'Beginner Gardener' Skill-Shares this Summer.

This summer there is one more reason to stop by the garden. On Mondays and Fridays around 2pm, we will be offering basic gardening skill-shares. Come by for all of them, or only a few. These will be very basic and hands-on, so don't be afraid to come by and get your hands dirty regardless of your skill level. The topics and descriptions of the classes are as follows:

1. Uses and maintenance of common garden tools. Learn to identify the proper tools for the job, call them by their correct name, utilize them in an effective and safe way, and the guidelines of cleaning, sharpening, and storing them correctly.

2. Starting seed in the greenhouse. Learn how to start a few different kinds of seed and the specifics of how to plant them for the greatest chance of germination.

3. Transplanting. Learn the most effective and gentle way to transplant, as well as the appropriate time to move the seedling from the greenhouse to the ground.

4. Direct-seeding. Learn the best way to direct-seed, and how to identify the plants that like to be direct-seeded from the plants that like to be started in the greenhouse.

5. Vertical gardening. Learn how to grow plants vertically and beautify the spaces and structures around the space, by creating pockets for the garden fence and choosing appropriate plants such as succulents and herbs.

6. Propagation. Learn how to start new plants from a 'mother' plant, by utilizing the proper skills to encourage the new plant material to set roots and grow.

7. Maintaining and using compost. Learn what materials are needed for a successful pile, and the attention required to keep the pile decomposing. Visit the garden's hot piles and worm bins, and learn how and where to use the compost when it's ready.

8. Making and applying natural pesticide. Learn to identify common garden pests and how to deter them using a solution that will not harm the plants.

9. Making and applying worm tea. Learn the fun process of making tea from worm castings and how to apply it as a foliar spray.

10. Irrigation. Learn to care for plants by watering them appropriately via hand watering and the drip system. Learn how to set the drip system to specific days and times.

11. Caring for perennials. Learn how to cut back, water, and harvest perennial plants.

12. Harvesting. Learn when and how to harvest a plant, depending on its life cycle, how it grows, and the part we eat.

SAVE THE DATE June 23, 2011 3:33PM

Melissa Lareau will be teaching a class on Mindfulness and Crystals this Thursday, June 23, 2011, at the Growing Home Community Garden.

The class will be held from 3:33pm until 5:00pm.

See you there!

Harvest

The lettuce is ready for harvest as well. Looks like we will have lots of lettuce this summer.

The strawberries are also ready to be harvested.

What's new in the Garden

We have so many lava beans in the garden. We have been harvesting the lava beans for several weeks now. I have been giving them to friends and visitors to the garden to enjoy.

Also, the tomato plants are starting to bear fruit.

My Time in the Garden So Far...

So far, being part of the garden has been a great experience. Through participating in the weekly meetings and a work day once a week, I have learned a great deal of information about gardening and met some great people. Since I first joined the garden, we have done a lot of crop rotation, double digging beds after harvest and amending the soil for new plants to be cultivated. We amended the soil by mixing in different organic fertilizers such as goat manure, compost from the city, fava beans grown in our garden, and our very own compost made with worm castings. Our garden has many young plants but in the coming months I think we will have some really nice growth.

Most of the plants that you see at the garden now were started from seed by members of the garden in our very own greenhouses. For this season’s summer crop, we planted Tomatos, Tomatillos, Squash, Zuchini, Carrots, Lettuce and more. Recently we moved some strawberry plants from our south-garden to our north garden strawberry bed. Before transplanting them, we made holes in the bed and mixed them with compost. Hopefully in a few weeks we will have an even more lush, green strawberry bed. In the bed that those strawberrys previously, we will plant root vegetables like onions, garlic, radishes, and more.

The tomato plants in the garden didn’t seem like they were doing to well at first, but in the recent days it seems like they are getting used to the soil and growing. That is exciting! Of the very first squash that we planted, some are already making fruit! We also planted a bed of squash with each plant elevated in its very own mound. It looks like a mountainous squash forest. We put the squash in mounds in order to facilitate better drainage and give the plants’ roots enough area to spread out deeply and soak up as much water as possible. We have noticed that they also don’t seem to like too much water in their early stages. I think squash blossoms are very beautiful to look at.

