Green Gal

An apprenticeship update & an exploration of what our treatment of weeds perhaps reveals about the limits we place on compassion It's already week eight of the Apprenticeship; time has truly flown by here at the farm and gardens! This evening in the Farm Center I'm surrounded by apprentices playing charades, others prepping for tomorrow's meals, and bouquets of fragrant and enticing flowers from our flower and bouquet class yesterday. Earlier today, I learned a bit about how to grow peppers as well as the many different kinds of peppers in the world. (The article we read and reviewed this morning is available online here .) We will be growing 67 different varieties of peppers in the Chadwick Garden alone this season, totaling more than 1500 individual plants throughout the garden! These will all be planted by hand. Sometime next week, we've been promised a dried and smoked pepper tasting session, as well as a potato and garlic varieties taste t...

The weeks pass by so quickly here, each day filled with learning the "why" behind the "how," engaging in interesting discussions with new friends, working, and getting "schooled up" (as Orin Martin would say) in how to be effective and skilled technicians in the art of gardening and farming. Each day could become its own blog post with the story of what was learned, practiced, discovered, and enjoyed. Today's update is a series of quotes, thoughts, and tidbits, a somewhat brief glimpse into my daily life here.   The Cultivation of the Gardener Each week, we have readings due on Wednesday that relate to the topic of our class for that day. One of our readings recently was titled "The Cultivation of the Gardener," written by a few CASFS (Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems) staff a number of years ago. The article describes the biodynamic French Intensive horticulture system brought to UCSC by Alan Chadwick in 1967...

In fall 2016, I began designing the backyard at Green Guy's mom's house so that it can become a cornucopia of year-round vegetables, flowers, and berries in a garden featuring symmetrical raised beds. The past two weekends, Green Guy, his mom, and I have been hard at work turning the design into reality. It's been a fun, hands-on opportunity for me to put into practice what I'm learning in my Permaculture Design Course (PDC), and it's also helping me better understand what to think about as I continue designing a permaculture garden at a local winery for my PDC group project (more on this soon in a future blog post). The original (ambitious) design of the backyard from fall 2016. There are now only two beds that are 11' x 8' with a 2' walkway in the U part. The raspberries and blackberries (4 of each) are spaced around the perimeter of the yard, and the blueberries (4) are in containers at the corners of the raised beds that face toward the center o...