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Written by David Cody
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Tuesday, 18 November 2008 15:22 |
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These last weeks have been very productive, thanks to the awesome volunteers. We have been tirelessly sheet mulching and the end is in our sights! This weekend we will be ordering 2 trucks of mulch and maybe 3 bales of cardboard, I really think we can finish it this weekend.
Saturday workdays are going to be official now. Jay was out last Saturday and managed to get much of his "compost factory" installed. His grasp of the patterns on the site and implementation of them is really impressive. If you havent seen it yet, go on by and see if you can notice the flow of the pathways, and how they interact with the function of the site.
It looks like next Monday will be bringing us the spent mycelium blocks from Far West Fungi. Should be a mix of oyster, shiitake, lions mane, king trumpet, and a slew of others, let the fittest survive!
We have a 1000 lb. bag of rock dust waiting in S. SF and we will need some help getting that on the site. The folks at the yard will load it with forklift, but we will need 4 people to grab one of the 4 handles and move it off whatever truck brings it. We need a willing pickup truck or van, so if anyone is ready to do that this week let me know. Even if we just get it loaded on a truck or van any day this week,then the truck can swing by on friday or saturday and we will have the people there to help unload it.
We have an order of seeds and innoculant coming from Peaceful Valley thans to David Glober. I have some favas already so I plan to get some going right away just to see how they do.
You may notice some new advertsing links at the left of the page. This is a new experiment to see if we can raise some extra money for the project. We get 5% of the sales of anything bought from them if you click the link. That only lasts about 30 days usually, so if you decide to go back and buy something from them, use the links here to get to their page so they know who sent them.
Lastly, we are gettin ready to order trees. We have a nice line-up of species thanks to Kevin and Tree. We will need to raise some money to afford them and so an "Adopt a Tree" campaign might be a good idea for the neighborhood. What we will do is take our species list and quantities needed, and go door-to-door to see who wold like to purchase trees for the site. Folks can pick which tree they want to buy, this should be a fun way to interact with the community and encourage participation. IF you are interested in being part of that campaign, talk to David: either stop by on Friday or Saturday or drop an email using the contacts link on this page.
Looking forward to seeing you all this weekend!
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Written by David Cody
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Tuesday, 11 November 2008 11:14 |
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The sheet mulching goes on. We finally moved through the first delivery of materials we got, 60 yards worth. I estimate that we have put down 5.5 thousand pounds of cardboard under that mulch.
With half the site sheet mulched and some of the swales partially installed, its going to be much harder to stage the next material delivery on Friday. We will proably have to drop much of it on the sidewalk and do our best to get it installed. I think we will have to have a saturday workday also to get it done. We are so close! With enough people we could be done sheet mulching by Saturday finish.
We really need some finished compost for planting. If you know of any way we can get our hands on some, please contact me. I have added a new main menu link for things we need. We will be adding to this list as we go.
BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
Friday AND Saturday workday this week! Lets get that sheet mulch finished!
And now, here's some pics from last Friday.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 11 November 2008 11:40 )
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Written by David Cody
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Friday, 31 October 2008 21:34 |
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Today we got through 2 more bales of cardboard and nearly used half of our total mulch that was delivered last week. We have had some problems with scavengers trying to steal the bales of cardboard and on more than one occasion we have had police up there. I personally had to jump on a moving truck, open the door, and slam the thing in park to get one of them to stop. This is just a bit more adventurous than we want so from now on, we will only bring cardboard up as needed. We are about 1/3 of the way through the sheet mulch and then we wont have to deal with that particular problem.
The first swale went in today and that allowed us to clear a good amount of the 'compost' material off of the sidewalk. This part was really exciting as we start to see the site take on some shape. We are putting a lot of materials on the site, and I feel that in no way are we skimping or strecthing out the materials to get it done. We have been taking our time and laying it on quite thick.
 
I have contacted Far West Fungi and they have agreed to let us take as many of their spent growing blocks as we need. One idea is to grab a few hundred of the Pluerotus Ostreatus (Oyster Mushroom) and stick them all throughout the sheet mulch and swales. This will add nitrogen and also inoculate the entire site. Oyster mushrooms are known to be very good at breaking down toxins and hydrocarbons and also will help reduce the acidity of the mulch by digesting the woody material. A good amount of the mulch is eucalyptus and you can smell it. This and other methods should adequately deal with the soil PH. Other species of mycelium are planned, myco-rhizal species are a good idea once we figure out what trees we are doing. We dont expect much in the way of fruiting mushrroms, we simply want to increase the bioactivity of the soil.
