November in the Gardens

November in the gardens

The second grade Snails planted barley, wheat, and rye recently. This grain will go into their third grade harvest dinner bread next fall! Yes, grain takes a while to grow. We grow winter varieties that sprout now in the late fall and then stand still for a while in the deepest part of winter. Then, come spring, the shoots shoot up and by April seed heads are forming. The children who are around in mid-summer will come to harvest the grain. Then, just as we did with the current third grade, next fall the now second grade children will thresh, winnow and grind it into flour. To protect our seeds from the hungry birds, K2 will build a scarecrow this week and install it next to the grain bed.

We have one lovely sunflower still blooming in the garden, but nearly all the other summer crops are finished. This week we’ll remove the beans and collect more seeds from the older sunflower heads. We have garlic growing and several brassica varieties. Brassica are cabbage and mustard family plants, such as broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. We need to get more lettuces going as well. Lettuce can be started in San Francisco year round.

The children are enjoying our gigantic leaf pile in the Tower Garden. We’ve been raking eucalyptus leaves all fall, and now we reap the benefit of jumping and burying ourselves in them. The second grade played a spontaneous rendition of “Old Roger is Dead” while burying their friends in the pile. Also in the Tower Garden the children continue to turn the beautifully large compost piles to speed up the piles’ maturation.

Have you noticed the wild onions growing around town? They are just now sending up their first green, ridged leaves. All of the plant is edible. The leaves are like scallions and can be chopped up for salad or stir fries. The bulbs can be cooked as you would a pearl onion. If you notice your gardener coming home with onion breath, this is why!

The animals are settled into their new home at Laguna Honda. The hair sheep and goats are friendly and line up for petting. Their bleating noises keep us company as we work in the gardens there. It is wonderful to have this important animal complement to our garden. A biodynamic garden relies upon the input of on-farm animal fertility (manure). A successful biodynamic farming system is a closed, self-supporting and even enhancing loop: the farm grows the food for all its animals and spreads the compost generated from their manure back onto the land. Happily we can now create that cycle at Laguna Honda.

I had the pleasure of attending a conference in early November located in East Troy, Wisconsin. This was a gathering of farm-based Waldorf educators. Garden teachers came from all over the U.S. to share ideas and learn from an active farm-school community there. Our SFWS program resembles the Chicago Waldorf School’s garden program in that we two urban schools must make use of available city land for our work. They garden on vacant lots and now within a community garden. Just as our programs include our residential host communities, theirs works closely with immigrant populations in Chicago. In East Troy we observed a farm school where there were groups of children building a fence, others clearing manure, and still another group cooking pork chops and apple crisp in the house for the group lunch. It was very inspiring to see the children busy at these important farm chores, especially in 40 degree weather!

Instead of a recipe this week, I encourage you to locate and cook with the wild onions. Ask your student gardener to help you find some around your home.

October in the gardens

Oh the late summer of San Francisco! Just as the students and I had removed all the corn and tomatoes - stunted by the cold summer - and put in our fall crops, now the sun is out and days are in the 80s! Each year about this time I make a note to myself to plant fall crops in April and summer crops in August. However, I haven’t had the strength of courage to actually do it yet. Now, as I watch my kales and broccolis wilting, I am reaffirming the need to reverse those seasonal crops in our SF planting rotations. Corn in November anyone?

The flowers have done surprisingly well this year, despite the cool summer. We are now enjoying the process of saving seeds from our annuals. The edible chrysanthemums are particularly satisfying to harvest, a big seed head full of little rectangular seeds that jump into the children’s palms. We also have a wonderful collection of sunflower seed heads. We planted many sizes and colors this year and these flowers provide a perfect example of pollination. Did you know that a sunflower is actually a “face” comprised of 100s of tiny individual flowers? In order for seeds to form, each seed’s flower must get pollinated. It is fascinating for the children to see that within one sunflower head, perhaps only 50% of the husks actually contain true seeds. In addition to saving them for next year, we also enjoy cracking the shells open with our teeth and eating the seeds inside!

The first grade continues to enjoy a weekly chapter of our Adventure story. As a reminder, Adventure is the bee that escaped from our hive at the Kinney’s the night Rinat Abastado and I moved it to Laguna Honda. Adventure is alive and well in our garden at St. Anne’s, and is a wonderful character with whom I can introduce the children to the myriad of garden creatures that keep our garden vibrant: gnomes, various fairies, moles, worms, butterflies… While at work, the children often spy Adventure visiting our flowers. Such a sighting brings smiles to all our faces.

