March and April in the Gardens

Amy Belkora, for the Gardening Program

Two full moons have passed since my last newsletter greeting. Sap Moon came in late February and brought with it the first signs of winter’s end: the pulsing of sap through the trees and the sweet harvest of syrup that it brings. In late March, we enjoyed Egg Moon. The children and I discussed the importance of Egg Moon. For some cultures eggs symbolize the universe in a microcosm-the yolk the earth, the white the galaxies that surround it. In concrete terms, the egg is an important nutritional rite of spring. It’s often the first bit of fresh protein a farmer gets in the new year as the chickens begin to lay with the lengthening days. To celebrate Egg Moon we’re making deviled eggs with fresh garden herbs.

We are also experimenting with potato towers this year as a way for the plant to grow vertically and capitalize on the potato’s method of growing its tubers above the original seed potato. Potatoes grow on stolons which are underground branches that grow off the stem. I’ve heard many growers say that when stems are covered by dirt, they produce more stolons, hence more potatoes. However, dissenting research shows that only very young stems grow stolons, and once the stem hardens off above ground from exposure to the elements no more stolons (and therefore potatoes) will grow.
The plants in our towers are quite tall now, at least three feet, and the stems receive more dirt monthly, so only the top 6-8 inches of foliage remains above ground. When the plant dies back this summer, we’ll dig through our tower and compare the yields to our in-ground planting. Stay tuned for the results!

It’s finally time to think about getting tomatoes in the ground. Tomatoes originated in South America and spread northward to Mexico and then over to the Mediterranean. Our cool climate is hard on these heat-loving plants. My tomato seedlings have only spent one night outside so far; otherwise, when nighttime temperatures are below 55, I ferry them outside for sunlight during the day, then back inside the garage at night. I’m growing my most successful varieties from last year: Stupice, Gajo de Melon, Black Plum, and Isis Candy Cherry. I’m also trying some new varieties: Snowberry, Mountain Princess, and Tigerella. The important thing for the cooler Western side of SF is to choose small fruited varieties so they have the best chance of ripening. Another tip: when you plant your tomato, make sure to bury a good portion of its stem below ground. All those little hairs you see on the stem will turn into roots and make for a stronger, healthier plant.

The children continue to work hard in the gardens. They are planting lots of seeds, maintaining our thriving raised beds full of lettuces, peas, turnips and radishes, and sifting the gorgeous finished compost we made last fall. The bee garden is a riot of color and bees. In particular the poppies are bright and ubiquitous. Our apple tree has blossoms and our fig tree is leafing out.

Here’s the recipe for the tasty deviled eggs:

Mix hard boiled egg yolks with mayonnaise and add chopped fresh herbs, such as wild onion greens, oregano, thyme, coyote mint, marjoram, a bit of rosemary. Stuff mixture into egg whites and serve.

February in the Gardens

by Amy Belkora, Gardening Program

The moles have returned near the soil surface at St. Anne’s. This is always an exciting time. The children love the story of the mole and the gnome in the carrot patch. There is nothing more exciting than sticking our fingers down into the mole holes to explore. I explain to the children that the moles are always in the garden, but spend most of the year deeper down, where the soil remains moist and the earthworms live. However, when it rains, the worms come up, and so do the moles. We can see the cracked earth above their tunnel lines. Did you know that moles can tunnel nearly 20 feet in an hour?

Moles don’t hurt our garden plants, other than occasionally destabilizing the roots of our vegetables and grain. They are after worms and grubs, in other words -meaty foodstuffs. They ignore the greens. I am thankful not to have to contend with gophers. They love to eat plants and are famous for pulling down carrots and beets before farmers’ sad eyes.

One child made a wonderful discovery this month. He noticed a swarm of honeybees have taken up residence in a eucalyptus tree in the Tower Garden. I’ve shown each class the bees coming and going. This is a wild colony, in the sense that they were completely in charge of finding their trunk home, building all of the comb to their preferred specifications, using all of the pollen and honey for their own livelihood. It makes us so happy to host this wild hive, and we like to believe it is thanks to the new bee garden that we put in this past fall. Now our garden is surrounded by bees-those Rinat cares for at the Kinney’s, and now our new Tower Garden hive. What a boon for the flowers and seed production!