We are also working on a a plan to have the whole site sprayed with compost tea. In addition we would lke to amend the soil with some rock dust to bring up the mineral levels. These strategies along with our winter compost crops should really get us off to a great start for the spring planting.
Fun was had by all today. I know not everyone can make it on Fridays so we have been talking more actively about a regular weekend day. If you are interested, I encourage you to come to the next SF Permaculture Guild meeting this coming Wednesday. It is at the Red Vic Peace Cafe in the Upper Haight. We meet at 7:30 pm
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 01 November 2008 19:42 )
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Written by David Cody
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Saturday, 25 October 2008 09:02 |
On Fiday, October 24th we got our first deliveries of materials from Bay View Greenwaste. The trucks started coming at around 8:30 am and in all we got 40 cubic yards of woodchip mulch and 20 cubic yards of their "compost" which is a finely ground material that is fairly hot.
 
The driver was ready to bring a fourth truckload but we couldn't find the space for it. We eventually had to dump the third load partially on the sidewalk and shovel it to clear a walkway. That process took us until lunch and the actual sheet mulching started at around 1 pm.
the sheet mulch went on pretty thick, since there is little soil on the site, this is our only chance to really get a good start on building a layer of soil. Potrero Hill is basically a giant boulder of Serpentine rock. We laid the cardboard down at around 6-8 inches thick. On top of that the mulch went in at around 10-12 inches thick. On average, we have around 18 inches of sheet mulch. By the end of the day we managed to use around 1000 lbs. of cardboard and blanketed an area perhaps 150-200 square feet.
During the course of the day, many of the locals stopped by and asked what we were doing. The response was great from the community and everyone was very encouraging. We posted a box on the site which holds some flyers explaning the vision of this site. The flyer has the URL of this blog.
This was a great day in San Francisco. The sun was hot, the work was hard, and the company was good. I look forward to much more of this. See you on Friday!
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 25 October 2008 16:50 )
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Written by David Cody
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Monday, 20 October 2008 22:41 |
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We will start around 10am and go sometimes until dusk. Theres lots to do at the site, head on over and look for Tree or David.
Over the winter, we are attempting to get as much healthy soil built as possible. The mulch materials we will be bringing in are far from ideal for growing plants, they are not composted enough. What they are is a resource that is given away free, and comes to us at a much lower energy cost than prime growing soil. We will transform this material on site, with ecological strategies. We will mix in as much amendments as is availlble free from natural sources withtout harming the source. Given these guidelines, local sourcing of otherwise disregarded material is ideal. Nitrogen fixing plants will be planted such as fava beans and other legumes along with groundcover. By spring, a modest harvest will pave the way to a soild productive planting strategy.
Over the next course of Fridays, we will be sheet mulching and building the "swales" out of the mulch material. If you have a pickup truck and want to know how to help, let us know. Keep an eye out at the local grocery stores for straw bales. After the pumpkin season we could use quite a few bales for a top-mulch over the planting beds. |
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Last Updated ( Friday, 24 October 2008 18:31 )
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Written by David Cody
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Monday, 20 October 2008 20:36 |
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AT the corner of 18th & Rhode Island, a lot has remianed vacant for many years. The SFPG has been cleared to develop a thriving Permaculture SIte there, and that is exactly what is happening! The site is intended to serve as a living classroom, permaculture demostration, and production site.
This project consists initially of two phases:
First, the summer 2008 PDC class at the Randall Museum was given the opportunity of designing the site as their class project. Taking this design and through collaborative visioning the guild will tweak the design and present it to the neighbors.
The class did an amazing job and their design presentation slideshow is posted below.
The second phase is the first actual breaking of gorund, or in this case, the non-breaking of ground. Preparations will be made for overwintering and building as much soil as possible for the spring. The general design will be modified in appropriate ways using feedback loops observed during the installation process. Maximum soil building will be a primary objective early on.
Sheet mulching and mulching in general will come first, compost crops planted as much as possible, water will be free from above. We will have the winter and early spring to get a handle on the water needs for the dry season.
With spring we can elaborate on diversity and plan for productive crops and further soil building.
Ultimately, the site is envisioned to be a densly planted, terraced design taking advantage of the site features. Trees and other tall plants will be kept within appropriate dimensions for harvesting, usually under 8 feet. improvement of site ecology and diversity of life is the main focus.
Yields envisioned for the site include:
- food yield to share
- improved ecology
- living classroom
- tranquil space for gathering
- community building
Please Contact us for more details.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 24 October 2008 18:30 )
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