The third grade is threshing, winnowing and grinding the barley, rye and wheat they planted last fall. The children enjoy these processes and cherish the small drawer of flour that comes from all that manual grinding. Each week’s flour goes into the baked goods the third graders are preparing for their harvest dinner. Today’s group of Weavers was particularly knowledgeable thanks to their recent field trip to the Bale Grist Mill in St. Helena.

We have good news from Laguna Honda. The farm animals will move into their home next to the garden the first week of November. And better still, the residents will move into their new buildings on December 7 and 8. Please contact Mitch Mitchell or me if you would like to volunteer to help move the residents on one of these two days. It will be a large and joyous undertaking. As soon as the residents are settled in, they will start taking part in the daily activities of the garden.

At Laguna Honda Dr. Burket, Mr. Prado and the ninth graders started three large compost piles. The beans are sky high and our pumpkins are ripening. The ninth graders also planted garlic, radishes, and greens. The bees appear to be very happy in their meadow home.

Here is our latest recipe from the first grade and K3:

Fresh potatoes (ideally small ones, like fingerlings)

Boil until just tender and the skin is gently cracked open

Add butter and salt

Pop them in your mouth

September in the gardens

by Amy Belkora, Gardening Program Director and Parent

What a relief to have the students back to their regular garden routines to help me propagate fall and winter seedlings, rake the fallen leaves, and pull the pesky weeds that are threatening to take over the gravel path in the pollinator garden.
I’d like to thank the Kinney family (Sam, Gr 5: Liza, Gr 4) for their generous hosting of our bee hive these last 18 months. At the end of August Rinat Abastado, our biodyanmic beekeeper, and I relocated all but one of the 50,000+ honeybees to Laguna Honda due to the Kinney’s impending remodel. Our bees are now happily settled in the Betty Sutro Meadow at Laguna Honda. We look forward to introducing a new colony at the Kinney’s in 2011. In the meantime, that one bee that got away has become the beloved subject of a story I tell the kindergarten and first grade children at the garden. Driving across San Francisco with a hive full of 30,000 bees puts an exclamation point on the need to drive safely!

On the topic of bees, there is a new movie debuting in Marin this October called Queen of the Sun, by Taggart Siegel, the director of The Real Dirt on Farmer John. Queen of the Sun takes as its starting point Rudolf Steiner’s 1923 prediction that in 80-100 years honeybee colonies would collapse. The movie chronicles farmers, scientists, and philosophers, and biodynamic beekeepers as they struggle to help the honeybee survive today’s colony collapse threat. One of the beekeepers featured, Michael Thiele, oversees the Melissa Garden in Healdsburg. This bee sanctuary is my inspiration for our pollinator garden at St. Anne’s. The movie will show Tuesday, Oct. 12 at 6pm at Cine Arts in Mill Valley and Wednesday, Oct. 13 at 7pm at the Christopher B Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

This summer Kacie Smith, Dexter Brightman, and I ran a week long summer camp at St. Anne’s. The children washed, carded and felted wool to make a felted goat’s milk soap. Dexter led the children in a cold frame building project so that we can experiment with cool weather seed propagation. On the last day of camp, Kacie brought her chickens!

During summer camp we dug into the potato towers where we’d been conducting the experiment on increasing yield. We took measurements regarding where we found potatoes relative to the ground and the top of the soil. My suspicions were confirmed as we found potatoes only down at the level of the first stem growth, just above where the seed potato had been planted, NOT higher up in the tower where we’d mounded dirt along the maturing stem. This disappointing result led me to plant the spring potatoes using a trench method at Laguna Honda. This was much more successful in creating a higher yield of tubers. The trench method makes it very easy to keep the stem underground where stolon growth occurs. The tubers form along the stolons, so, the more stolons the more potatoes.

To use the trench method, dig very deep holes, one foot minimum, and place a seed potato at the bottom. Barely cover the potato, leaving a visible crater above it. When the first stem and leaf growth appears, quickly cover that with dirt, again leaving a visible crater. Continue to do this until your crater disappears and the stem comes out of the flat ground. At this point, if you are quick to spot the emerging stem you can continue mounding, but I just leave the plants to grow at this point as there is enough potato growth under the soil already.

This trench method is a much easier way to ensure that the stems are kept growing underground and therefore will continue to produce the key stolons which in turn form the tubers. It is much quicker and easier to push dirt into a hole than to cart it over to shovel into to a tower. You want to make it as easy as possible to keep the growing stem underground. I’d love to hear any other potato growing strategies you might have!

Kale and Potato Stir-fry

• Melt coconut oil in a large pot
• Add chopped potatoes
• Stir until just cooked through
• Add chopped kale, salt and a little pepper and stir briefly until kale just wilts
• Serve and enjoy!

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.