Hunger Moon shone in late January. This is the time of year when food supplies are very thin. I show the children a few potatoes, a garlic, perhaps another squash, and the funny, cold-loving celery root (celeriac). For snack the second grade makes a mash of these vegetables, and some groups crack walnuts to enjoy. I stress that in traditional times, this is the leanest month of all. In fact, Hopi peoples refer to this moon as Purification Moon. As Jessica Prentice writes, the Hopi turn the lack of food into a time of prayer, of intentional, conscious hunger. She also points out in her book Full Moon Feast (Chelsea Green Publishing) that the month “February” takes its name from the Roman Februa, a festival of purification held on February 15th. In our day, many folks still celebrate Lent this month, again an example of self-induced, spiritually-driven deprivation.

The third grade just returned from their exciting trip to Live Power Community Farm in Covelo. Look for our trip report soon!

Here is our recipe for those last items in the Hunger Moon root cellar:

Hunger Moon Mash

• Peel and chop potatoes, squash, celeriac, garlic
• Sauté in coconut oil or butter until soft
• Mash together with cream if available. Salt/pepper to taste.

January in the Gardens

by Amy Belkora, Gardening Program

The first and second grades have been learning about the Wolf Moon in late December. I am reading local author Jessica Prentice’s excellent book Full Moon Feast and sharing her knowledge surrounding the traditional Native American names for the yearly full moons. Wolf Moon was three weeks ago and now we’re fast approaching Hunger Moon.

Native people gave these names to the full moons as a way to mark the moon in relation to food availability and crop production. The Wolf Moon derives its name from the barren time of late December and early January when most parts of the US are covered in snow or chill and people are dependent only on the food they managed to save from fall harvests. It is a time when wolves are howling in their packs, distraught from hunger, coming closer and closer to human shelter.

I show the children examples of Wolf Moon foods: winter squashes, onions, garlic, dried herbs, potatoes. These are all foods that we harvest in late summer and fall and can store well into winter. The second grade enjoyed cooking a Wolf Moon soup of winter squash. See below for the recipe courtesy of Full Moon Feast.

In between rain showers we have been working to lay down a wood chip path among the native flowers in our bee garden to keep the pesky grass at bay. The first graders decided to unearth a two year old tall stump, the remainder of a tree that blew down two winters ago. This job has proven to be exciting and addicting. For the past two weeks each visiting class has had a go at its removal. Finally, on Friday the 15th, the First Grade Gnomes succeeded in wrestling it from the ground. Per Monique’s request, we’ll turn the stump into a nice perch in the garden.

The third grade cleaned up the school garden and planted a winter crop of potatoes. We placed them in a plot where we’d turned in grain crop residue three months before. Potatoes love to grow among green manure, in other words, plant matter that has been disked into the soil to add organic matter over time. We also planted several new radish varieties to enjoy over the coming weeks. Radishes grow quickly and well in San Francisco.

Wolf Moon Soup:

Coconut oil (or other oil, but the children love the coconut!)
Acorn squash (or other winter squash) peeled and chopped into small pieces
Minced garlic or onion
Fresh or dried herbs including rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Vegetable or other stock

Sauté squash in oil until soft with herbs and onion/garlic. Pour in stock and mash lightly until soup is lumpy and hot. Serve with a dollop of yogurt if you like.

From the Gardens - Late Fall

by Amy Belkora, Gardening Program

As we creep closer to winter and what we hope will be the rainy season, the children, garden volunteers, and I are hard at work wrapping up seasonal jobs. The second and third graders planted the grain crops. This year we planted barley, wheat and rye. Each of these will over-winter and be ready for harvest in summer of 2010. The kindergarteners are making their winter offerings to our bird friends.

The pine cone feeders gently hung just last week by K3 are nearly all empty of their seed, suet and peanut butter already!

The third grade also planted a stand of white garlic. We put in extra cloves so that come early spring we can harvest spring garlic, also called green garlic, and leave the rest in for full heads to develop by summer.

Two of the largest jobs since we founded our garden at St. Anne’s have recently been completed. At the request of the Sisters of St. Anne’s, we planted a pollinator flower garden on the western edge of our original space. This garden contains largely native plant species, shrubs, perennial and annual flowers. We received generous donations from Annie’s Annuals in Richmond to help round out our plant selection. I selected each plant to maximize its attractiveness to bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds. Our honeybees across the street at the Kinney’s house will be the primary lucky foragers.

