Saturday Feb. 6th Recap

This past Saturday workday from 10am - 2pm started with the arrival of roughly three pick-up trucks worth of compost from the city dump. Farming in San Francisco on a large scale requires lots and lots of nutrient rich material to amend the sand-like soil. We'll be using a double-digging method to get our beds ready for planting.















This Saturday also saw some special friends from Tofu Town. They generously provided us with prepared lunches of vegan gyros and backyard gleaned fruit juice. All-in-all around 20 volunteers were fed. It was so good, I can't say enough. Thank you Tofu Town!















In keeping with the community building component of community gardening/farming our group comes together during important parts of the workday. We gather for a group huddle to lay out our plans for the day before we start, we come together again for a lunch break, and then we close by touring the farm and pointing out what's been accomplished during the day. The Free Farm project is about more than just growing food, it also seeks to nurture community amongst its contributors.

I hope you will come be a part of this growing community during our Saturday 10am - 2pm workdays.

Ready to Irrigate Means We Need Drip Tape!

Hi Everyone!

In the last post I told you that we have beds ready to plant food in. How exciting! All told our beds will provide us with over 1,000 square feet of planting space. As you may well imagine that much space is difficult to water with just a hose and spray nozzle. This means we need a drip irrigation system using drip tape to properly water our crops.














(Hand watering is ok for seed trays)




















(Hand watering is not ok for 7 more of these beds!)

This link has a picture of what I mean by drip tape. It also has a short rundown on how drip irrigation works. It's a good way to irrigate for large scale food production, and soon when we move beyond the two beds we have ready right now, it will be critical to the livelihood of our crops.

As always you can check out our wish list and learn a little bit more about our intern Pete, the person to contact if you can help out!

DIY: Learn to double dig raised beds

This Saturday workday our group got two beds ready for planting! Tree gave us a tutorial on how to prepare them by double digging.

Step 1.) Your beds should have a 4-6" layer of compost on top to start with.














Step 2.) See Tree there in the photo below with the shovel in as deep as the shovel's head? That's as far down as you want to dig. You also only need a width of one shovel's head.














Step 3.) The soil from the first trench should be placed in a wheel barrow. That soil goes to the far end of the bed where it will be used to fill in the last trench.

















Step 4.) Stick a digging fork in the trench you just dug so the tongs are fully submerged. Wiggle the fork around to loosen up the soil. This wiggling aerates the soil allowing roots more space and increasing drainage.













Step 5.) Now that the soil in the first trench has been loosened up you can begin digging the second trench right beside the first; same depth, same width. The soil from the second trench (including the 4-6" of compost on top) gets put into the first trench. You're just moving dirt from hole #2 into hole #1. Easy as that.

Just keep following this pattern of digging out a trench, working the fork into the dug-out space and then digging another trench right beside it and putting the second trench's dirt into the first. Do this all the way down the line. Mixing nutrient rich compost in with your soil helps build the soil structure, making the beds a hospitable area for food growing.















After raking the beds even our beds look like this.

Lots of Compost Needed!

Hello friends of Urban Share and the Free Farm!

This time of year in San Francisco is the right season for planting! In order to take advantage of that our farm needs lots and lots of compost to work into the soil. It's probably our number one need right now in order to get food growing to give to those who need it most. If you or anyone you know, be they from work, or from school, your family, your church, or some other organization, has access to a large truck we would Love to use it. As a non-profit we can write a letter so the expense of using the truck is tax-deductible.

The picture you're seeing above shows 4 of our 9 planting beds that total over 1,000 sq. ft. We need the beds covered in 4" of compost, which equals a lot of compost. The issue isn't where to find the compost, it's getting it to our site, which requires a large truck. Can you help us out?

If so, please email me: case.garver@gmail.com

A Labyrinth, Finished Steps, and More Food in the Ground!

This Saturday workday saw a lot of action and a lot of progress. One of the big visions for the garden space is a food growing labyrinth! Tasty walking contemplation! It's taken lots of wheelbarrows of compost and roughly one ton of donated cardboard.

The above pictures is what we had co

mpleted on Wednesday. By Saturday all of our cardboard was covered and ready to build a labyrinth on!

The Free Farm is in a lot sunken below ground level. Getting down to the planting area sometimes proved tricky. In order to make the site safe for volunteers we've created a slow ramp and now a new set of stairs!

You'll notice the steps are surrounded by terraced beds. We've added more than what we had last time to include more strawberries, irises, and artichoke. Yum!

Plants in the Ground at Free Farm!

This past Saturday marked the first planted bed of food at the Free Farm! We have three adorable terraced beds of strawberries on a slope overlooking the farm.

We started with some compost from the dump

then dug out the side

of the hill to create a plane, or terrace, mixing in the compost.

We used rocks from the original St. Paulus Lutheran church structure to shore up the bed

Planting seedlings in

the new beds

And this is what you

end up with. Strawberries in the ground!

Work With us at the Free Farm this Saturday

The Free Farm is quickly moving from an abandoned, neglected lot, to a well-loved, full-scale farm. Come be a part of our growing community of farmers this Saturday from 10am - 2pm. We'll be getting our beds prepared with manure and compost, laying down wood chips to finish our loading ramp, continuing cleaning the lot, and watering our strawberry plants! To work at the farm you'll need to wear some work clothes, including closed-toed shoes, and be ready to sign our volunteer liability and photo release form. We'll provide the delicious vegan lunch! See you then!