Jack Frost.

Around the gardens here in The Mission, we’re packin’ up for winter.  As I write this, record low temps are due for the entire Bay Area tonight that dip below 30*.  This frost is most certainly a game-changer for our greens.  While there are many ways to prevent frost damage, luckily Amyitis doesn’t have all that much to protect at the moment.  Most of our space is now occupied by frost-hearty cover crop or planted deep with garlic and potatoes.  Some of these root crops have sprouted and I am curious to see how the frost affects them, the garlic shoots in particular.

In Vermont, November garlic plantings very quickly faced low temperatures and light.  This didn’t allow them time to sprout before the snows of winter; they lay protected under the ground until spring.  Here however, all of the garlic planted in November has seen the light of day due to our easy climate…. and now BAM!  An edge event like this frost can be quite destructive for a region unprepared for such weather.  I guess I’ll see tomorrow morning.

Frost occurs when a (deposition) surface temperature falls below that of the dew point of the surrounding air.  Plants not protected by a thermal mass or with exposed foliage quickly fall below dew point temperatures on these extremely cold nights and begin to collect ice crystals.  These ice crystals can destroy cell walls of many vegetable plants turning them black and rendering them “compost” within an hour.

Above and below are a couple of pics from a potato planting day.  The cut halves of the seed potatoes are dipped in ash ( highly alkaline) to prevent seed rot.  Tomorrow I will be experimenting with potato towers to examine the difference between methods.

Until next time,

Happy gardening.

-David

Vermaculture

Though the San Francisco summer fog has slowed down plant production at Amyitis, we not letting it slow us down!  It is true; we’ve noticed a marked stunt in growth and production across the board since the 2nd week in July.  The fog brings 50* temperatures with it each day when it arrives at around 4:30pm.  Like an old friend who’s overstayed his welcome, I was happy with the fog at first but then things turned sour.  What once provided cool relief from the intense heat of a California summer has become a nearly icy relationship.  Generally speaking, if the fog decides to burn off at all, most days it won’t do that until at least 10:30am.  That leaves very little time for our plants to take full advantage of the sun’s offerings.  Even though we are relatively shielded here in the Mission, this July the fog has been pervasive.  We’ve taken advantage of the time off from harvesting and weeding to get to some projects.  

At Amyitis’ central location we’ve lacked the time and resources to deal with our compost situation appropriately.  Until now we’ve had an open-air compost pile.  Frankly, it is a heap.  And while some of our organic waste IS composting, most of it is not.  After some thought around the matter and a little research, Eben and I decided that Vermaculture (composting with live worms) was what we really wanted to do.  Vermaculture, or worm composting, is a fast, clean, efficient and relatively orderless way to produce compost from food and yard scraps.  The worms can consume about half of their body weight per day.  What they leave behind is called “worm castings” and is literally some of the best fertilizer money can buy.  Click on the link above to learn a but more about how to do it at home.  

My good friend Matt Wickland came to lend us a hand in building the beds.  While there are many designs for worm bins, we took what we knew about worm behavior and took a stab at our own design.  We built two bins 12″ deep by about 2.5′ square that are made to rest on top of one another.  As the worms eat the vegetable matter, one can rotate the bins to keep the worms eating and take full advantage of their castings at the same time.  For so many reasons, vermaculture composting seems like the perfect compost system for the urban garden.  We’re hoping that our experiment will prove us right.  I guess that I kind of goofed.  Sometime last month I realized that our lettuce crop (which had been providing for us nicely since early April) was quite literally at the bitter end.  We plant the seeds very close together and cut them often.  This gives us a baby variety of many types of lettuce.  Since the plant is never allowed to fully mature it continues to sprout, giving us ample harvests.  Our lettuce had been going strong for a while.  In a panic a few weeks ago, I planted more lettuce in spaces I had availablele; they didn’t germinate properly.  It wasn’t until my third attempt at seeding new lettuce that the seedlings finally took.  We finally pulled up the remaining lettuce beds that had sustained us for so long and started anew.  In order to really have  super-productive gardens, it appears as though managing planting schedules is more important than I had ever realized.  I waited too long relying too heavily on a single planting.  As hard as it is to turn over a bed that is still productive, sometimes you have to in order to keep things healthy. Lesson learned.  More lettuce in late August.  

happy gardening, 

 

David

Will work for food

Volunteer Update

We’re gaining more sunlight everyday and with each new sunny moment we’re seeing great changes in our backyard farms.  These changes mean more work to make sure we can pull off great harvests for The Corner and Weird Fish, the restaurants we grow for.  More work means that we are in ever greater need for more hands.  Our volunteers have responded to those needs in numbers.  

This week Joel, Sierra, Tina, and Adrienne showed their lust for learning about food by getting dirty.  They donated a Friday to getting some plants and seeds in the ground at both of our current garden locations.  Blessed by a warm sunny day in the Mission we were able to get some of our seedlings in the ground. Throughout the day we planted head lettuce and scallions that we’d started from seed on our grow table.  After that

we got crazy with some direct seeding of arugula, tat-soi, kale, and mizuna.  While seeding doesn’t take all that long in a small backyard garden I had a great time showing people the ropes.  Beyond that, I was really grateful for all the help and good company.  Before long I reckon we’ll have some real black belt volunteers.  Thanks guys.  

