Today for our skill share, we walked around the garden and talked about what could be harvested and how to do it so that it helped the plants stay healthy. 
Also remember, we serve lunch each Monday during our garden meeting. We enjoy a salad harvested from the garden and soup from the Zen Center. 
We continue to work on installing irrigation at the garden. The system for the trees has all been set up, now we continue to work on installing drip lines.
We're starting to get a good collection of vertical succulent pockets. Our hope is that these pockets will help us divert the wind that gusts through the garden and has been beating up some of our plants. The trick, has been to put the pockets in locations that will not create shade near plants that need a lot of sun. All the
Special thanks to the Methodist youth group from Salem that helped in the garden on Wednesday afternoon. The group helped us do some planting and to install the irrigation system.
Now, all the trees are set up and we're working installing the drip lines for the rest of the plants.
Today at the gardening skill share, we learned how to make vertical garden succulant pockets. The basic steps to create these pockets include: 
Filling the pockets with soil or sphangnum moss. You can use a potato sack to hold in your soil if needed, or try wetting the soil or moss to keep it inside the wire. Eventually the roots of the succulants will hold in the soil/moss.
We put a hole in the moss with our finger to create a tunnel for the stems of the succulants. The succulants can be tied in with twine or wrapped around the wire to make sure that it stays in the pockets. Note: After being put in the pockets the succulants will look a bit wilty and sad for a few weeks, before they begin to look more at home. Because they are succulants, you should not need to water the pockets regularly. If you do water them, like right after you plant them to give them a bit of a head start, be sure to use a very low flow of water so that you don't wash all the soil and moss out of the wire.
As the succulants get happier in their new home they will flower as a sign of their health.
The San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, June 15, 2010
There's a bumper crop of fava beans this year in San Francisco's Hayes Valley.
The vegetable's thick stalks fill planter beds on one side of Octavia Boulevard, and cloak a steep slope between abandoned freeway ramps on the other. Plenty else is popping up - tomatoes, squash, peas - but 40 pounds of the soil-replenishing favas already have been harvested.
They also prove there's a way to revive empty city lots - even ones where buildings are scheduled to rise.
I first wrote about the need for such interim landscapes last summer, as the development boom-turned-bust left several San Francisco neighborhoods with a gap-toothed terrain where buildings once stood, replaced by chain-link fences that enclose asphalt or dirt.
Most are still there, looking tattered as ever, but the scene along Octavia Boulevard shows blight can be turned to bounty. All you need is open-minded neighbors, wise owners and creative people willing to try something different.
In other words, nothing happens by chance.
The Octavia lots exist because the elevated Central Freeway was replaced by a tree-lined boulevard, with sites alongside it reserved for neighborhood-scaled housing. Developers were selected, and then the recession rolled in.
Other neighborhoods would respond with cynical I-told-you-sos; Hayes Valley leaders encouraged the city staff to put some of the parcels to short-term use. And because the city owned the land, it was happy to play the odds.
The large site where you can still glimpse ramps has been rechristened Hayes Valley Farm. Three committed urban gardeners oversee it, and the city has OKd its presence for at least the next two years. Most of the grunt work is done by volunteers on Thursday and Sunday afternoons.
Across the way at Growing Home Community Garden, things are more polished, with raised beds along central paths on two lots that each are just 16 feet wide. Trees that once buffered the freeway shade a bench, and there's a picnic table.
The instigators include Project Homeless Connect and the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association. Theoretically, half the work is done by neighbors and half by homeless people.
"Has this been worth the effort? Absolutely," says Rich Hillis of the city's Office of Economic and Workforce Development. "It has helped us maintain the vacant sites, and it energizes the neighbors."
The efforts are more tentative on Rincon Hill, where empty lots outnumber completed towers. But there are frail signs of hope.
One is on the fenced-off lot at 45 Lansing St., where, amid thickets of browning weeds, circular planting beds are flecked by hints of lupine and poppies. The idea is a "temporary garden and art installation," a year-round way station for butterflies and birds. It's designed by Rebar and the Pollinator Partnership, funded by landowner Turnberry Lansing - and put in place, again, largely by volunteers.
Right now things are ragged; this is a work in progress where such extras as information boards will go in over the next few weeks. Some weeds will be cleared. Others won't.
"We're going to keep a certain number, because that's habitat, too," says Gregory Kellett of Pollinator Partnership. Nor does he mind that, theoretically, the garden will be replaced by a 40-story tower when (if?) boom times return: "Even if it's only temporary, this is a way to show the neighborhood we're connected to something larger."
Is there a danger that enthusiasm will wane or, conversely, fans will decide that cropland is the highest and best use? Of course. But the participants seem comfortable knowing they're experimenting with a sort of ad hoc urbanity - and shaping models that, if successful, can be replicated elsewhere.
"Some of this stuff seems a little far-out, but some of it might catch on," says Ron Miguel, the president of the city's Planning Commission. "As a San Franciscan, it's important to me that the city not look as ragtag as it does in spots. If we encourage efforts like these, they become part of the culture."
I wish more were happening, and happening faster. But when lupines bloom or fava beans ripen, it's a start.
For information on Hayes Valley Farm, go to bit.ly/9QZSCg.
For other pieces on interim urbanity, go to sfgate.com/ZIBD.
Place appears on Tuesdays. E-mail John King at jking@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Today at the garden Christopher showed the garden members how to install the irrigation system on our garden beds. Garden volunteers will then work on installing the irrigation system over the next week. The photo below is a sample of how all the parts will get put together for the irrigation system. Putting the irrigation system together (we hope) will be as easy as putting the correct attachements together. We'll show you photos of how the project progresses at the garden.
Also at the garden today...
At the nutrition/cooking skill share: Johnneannita and Christopher made a solar powered dehydrator out of a cardboard box, some dark paint, plastic sheeting, clip binders, wire mesh and some wishing wire. 
On Monday, Christopher shared his knowledge about sprouting. Here are the crib notes about how to start sprouting at home:
Add about three packets of seeds to a glass mason jar and cover them with water and let them soak overnight (or about 8 hours) in a dark place. Instead of putting the full lid back on the jar, either cover the hole with cheesecloth or wiremesh and then use only the outer circle ring of the lid.
Meet Casper, a neighborhood pet. When he is good he is rewarded with a walk in the garden where he gets a treat. Today he was very good and was able to enjoy two large fava bean pods. If you see Casper around the neighborhood, say hi.
Today at the garden we planted produce and medicinal plants. First we did lots of harvesting of favas, lettuce and radishes.
from 2:30-4pm.