Just before Thanksgiving several helpful families gathered to build a beautiful raised redwood bed for our new Tower Garden area. Chris Larrance (2nd) designed the box and supervised the building. I also want to acknowledge the hard work of Peter and Chloe Carlstrom (1st), Bill Brockenborough (2nd), Tony and Dahlia Martorana (1st). I could not have completed this project without them! In addition, we received a generous lumber and delivery donation from Beronio Lumber here in San Francisco. Several children have worked to fill the boxes with soil and we are now ready to plant. In addition to the wooden raised bed we are experimenting with straw bale beds and planting directly into compost-amended straw bales.

The First Grade Gnomes made their inaugural visit to Rose Hive last week. Rinat Abastado, our beekeeper, came to show the children bright white new comb, old comb with bee bread and a small amount of brood within it, and offered a taste of delicious honey. When we got to the hive, Rinat took the children near the hive in small groups to listen to and watch the bees’ comings and goings. As the year unfolds, each garden group K through 3rd grades will have a chance to learn about and visit the bees.

During these cold days the second grade makes hot tea for snack. We use a collection of fresh herbs: lemon verbena, yerba buena (a low lying, native mint-family herb that means “good herb” in Spanish and was the original name of the city of San Francisco because of its prevalence), lavender, thyme, and sage. To sweeten the tea, the children mash fresh stevia and place it in each cup. Then they pour the steeped herbal tea in and after it’s all drunk up, chew the stevia for a final delight.

Happy holidays!

In the Garden

by Amy Belkora, SFWS Gardening Program Director

The third grade completed the harvest, threshing and winnowing of the rye, wheat, and barley grains. They harvested a big bed of potatoes and the remaining heads of garlic. These are among the ingredients for our Harvest Dinner on November 4th.

The third graders are quite fond of our Very Hungry Caterpillars which live amongst the green cabbage leaves in our school garden. Each group of gardeners carefully picks through the cabbage leaves following the telltale signs of the hungry beasts.

Usually we find three or four, and these go into jars (along with more cabbage to eat!) so that the children may watch the caterpillars turn into moths. Then, the cycle repeats itself as the children let the moths go right back into the garden where they lay even more eggs for the next generation of Very Hungry Caterpillars. Experiments like these are quintessential pleasures of an educational garden!


At St.Anne’s garden the classes have finished the preparatory wood chip laying at the Tower Garden and we now prepare to build the raised beds and several compost piles. Down below in the Home Garden, we have harvested the last tomatoes and delighted in digging up the leftover fertilizing fish bones underneath the plants. We have taken in the corn, eaten the summer squash, and harvested a miniature pumpkin for each class.

In the next weeks we will plant the native wild flower seeds and the bee-friendly plants in the western end of the Home Garden. Fall is a great time of year to start plants in the Bay Area: they establish well in the coming rainy season. We have an assortment of hummingbird and bee friendly shrubs and flowers, including salvias, monkey flower, members of the mint family, and native poppies.

I am recruiting volunteers to grow a stand of purple vetch at home. Vetch is a nitrogen-fixing cover crop. May Fair organizers will use the purple flowers and stems to create beautiful head garlands. After you harvest the flowers for the Fair, you can turn under the rest of the plant to add organic matter and fix nitrogen in your soil. Please contact me if you’d like some seeds to plant now.

Community Service: A Day at the Farm

by Tabeetha Sun, SFWHS Student

Because of my involvement in the Waldorf High School Environmental Club, I chose to work at Alemany Farm for my community service project. The farm is collaboratively run by city officials and Alemany residents, but it relies heavily on volunteer involvement to maintain and harvest the fruits and vegetables.
Our high school group worked on a regular Monday for volunteers, which anyone can attend.  We were given a tour of the site and saw dozens of varieties of edible plants.  When the trucks arrived with their trunks filled with mushrooms, we had to cart wheelbarrows full of the plants to our planting site and sort them into their categories.  As we were given a tutorial on the specifics of planting mushrooms, it began to rain heavily.  During the process of clearing the ground, disinfecting the plants, planting and covering them, the rain continued to pound down but we didn’t stop even when we were completely soaked to the skin!  Afterwards we were able to harvest any of the ripe produce grown on the farm and take it home with us. 

The whole experience really opened my eyes on how much work it takes to maintain a farm, or even a garden, and I really gained an appreciation for the work these people do.  I look forward to continuing my service days at the farm, although I hope we will not be so drenched!

Editors note: Alemany Farm empowers San Francisco residents to grow their own food, and through that process encourages people to become more engaged with their communities. Find out more about Alemany farms at www.alemanyfarm.org.