The Grateful Table

Yesterday my friends and I were at the Free Farm Stand embracing the newly arrived weather front that brought much needed rain and cold to San Francisco. Though the weather slows down our gardening efforts and might bring us some discomfort, we welcome the rain that brings water to our soil and plants and chill to our fruit trees that need it to produce abundantly. I realized the other day that the Free Farm Stand is really a welcome table. We welcome in the weather that we have to live and work with. We welcome all our neighbors who come out on Sundays to share stories with other neighbors and extra home grown produce if they have any. We welcome all the beautiful people that come out not just because they need food, but because they want to help make local food growing and sharing a reality. We welcome the leftover fruits and vegetables from the fancy farmers markets here in the city or the extra bread from the bakery. We welcome the gleaned fruit that shows up sometimes almost magically. Then again, the stand is not only a welcome table, but a grateful table.

I didn't pick a lot of produce this week from the gardens, although there was some lettuce mix and arugula that could have been harvested (I had a lot from the farmers market and I wasn't sure how many people would show up in the rain). On Friday fava bean leaves were harvested from the 18^th and Rhode Island garden. We just picked off the top leaves of the young plants (they are eaten raw like in salads, kind of like spinach but not in taste), though I haven't tried them in cooking yet. They were actually more popular than I thought. I also was amazed that there were still some orange cherry tomatoes growing there that I could pick (it must be the heat reflected off the white house wall adjacent to the small garden). And the oregano was spreading beyond the fence and provided me with a big handful of fresh leaves.

My friend Gary left me a big bag of lemons at my door that he harvested from the Oakland neighborhood that he lives in. He says there are a number of trees there that he harvests regularly and makes lemon juice that he freezes and that goes into lemonade. Also, I had smaller more yellow and almost orange lemons that Tom brought me on Monday from Santa Rosa. He lives down there but comes up to this area frequently and usually finds something to glean up there to bring down for the stand. I think the lemons from Tom were Meyer and the Oakland lemons were the Eureka variety.

The stand was loaded with the usual cool weather greens like mustard, broccoli raab, and kale, lettuce mix, arugula, radishes, daikon and beets. We had a box of Romanesco broccoli that someone pointed out to me is a fractal food. I finally understood what fractals are by reading online something in the Scientific American: "… a small piece of broccoli, when viewed up close, looks the same as a larger chunk." That is really true!

We had a great group of volunteers and more people came out than I expected. Actually, the rain had slowed down a lot until the end and we gave almost all the produce away (I still have lemons that will keep until next week and some broccoli raab and a few mustard greens).

On Friday in between the little rain we had I worked with two women that want to intern for the Free Farm Stand, Sarah and Ashly. We were at 18^th and Rhode Island and planted a lot of hot pepper and tomato seeds in containers. We also helped take measurements for the site so David can produce an accurate map. One of the best things that we got done is that I met with David and Kevin and went over the planting strategy that Kevin had written up. I now have an idea of a lot of work that can be done there in future Friday workdays coming up. There is a lot to do in terms of preparing some spaces for potato towers and a perennial bed. And we can start planting carrots and other biennials perennials and possibly some annuals when we get seedlings. The next project is planting a few more trees: We have a white Sapote, some Asian Pears, and a Weeping Mulberry, and sometime later a couple of figs. Friday Feb 20 we will be doing some work preparing for sheet mulching onFriday Feb. 2oth and on Saturday Feb 21 we will be sheet mulching and planting trees.

Potato Towers

As people must know by now I am excited about planting potatoes this year and last week we built and planted four towers in 2 gardens. On Tuesday a few friends showed up at Treat Commons and we installed the tall wire mesh potato tower there. A lot of kids from the park came in the garden to help and they mixed up soil and mulch and added it to the tower. Later that day we went to the Secret Garden with the Jamestown Center kids and planted potatoes in trash cans with their bottoms cut off.

Someone asked me to describe how to build a potato tower and I explained to her that I was reluctant to get into it in this blog. First of all, I have never planted potatoes in towers before only in the ground. Pam Pierce's book Golden Gate Gardening describes this in good detail and there is plenty of information on the internet and even videos of how to do this. Basically we are planting potatoes in what Pam calls "rings" made of mesh or another way is in trash cans with the bottoms cut off (placing the trash can on the ground bottom side up for stability). Last week we tried out what I call "the cover as it grows" method. We used both mesh and trash cans. We put a mixture of compost and rotted manure on the bottom of the towers and put them on top. We covered the potatoes with about four inches of a mixture of mostly wood chip mulch (what they call compost at Bayview Green Waste Management who will give it to you for free) mixed with a little soil. As the potatoes grow upward we will cover the stems (not the whole plant).The potatoes will eventually grow out the top of the tower (and if it is mesh it may need to be kept from growing out of it). Then when the potatoes die we will remove the tower and pick up the potatoes.

With the lasagna method we will plant the potatoes all at once in layers of potatoes and woodchip compost mixed with soil. The potatoes will grow out the mesh. I have heard we will have a lot more potatoes this way but they will be small. Tuesday afternoon if it doesn't rain we will plant more towers and one will be using the lasagna method. We may have potatoes by the end of May.

Planting Gardens Project

Besides the new gleaning project about to take off (the fliers are almost out), the idea of helping our neighbors put in gardens and offering mentoring advice is about to fly too. I think we have two volunteer interns that want to help make this happen and we might call a meeting soon of people that may want to help out. The idea is to maintain a list of people in the Mission that need help putting in a garden in their yard and to every week get a group of volunteers who will show up with the stuff needed to make a garden. At first we may need to just offer advice or seedlings, maybe at a well staffed table at the Free Farm stand, it all depends on what supplies we can come up with. The idea is to help establish a neighborhood network of people growing food in their yards and sharing the surplus with each other at the stand. Please contact me if this is something you want to help out with and would like to attend a meeting.

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