The garden is a great place and I encourage others to stop by on any of our workdays and especially our Monday meeting. I encourage others to come to the garden to enjoy this great weather in the city as summer approaches and learn about different gardening skills and beneficial methods of organic gardening. Gardening is a great skill to know and you can set up a garden just about anywhere with good sunlight. Gardening can be as easy as making a fence pocket out of a burlap sack and chicken wire, filling it with soil and hanging it on a railing, fence or gate. Just add seeds and water and sooner than you think you can be eating your own lettuce or making tea from you own medicinal herbs. By coming to GHCG you can learn a lot about gardening and if you want to, bring home what you learned.

The garden is also great because it gives you the opportunity to get outside, get your hands dirty and also meet some great people. At our Monday garden meetings (1pm), we have been very fortunate to enjoy soup while we have weekly discussions about different aspects about the garden such as: crop rotation, irrigation, harvesting, art and our next plans of action for working in the garden. It’s a great time to check-in, start off the week and all join to take care of something very valuable to us all: the garden.

This Week in the Garden.

A lot is happening in the garden. To be in compliance with the new city code, we will continue to adorn the cyclone fencing with art in the form of succulents and herbs busting out of various pockets and cans. Vertical gardening is very exciting, and in many places (such as Cuba), it is a good solution to the lack of space. At Growing Homes we have lots of herbs and succulents growing on the fence, and I'm excited to experiment with annuals that have shallow roots as well, such as lettuce and strawberries. In the picture above, there are different herbs growing out of tin cans.
Here is one of the many succulent pockets. Succulents are a good plant to grow on the fence because they do not require much water or nutrient dense soil.
Most of our beds at the garden are planted out! Exciting! Now we get to watch them grow and transform and send them nurturing energy as our fall harvest approaches. Above is the evolved bed of lettuce and brussel sprouts. We just received our first harvest of lettuce a few weeks ago. It is tender, delicious, and multi-shaped and colored. The brussel sprouts are struggling as we've been trying to save them from a very aggressive bunch of aphids.
Here is a bed of tomatoes, peppers, and basil. It is our "warm weather" bed, and as such the modified gallon water jugs are serving as a mini greenhouse. We'll see if they assist the health of the plants.
In this bed there are actually three. When we double dug the bed we decided to break it up into three parts in order to facilitate harvesting. In the back bed there is mustard greens, the middle bed houses poc choi, and the front bed is a home to baby tomatillos. I think the tomatillos will do well in the garden because they are a wilder cousin to tomatoes, requiring less sun and warmth and able to handle more wind.
I believe the secret to a healthy garden is doing the lengthy work of starting seeds in a greenhouse and transplanting them to the beds when they are strong seedlings. However, some plants are appropriate for direct seeding in the Bay Area. This bed is a home to spinach, lettuce, carrots, sweet peas and perennial flowers. The flowers and spinach were transplanting, but all the other annuals were direct seeded and are doing well. Sweet peas are super easy to grow in lots of different climates. When in doubt, plant sweet peas!
This is my new favorite bed! On Friday we transplanted over 20 squash plants into this bed. Now it is the "squash village." I'm looking forward watching the summer squash, zucchini, butternut squash, delicatta, and pumpkins grow long into the fall. We had a lot of fun digging out this bed and mounding up all the earth. There were four of us tending to this bed and we went from pulling out the old plants to having the babies transplanted in a little under three hours. It was fast and fun!
I am fondly referring to this bed as the "hodge podge" bed. It is a mixture of various annuals and perennials and I can't even begin to name all the plants because there are too many. Initially we just wanted the perennial flowers and squash, tomatillos, and tomatoes to grow. However, there must have been a lot of seed in the soil because volunteer mustard greens, potato vines, raspberry vines, and chard have popped up in the past few weeks.
Our donated tomato starts that we received last month from Sunnyside Nursery in Richmond are finally sprouting green leaves and recovering. If the sun comes out, we will have delicious tomatoes ripening in a few months.
It is early summer and many of the green things are flowering or fruiting. The garden has exploded in various colors and shapes. Here is the first baby pear on the pear tree.
Here is soapwort, which is a flowering shrub. Soon we should see some pretty violet flowers appear. Behind the shrub is foxglove, a towering perennial. The flowers look like fairy hats.
The bed in the south garden in the far corner is a home to a beautiful thriving rosebush. It is in the back of the bed, while in the rest there are many different baby vegetables that a crowd of kids planted. They were planted kid style, i.e. haphazardly, but in true kid style they are doing well because plant energy and kid energy is very synchronous.
Here is one of the medicinal herb beds in her full summer glory. The creepy crawly plant is yerba buena, which belongs to the mint family and is a San Francisco native. This city has a rich interwoven relationship with this medicinal, and many native peoples regard it as sacred.
Above is the second medicinal bed. In the foreground is St. John's Wort and in the background is seeding oregano and a strong perennial flower that won't stop flowering.
Here are two very useful flowering herbs: calendula and red clover. Calendula is used for skin care and red clover is used internally and as a ground cover and nitrogen fixer.
Last but not least is our wonderful clary sage! It flowers at six to eight feet tall, and is amazingly aromatic. It is used for cut flowers (which last along time and are really unique and beautiful) and skin care. Come by the garden and take a whiff of this incredible perennial herb in her full flowering glory, which elicits different reactions in everyone.

