This Week at the Garden: Photo Story

See what we did on Monday

Wednesday's Workday:
Mikey, who was homeless for more than 23 years and is currently resident of a single room occupancy hotel room in San Francisco's SOMA district, learned to garden at a garden for homeless individuals in Santa Cruz. He's excited to take up gardening again and to serve as a mentor for some of our other homeless and formerly homeless individuals volunteering in our garden. Participating in the garden is a way for Mickey to improve his health and to get away from the stress of living in his building.

In the picture above, you can see Mickey teaching Christopher, one of our student employees, how to double dig one of our beds and mix the soil and compost together to enrich the soil.

Mikey is trying out an idea he has about how to improve the soil quality and in one of our beds. If his methods work, we will repeat them in other beds throughout the garden. You can find Mikey in the garden every Wednesday and Friday.

Friday's Workday:

On Friday, we got a delivery of seedlings for a new season in our garden. Above you can see Christopher and Joseph turning over the soil in several of the beds to get them ready for planting.

After turing the soil in this bed, we put up string to denote where the walking pathes are in the bed.

Then, the seedlings were planted and the drip lines were reinstalled.

In order to solve a few problems we're having in the garden, we've decided to bring in some organic help from our animal friends. Because soil tests reveiled that our soil was lacking nitrogen, we decided to amend our soil with with horse manure and worm castings. In order to have additional worm castings in the future, we also got some red wiggly worms for a worm compost bin.

We also got some lady bugs, which we hope will decide to live in our garden and take care of our bug problem. We'll let you know if our lady bugs stick around.

Today at the Garden: Planting Cover Crops

Above is a photo of our Monday, Garden Skill Share. This week at the garden we had 11 participants in the our garden skill shares, 10 for addiction recovery support group, 4 for the veterans support group and 1 for trauma care.

Ilyse enjoys the flowers growing from the peas that are growing up the fence.

We had a large harvest of carrots!

And we got a new "to do" list board to help all the garden volunteers know what needs to be done each week.

We planted Cover Crops:

Above is a photo of the mix we used.

Finn, our garden educator, shows our garden members and interns how to turn over and prepare the soil.

Then, the seeds are scattered over the soil.

Here's a photo of what it looks like, so you can see about how many seeds we scattered. Then, we gently raked the seeds to cover them with soil.

The photo above is of some of the flower seeds we scattered the previous week, that are starting to peek out of the soil.

We,'ve also started adding these beautifully simple signs to our beds so that we can let people know what we've planted.

Today at the Garden

This week at the garden we had 6 participants in our garden skill shares, 5 for addiction recovery support group, 3 for the veterans support group, and 3 for trauma support. It's exciting to start having regular participants and to see all the different ways our garden can provide a safe and educational space for individuals.

Our current calendar of support groups and skill shares is as follows:

Monday 12-1 pm Cooking & Nutrition Skill Share

Monday 2-2:30 Garden Skill Share

Wednesday 1pm Addiction Recovery Support Group

Friday 11pm Veterans Support Group

Friday 12pm Trauma Care Support Group

Friday 2-3pm Stress Reduction and Art Skill Share

Michael, a formerly homeless volunteer, has been consistantly tending to our compost pile. The photo above shows him turning the pile. The bag at the bottom of the photo is coffee grinds from a local coffee shop. We've been using coffee grinds to heat up the bead so that the compost biodegrades faster. Micahel suggested that we get some worms for our garden. So, we've ordered some along with some worm droppings (which will use to add some nitrogen to our soil). I'll be picking them up on Saturday from the East Bay. Below are some photos of Finn, our garden educator (in the blue sweatshirt) and Adrian (our intern, who leads the stress reduction and art and veterans groups on Fridays) tending the garden and getting our garden ready for a new cycle of planting, which will happen next week.

What's Happening?

We have been extremely busy bees this week as we tend to our amazing garden. Lots of good progression happening as we tackle another round of harvesting tasty food. There were 5 in the group on Wednesday - we talked about things that have worked, or not worked for people in their recovery, support that they have, past abuse or trauma that makes addiction recovery hard and celebrated the ways people have found to recover from their trauma.

This next picture is of one of our addiction recovery support group participants, who lives in an SRO (single room occupancy) hotel. He took some soil so he could do some gardening in his room. His plan is to grow some plants to give away at GHCG to others who are living in SRO's so that they can feel healthier and happier in their homes.

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Christopher and our student employee Chris working on the compost! It's a dirty job, and they are more than qualified to tackle it!

We are very excited about our new upcoming skill shares and groups that are starting up this week and next. Things like trauma recovery, veteran groups, and how to become better at relaxation are just a few of the things we have in store. Hope to see you soon!