Can we get a light?

While the sun sticks around a little longer now, we’ve been having some light issues on our light table in our grow room.  Our squash starts just have not seemed happy.  When a plant thinks winter is coming (i.e. when light decreases) it reacts by producing as much offspring (veggies in this case) as it can before the light is no longer enough to sustain the plant.  In controlled environments, one strictly controls the amount of light a plant receives in order to give the plant time to mature before it decides to produce fruit and ultimately die.  By systematically reducing the daily light cycle, we encourage the plant to “flower” and then “fruit”.  

In our case, our squash was flowering prematurely.  Which meant it thought death was immanent.  We had set our lights on a 12 hour time cycle to ensure that the plants had ample light to photosynthesize and grow large before we planted them outside.  But for some reason it wasn’t working.  Scratching our heads, we just couldn’t make sense of why our squash thought the end was nigh.  That is… until now.  

I donned a dunce cap the moment I realized, while laying in bed at 3am, that the master switch to the power was being turned off every night at 8:30 by our cleaning service at the restaurant.  This master switch includes our timer.  So regardless of what our timer decided to do, it was lights out every night at 8:30… no questions.  Some days our squash was getting a full day of “sun” and others it was getting maybe only 3-5 hours.   Now, with problem solved, we need to seed a new bunch of squash.  And now the death-row squash will be granted a pardon and set outside to start hardening off.   With any luck they’ll brought back to health.

I believe that Homer Simpson said it best when he said “Dooooough“!!  He knows as well as I do, its hard to sleep with a dunce cap on.  

Link of the week

This week I’ve decided to try something a bit out of the ordinary for us and suggest a link that is off the beaten path.  ”Fringe” Author Daniel Pinchbeck (2012: the return of Quetzalcoatl) writes mainly about altered consciousness and the point break of our political, social and environmental culture-wave but has also been known to wax poetic when it comes to sustainability.  While I will leave the research on his credentials up to the masses, I will advocate his very interesting blog www.realitysandwich.com.  In addition to his provoking ravings and rants about consciousness expansion, he has interesting views about the state of the environment and what we can do about it.  While he’s no Michael Pollan, his views about personal responsibility and urban farming are worth more than a mention.  Explore his blog and decide for yourself.  

Happy reading, 

David

Photo Maki

Dear Readers, 

Although it has been some time since our last post, we can assure you that we’ve been hard at work here at Amyitis.  While enjoying the warmth and glow of these holiday and inaugural seasons, we’ve been toiling away here to insure our success for the seasons that lay in wait.  We’ve been so hard at work, both at our day jobs and at the gardens, we’ve only found time now to get you caught up.

Taking swift advantage of the recent Bay Area warm spell, we motivated to get some timely projects and experiments finished.  Thus far, the results of these projects are getting us really excited as we move forward into the spring and summer seasons.  Along the way, the owners of gardens #2, showed incredible enthusiasm and generosity by having raised beds built in their yard.  This huge commitment on their behalf was humbling and inspiring.  We’re unfailingly grateful to them and their efforts to keep Amyitis alive and well.  On a day this past week I helped Michele, Amy and their builder Lucas clear brush, trees and stumps from the space to prepare for the beds.  A day later Lucas had finished the beds, and beautifully.  The before and after photos below truly speak for themselves.  But rather than ramble on here, I will let the photos do the talking.  Scroll down for a tour of what we’ve been up to.  

Happy reading,

David

From top:

1) Starts in our “start room” in the basement of Boogaloos

2) Jessie tending to the trays

3) MFS lettuce dicots for head lettuce

4) Hericium erinaceus or Lion’s Mane mushroom grown in our home kitchen

5) The Author with kitchen grown Shiitakes

6) Before and after photos of garden #2 under construction of beds

7) Garlic sprouting in garden #1 planted a couple of months ago.

Link of the Week:

Check out Novella Carpenter’s blog at www.ghosttownfarm.wordpress.com.

Novella is someone I met two years ago when I was looking to get my hands dirty.  After just having moved to the city from Vermont, I was unsure of how to get involved in the urban agriculture movement I knew was happening all around me.  As I applied for jobs I quickly realised that no job in urban farming was going to pay my San Francisco rent. Through my consistent search for a good fit, I was directed to Novella through a friend of mine.  Novella was kind enough to have me come over to her very unique garden/mini-farm operation in the east bay once or twice weekly to see how she ran things and volunteer.  She, unwittingly, is the inspiration for the blog you read today and quite possibly Amyitis itself.  Do check out her sight and read on.  What she has done and continues to do in urban agriculture is groundbreaking and fearless.  I applaud her efforts and achievements.  If you read her blog, you may too.