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31 January 2011
Greetings from the Hayes Valley Farm Biodiversity Team!
Our fall and winter have been very active due to the completion of our new greenhouse, thanks to Ron Stanford, Jason Hiller, Shoukry Kabbaz, Steve Humenay, Harshal Deshmukh and countless others who helped in its construction. Since its completion, we've been able to multiply our seedling production. As a result, our volunteers have been harvesting delicious Brassicas all winter long! This fall and winter too, we've been exploring sustainable soil blocking mixes, in the attempt to wean ourselves from non-local, unsustainable ingredients to more local and sustainable ones. To this end, with the good insight from our resident micro-biologist and lead researcher Aimee Hill, we've been working with combinations of worm castings and filtered compost.
This year, we hope to be able to proudly announce a viable mix from all on-site ingredients. Aimee's also been brewing up lots of fertility teas, and greatly increasing our compost production! Shannon Stewart, member of the greenhouse team for the spring greenhouse activities is taking the lead on the planting plan for the newly designed Fell street slope; we look forward to seeing her vast creativity and knowledge come to fruition.
Meanwhile Levi Maxwell continues to introduce and research famine crops, Andean crops, and other species that may be suitable for our unique Hayes Valley microclimate. And Zoey Kroll, Curtis Schofield and I are on the verge of releasing our Neighborhood Garden Journal: an online journal, participatory data collection, and story tool that tracks the success of a variety of plants in the diverse array of micro-climates in San Francisco. This project is the result of an interest in keeping track of our 10-10-10 Global Day of Action "Garden Starter" plant boxes, over a hundred of which were distributed to folks throughout the city.
Stay tuned this year for the launch of our neighborhood worm network, new plant species lists, new internship possibilities and lots more biodiversity!
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Over a thousand volunteers, neighbors, and community members have helped coordinate the farm efforts.