Recently, I have had a more personal experience of what it is like to be homeless because Monday - Friday, I pack up and flee my apartment because I cannot tolerate the noise from the construction going on in my building.

For the past two weeks the construction noise at my apartment building and especially in my bedroom has been unbearable at best. It has left me with no option but to leave my apartment everyday (Monday - Friday) from 9 -5 pm.

I just cannot deal with the noise from the banging, drilling, pulling out of dry-rotted wood, etc. This is taking place right on the other side of my bedroom wall where I lay my head down to rest. I feel like they are right in my bedroom, I can even hear them sneezing and singing while they are working! Every morning I pack my things for the day and leave my apartment, and head for the streets.

Luckily, the Growing Home Community Garden is open Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from noon until 5 pm. This experience has led me to think about some things and ask myself:

1. Where do the homeless go when they just want to be alone and recharge their battery?
2. Where do the homeless go to quietly enjoy reading a book or magazine?
3. Where do the homeless go to take naps when they are tired?
4. Do the homeless have a place to go and watch TV?
5. Where do the homeless go to when they are hungary? Is it a place where they can enjoy their meal in peace?
6. Where do the homeless go to get help --medical, psychological, dental, vision, etc.?
7. Do the homeless have access to legal assistance when they feel they have been treated unfairly and need help?

I don't have the answers to all of these questions, but I will be researching these issues and updating the blog as I find out. Once every other month you can come to the Project Homeless Connect (PHC) and get help. There are many resources available for the homeless and nearly homeless.

This month PHC will take place on Friday, June 10, 2011. It will take place in the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood of San Francisco - 2401 Jennings Street. It will take place from 10am - 3pm. There are many resources available for the homeless and nearly homeless.

If you are interested in volunteering, you can volunteer from 8:30am - 4pm.

Come join us at PHC and show you care!

A Very Good Day in the Garden

Friday was a very good day in the garden.

We double-dug the bed that we harvested carrots, lettuce and turnips from last week. It was my first time actually digging and I truly enjoyed it! It helped me to take my mind off of my problems and I worked up a sweat.

It was fun learning how to plant squash and why we plant squash in a certain manner from Sam McMullen our Garden Educator. It was enjoyable working with Ty and one of our garden volunteers. We amended the soil and planted lots of squash. I will go take a picture of it over the weekend and update this post with the photo over the weekend when it stops raining.

Lastly, it was fun learning more about the people I am working alongside.

Stay dry!

Summer's beginnings in the garden.

The ground is getting warm and the plants are getting big! After being a way from the garden for a little bit, I started the work day last Friday by staring with awe at a very lovely squash plant. The flower had just opened and it is the most amazing shade of orange. The squash in the greenhouse are big too, and have been very patient but nevertheless questioning, "When will you find a home for us?" I know it's time for them to go into a bed, because I've already snipped off four small flowers. It is very satisfying to start your plants from seed, wait months to transplant them into a bed, and then to see them become very large and healthy plants (and hopefully productive, too).

Meanwhile, in a middle bed in the North garden, the strawberries are setting quite a bit of fruit that is delicious when it is ripe. But waiting can be very hard! I've seen quite a few people pop a not fully ripe strawberry into their mouth. And let's not forget about the fava plants! We have been harvesting many pounds of beans often and still there are many to take away.

We have a bed of lettuce that is almost ready. But most of our beds have baby plants that have just recently been transplanted. We have only a few more beds to turn, amend, and plant in and then it's the part that I might enjoy the most: to wait, water, and watch the plants get big for the fall harvest in September. If all goes well we will have sweet peas, lettuce, carrots, squash, tomatoes, peppers (with lots of luck), tomatillos, basil, endive, radicchio, kale, chard, and brussel sprouts.

Come by to see the garden in all her summer glory!