Green Gal

The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program through Green Gal's Garden is in full swing--we are already in week four of the twenty-week program! CSA boxes in the past month have contained a variety of veggies, such as chard, kale, summer squash, cauliflower, scallions, basil, dill, oregano, mint, rosemary, lemon balm, eggplant, spinach, cilantro, rhubarb, peas, flowers, blueberries, and more! The tomatoes are still green on their vines but there are hundreds of them, the corn is nearly ready, and the peppers are tempting me with their size but haven't started coloring up yet. So much deliciousness still to come! (See the latest photos from the garden on Instagram .) I'm grateful for so much these days--the potential contained within seeds, the land I am able to farm this summer thanks to the generosity of soon-to-be-family, the encouragement and support from those who believe in my dream and have helped the garden grow.  On harvest days like today, I am ...

This afternoon in the Farm Garden, I led a Garden Talk on my new favorite flower: Lavender! Everyone currently working in the Farm Garden took turns last week and today presenting for 10-12 minutes each on garden topics of our choice. Other apprentices shared about topics like quail, African and African-American traditional foods and crops, compost worms, the impact of colonialism and forced removal on Native American traditional foodways, the "Language of Flowers" and their meanings, mycorrhizal fungi, and more! I chose lavender because I've been collecting and drying bunches of lavender in my tent cabin for a few weeks, and as I learned more about its uses, I was blown away by its incredible range of uses, both medicinally, culinary, and beyond. I've adapted my presentation into a blog post to share with you all below. In addition to presenting on lavender, I also brought some different lavender varieties, books with recipes and information, lavender essential oil...

I'm filled to the brim with inspiration this afternoon after a delightful chat over coffee with my friend Cain at a cool little coffee shop in downtown San Jose called Social Policy (part of the Bellano "family of coffee lovers" ). (If you live in SJ, you may have seen Cain cranking down the street on his red cargo bike hauling huge boxes of awesome stuff for Cowgirl Bike Courier !) We discussed an upcoming bike/art event he is planning, a bike-to-farms ride that I'm planning, San Jose bicycle news and issues, Viva Calle SJ promotion, and more. Last evening, I also connected with friends at my house to plan our bike-to-farms ride. We had a potluck feast of homemade, vegetarian yumminess, and then we identified next steps for turning our vision into a reality. And the night before last, I attended a bike coalition meeting where I saw plans for putting bidirectional contraflow lanes around the SJSU campus and heard the good news that the Willow Glen Road Diet has overa...

The day has finally arrived! The worms are here! The mail person tried to deliver them yesterday, but we knew we wouldn't be home and put a note on the mail box. The mail person left a note indicating which post office they'd be kept at until we picked them up. This morning I biked over to retrieve them. On the way to the post office, I picked up some corn meal since I had read it would be helpful for them to have something to munch on while their first set of food begins decomposing. There's been some food slowly decomposing in the bin since earlier this week, but I don't know how well that stuff's been decomposing. Now that there are 2000 worms with some of their castings in there, I think the food will break down better since there's more moisture and material. I made sure to really wet the bedding and cardboard pieces on top because of the heat we've been having. I may need to water the bin daily if this hot weather continues. After I put the wo...

Yesterday, I was able to complete two quick garden projects. I re-potted an aloe plant, separating two baby offshoots of the aloe into their own pots, and I finished that project event before it was time to hop on my computer to work from home for the day. The other project--planting cucumber seeds--I did mid-day as a break from work, and it only took me about 15 minutes. Take a look, and remember that if you click on the images, they will open up in a larger view: The white pot with aloe in it was sitting in our backyard when we moved into this house. It didn't look too great then, and it still doesn't look as healthy as it maybe should, but I was able to help it look a little less sad. It's been on our front porch for months, and I water it less than weekly. I recently learned online that you can separate the "babies" that sprout from the parent plant and repot them. So this morning before I even made coffee, I followed instructions online, such as these...

I woke up at 8am yesterday, which hardly ever happens on weekends. Usually I sleep as long as I can before I have to get up for whatever plans I may have. Usually that means sleeping until 10am, a blissful change from my near-dawn weekday wake up time that's required for me to be first in line with my bike for the bus commute over the hill. Perhaps it was easier to get up early yesterday because my body is now fully adjusted to waking up early... or maybe (more likely) it's because I wanted to get some gardening in before bicycling over to Veggielution farm for their Saturday work day. Either way, I was up early enough to get my hands in the soil, transplant plants, plant seeds, water, and enjoy a cup of coffee. It was a much better use of my morning and more fun than sleeping. Remember the broccoli sprouts I posted about here ? They are doing great, although the tomatoes in the other can never showed themselves, sadly (old seeds may be the issue). I have kept the br...