Gardening Volunteer Opportunities

Hi there! If you've got a desire to learn about gardening and food growing by getting your hands dirty, here are some places you can go!



















Every Wednesday and Saturday from 10am until 2pm the Free Farm at Eddy and Gough Streets is open for folks to come work. There are all kinds of jobs to be done. This coming week we plan to do some shoveling to double dig our beds, planting more food, building our trellis for scarlet runner beans, raking and smoothing double dug beds, organizing tools in the shed, taking pictures, watering plants, running the wheelbarrow, or making a vegan lunch for yourself and the other volunteers! Sound like something you'd like to do? Either stop by in some clothes you don't mind getting a little dirty, or send me an email at thefreefarm.sf@gmail.com

Tree, a major coordinator of the Free Farm also has opportunities at different gardens listed on his site.

Happy Growing!

Trees for Arbor Day, A Heap of Horse Manure and More Food Planted!

Major thanks to the folks at Redwood Ranch in Oakland for giving the Free Farm over 25,000 pounds of horse manure. Many thanks to our friend who drove the truck to deliver to us as well! With enough manure to last us for awhile our Saturday workday crew dug right in to prepare and plant more beds. Right now the Free Farm has 9 farm-style beds totaling over 1,000 sq. ft. We have 4 planted and another ready to go.






























































In the above photo you'll notice the beds are covered with a thin fabric. This stuff protects against, birds, bugs, and wind, as well as helping the plants grow quicker.

This Saturday the Free Farm observed Arbor Day by planting more food growing trees. Below a Lamb Haas Avocado tree is being planted.














We also planted Pakistani Mulberry tree! The Free Farm now has the avocado and mulberry trees I mentioned , and a weeping santa rosa plum, and a desert dawn nectarine.

What a great way to celebrate Arbor Day!

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!