Mint Taming for Mental Health - Autism, ADHD and Anxiety

In our garden, we've planted several beds that are dedicated to teaching people how gardens can be used for self care for individuals with common mental health issues. One of my favorite activities in these beds is trying to tame the mint. As someone on the autistic spectrum (with mild Aspergers) and ADHD, I find that gently pulling up the mint roots (long purple stems with little green leaves on it) and redirecting them is a satisfying and stress reducing activity.

Why do I tame mint roots? Well, mint is known for having roots that take over a bed and strangle other plants. Some gardeners suggest you only plant mint in individual containers so they don't take over everything. However, because training the mint is such an enjoyable activity for me, I'm excited that we have included mint in several parts of our garden. I enjoy checking in on the mint every week, pulling up new roots and seeing how far they've grown. One of the best parts of this activity is that the smell of the mint will remain on your fingers for the rest of the day. Since I find the scent of mint calming, I enjoy this. Others on the autistic spectrum may find the smell overwhelming and may want to wear garden gloves to avoid this.

How do you tame mint roots? I gently pull out the dark purple roots that will grow out of the mint - it is from these roots that more mint will grow after a few weeks. Then I place the root in the direction I want the mint to grow by weaving many stems together or putting dirt piles on it to hold it in place. You can see the mint roots at the top of the photo above. The tall bushy section is the spot where the mint was originally planted. As the roots get longer, it will also grow tall bits of mint too. Depending on the type and size of the mint, taming the roots may be more or less difficult. I find that working with larger varieties of mint (like spearmint) is easier than smaller mints (like some chocolate mints). Others on the autistic spectrum may enjoy smaller mints that take more concentration and focus to be more enjoyable to work with.

Other Mental Health Care Uses: In addition to being a useful gardening activity, mint is also great for teas and in meals. The smell of mint and drinking mint tea can relax individuals who have anxiety or calm the tummy of someone who is not feeling well or has a lot of stress. Since individuals living with a disability, mental health issue is a friend or partner of one typically experienced some stress or anxiety from it at some point, mint can be an important addition to any garden.

Today at the garden

Today at the garden, 14 of us enjoyed produce from the garden with our soup. This produce was harvested and eaten in less than an hour! After our meeting Christopher, lead a garden skill share about soil.Then, we turned over a shallow bed that wasn't working well for produce production and turned it over. After pulling the crops, we turned the soil over with a fork (see above). Then after raking the soil, we scattered flower seeds (see below). Finally we gently raked the seeds into the soil. Soon this bed will be full of beautiful flowers and need less attention than some of our produce beds. Will take some pictures as the flowers start to grow to let you see how it goes.

Today, we also learned about a new system for our composting that will rotate layers of green and brown clipplings, so that we can get more nutrients into our compost. Soon we'll be getting some worms and some worm droppings to help amend our soil. Stay tuned for more about the who, what, when, and why about worms.

Last Friday at the Garden

This past Friday, in addition to our regular art and stress reduction skill share, we also had a garden skill share. The photo above shows Finn, our new garden educator, teaching volunteers from the Bishop Swing SRO (single room occupancy) the proper way to compost. Finn and the volunteers created a system for managing the compost and will work together to make sure the compost continues to stay hot.

Then, Finn painted some numbers on our garden beds so that we can make "to do" lists for garden members that let people know which garden beds need work.

Video - Our Garden

Introducing Adrian Scharfetter

We have a new student worker helping in and around the garden now. Please stop by and say hello to Adrian Scharfetter. Adrian is a 2nd year Expressive Art Therapy graduate student at CIIS who is focusing on war trauma and PTSD, as well as help with various veteran/family support issues.

Adrian will be helping promot

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e art and creative outlets for our community members stress reduction workshops as well as leading veteran support groups each week. As a US Army veteran of the first Gulf War, Adrian brings a sympathetic ear and a strong background in what it is like to be in a combat environment as well as readjusting to civilian life in general. He is more than eager to work for the Growing Home Community Garden community and is quite excited to offer his skills and background to us. Stop by and say hello to him!

Today at the garden

Today at the garden we had three individuals at our art and stress reduction skill share. We talked about things that make us feel better when we are sad and about how hard it is to live in an Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Hotel Room at the beginning of the month when people get checks.

Finn (right), our new garden educator and Michael a formerly homeless garden volunteer shared looked at the garden and created a planting strategy for our next planting and then shared what they knew about composting. Michael learn about gardening in Santa Cruz while working at a homeless garden project.

Stay tuned to learn more about the ideas Finn and Michael had about creating wind barriers, maximizing produce yields and for beautiful flowers and mental health gardening.