onions for cooking and salads.

We continue to harvest many types of mint from our garden for teas and garnishes. The mint shown above in our potato sack fence garden are doing particularly well during this rainy season.

We continue to have strawberries in the garden. This is now the 5th harvest we've been able to get from this strawberry patch in the north lot of the garden.

We still continue to harvest enough produce each week to share salads at our Monday garden meetings (1pm). The salad is a great side with the soup that is donated by the Zen Center.

Our new hand painted garden signs were added to the fence to let people know our hours and mission.

NEN 2010 Award Ceremony

The Growing Home Community Garden was awarded the 2010 Neighborhood Empowerment Network Award for Best Community Challenge Grant Project. See images of our award, and certificates below:

Today at the Garden: Sealing the Shed

Today at the garden we sealed the mural on our shed. This was our final step in this project.

Today at the Garden

Today at the garden planted medicinal plants and produce in containers.

Ilyse, pictured to the left, helped us plant transplants from the rose scented geranium plants in our medicinal bed in tin painted tin cans. These cans will helped to make the neighborhood smell good (like roses) and because geraniums grow so quickly, it will also provide wind cover and shade for our garden. We also hope that the beautiful green plants on will beautify our chain link fence.

Finn, on the left, is our garden educator. Finn and four others planted produce in garden pots. The containers are a great low maintanence way to increace growing area in an urban environment.

We also harvested 2 pds of tomatoes today!

GHCG Wins 2010 NEN Award

The Growing Home Community Garden has won the 2010 Neighborhood Empowerment Network (NEN) Best Community Challenge Grant Project Award which will be given out on November 17th, at City Hall at the 2010 NEN Awards in the North Light Court.

Event Details:

6pm to 7pm - Reception (A light supper buffet will be served)

7pm to 7:45pm - Awards Ceremony

7:45pm to 8:30pm - Reception

The event is free. You can register here: http://2010nenawards.eventbrite.com/
We hope to see you there!

Last Friday at the Garden

We started clearing away the dying snow peas from the fences. Then, the stalks were hauled down to our compost bins (above), where a group of homeless volunteers chopped the stalks into small enough pieces to get composted (below).
As the winter and rain approaches our garden will have less and less work that needs to be completed on our site, we're thinking about doing some work at some other nearby sites to get their spaces ready for gardening, adding more vertical garden areas to our fences so we have more spaces for planting or about doing some other construction projects to get us ready for the spring.