USF Garden Project

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Hey all. Aren’t you excited about finals coming up? No? Well then, have some pictures from our community meeting from last semester!

Last semester, we also went on an overnight trip to Santa Cruz and visited UCSC’s Farm and Free Wheelin’ Farm. It was a great trip! We stayed at a hostel and made dinner and breakfast. Yum yum. Ask us about it sometime!!

Last semester, we visited the Dearborn Community Garden. Pam Peirce, author of Golden Gate Gardening and Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California, gave us background on her and also gave us a tour of the garden. Pam Pierce has her own blog - http://goldengategarden.typepad.com. Please check it out. It’s pretty cool…

We also saw some amazing murals in the Mission. Take a look and if you like what you see, comment! Also check out the Flickr set we have for this trip: Dearborn and the Murals

nalini and her precious, deteriorating cow bones, originally uploaded by USF Garden Project.

Where did the bones go?

weeding party 3

Originally uploaded by USF Garden Project

Hey all,

We, the Garden Project, invite you to our Work Party on Saturday, April 12 from 11am - 4pm. Snacks and drinks will be provided, so drop by whenever you can, and bring your own cup (if you have one).  Also, wear your grungy clothes and if you have tools, bring them!

Please R.S.V.P. by Wednesday, April 9th so that we know how much food to make. Send your response to usfgardenproject@gmail.com and if you need directions to the garden, please email us.

Hope to see you there!

The store at Pie Farm

Originally uploaded by USF Garden Project

If you haven’t already been to Mission Pie in the Mission District, we suggest you do! The pies there are scrumptious and the ingredients are all grown on Pie Ranch. How cool is that? Visit Mission Pie at http://www.missionpie.com and Pie Ranch at http://www.pieranch.org!

Ready to Work at Alemany!

Originally uploaded by USF Garden Project

If anyone is interested, Alemany Farm has work days on the weekends where volunteers come and help out. Go to their website http://www.alemanyfarm.org and see which day they’re working. You even get to bring home goodies at the end of the day!

First I like to say that I’m really pleased that I had a chance to meet someone that has published a book before. That was the closest I’ve ever been to meeting someone famous. Maybe she’s not but, she has been published and is a very smart lady, and I really admire that about her. The famous Pam Peirce, at lease through me eyes.

I really liked it that she started it off with her young childhood, she mentioned that she grew up gardening. She also mentioned that she had accomplished many things, which was very impressive. The one thing that really stuck out was that she mentioned she had a vision and after that vision she set out to accomplish it or make something happen with the community. She mentioned that people need to come together and talk about the vision, and then organize it. Seems like we are in that stage of in visioning our garden our community and trying to make something out of it. We are doing everything that she has followed.

She gave us a lot of history with the organizations she worked with and what role she played in them. Another interesting statement she pointed out was that when people make a community and there are people in charge or maybe a president and it comes the time to elect a new president, it’s not always the best choice to put someone in charge from within the group. I thought that was pretty interesting because people always seem to think this way and probably it has to deal with a comfort. I learned that communities are hard to establish and to maintain. I also learned that the longest day of the year is June twenty-first. But the best time for plants to grow in San Francisco is during the month of September. Fun Facts, and the garden was very beautifully divided.
-Valeria Vital

October 24, 2007

Two vehicles containing all the Garden Projecters and our professors left USF on Friday, October 19, 2007, around 1:45 p.m. We headed to Santa Cruz to see UCSC’s farm. There we met Derone who gave us a tour and even showed them his own patch of land.

Down Garden was 1.5 acres and plenty of growth going on. One great method for getting rid of the coddling moth, an insect that hangs around apples, was to use pheromone technology. It causes mating disruption so that the female can’t lay her eggs in the apples. The food grown at UCSC was given to apprentices, farmers on campus, and to a CSA (community supported agriculture). Down Garden had bed ends, trellises, a worm box, a learning center, rows, and so much more. For their water distribution, they used spigots, headers, and an underground set of tubes. The flowers that they grew were beautiful and were made into bouquets and sold.

Derone’s farm was 1/4 acre and he certainly made the most of it. He had a scarlet runner bean teepee, a pumpkin patch with scarecrows, kale, bok choi, a walnut tree, figs, chickens, corn used for popping, and a whole bunch of other stuff. He also had some suggestions as to what we should plant such as teas, lemon verbena, kale or plants that grow year-round, carrots, lettuce, potatoes (plants that take 70 - 100 days to grow), and definitely have at least one part vegetables. He told us that gardens are a celebration and we should think about a picnic area, holding student-specific events, having a shade structure such as a gazebo or plexi-glass, and an info board.

Later that night, we went to Free Wheelin’ farm and met Amy. She gave us a box of goods which we used to create our fabulous dinner. Saturday, after a delicious breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and juice, we made our way over to Pie Ranch. There we worked the land by picking strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, getting eggs from the chickens, taking the staples and tarp off rows, and airing out the pumpkins. We then got a tour of the old house and broke for lunch which, again, was amazing.

I feel that this trip was very productive since we were all bonding and really got some see some great farms. My favorite was UCSC’s one since it had such a good feel to it and I loved the way they used all their resources. The views for the places visited were breathtaking. As always, thank you for this trip and the experience.

-Nalini Bholanauth