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.