valentines day = Double Digging

What better way to spend Valentines Day then to turn some rich soil with some beautiful garden friends. In effort to maximize the crop turnover, a lovely and wise landscaping guru came to teach and assist the Secret Gardeners. Casey Allen (guy in the red shirt), of San Francisco Landscapes is admired for his eco-friendly urban gardening. He specializes in permaculture design and keeping the energy level high. With the help of homemade and home grown sweets and savories, a 4'x 15' bed was turned, forked, composted and planted within just a couple hours. You can check out this book for more information on the specifics of double digging: 7th edition of How to Grow More Vegetables*, by John Jeavons. There are really just four steps to Double Digging. 1) Remove all the large plants in the bed 2) Lay down about 1" of compost on top of the whole bed 3) Double dig a 1 spades width and depth, turn soil to the right or the left of where you are diggin' 4) Use a digging fork to add air to the whole bed. (100 sqft take approx. 8hrs) Enjoy the pics and HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
Monica




____________
Casey Allen
The Green Gardener
San Francisco Landscapes
office: 415 585 9137
www.sflandscapes.com
casey@sflandscapes.com

As the Bee Garden Project comes to an end it is really just the beginning of an ongoing opportunity to become a permanant volunteer at the secret garden as well as other community gardens throughout San Francisco. The process of creating this space in a vacant part of a community garden, has taught us how little it can take to make a large difference in your community. The garden now hosts a safe, healthy and beautiful pace for children and adults alike to take refuge.
we started off an educational be the change process with a goal to bring awareness about the depleting bee population. The transformation of the space from an empty plot of land to a sustaining garden of bee attracting foliage, is now a beautiful sanctuary for people to spend a quiet moment out of their busy life. Children now have a place to play, learn and volunteer at; the Honey Bee Garden.

Garden Day With The Children

What a perfect day to have neighborhood children explore the Secret Garden!! The weather was superb for gardening and outdoor crafts! The children galloped through the garden gate into the sunny warm garden. The leaves from the plum trees had turned a deep burgandy and the Datura blossoms were in full bloom; a lovely Californian Fall day it was.
We welcomed the children into the garden with snacks and juice. Everyone received a shovel to get dirty with!
They were so excited to help lay down the brick pathway and curiosity abound with the earth worms as the photos below show up and close:)
Thanks to the crafty little hands of the 8 children that took part in the days activities, the garden is now decorated with beautiful paper Bees. The sparkly glue was a big hit.
The day was successful and the children left with more excitement then they entered with. They asked us when they could come back!
For all of you that are curious out there regarding garden hours, whenever you see the garden gates open, please come in!!!!
warmly,
the garden group

Gettin' Dirty!

After a few weeks of pooling together our money and gathering various bee attracting plants, we all met up at the garden today, to get our hands dirty. The light rain from last night made the soil moist and perfect for tiling. First we racked off dead leaves and branches and then smoothed out the larger clumps of soil to further prep the area. We were surprised and delighted to find that the soil was rich with bugs and worms and didn't seem to need mulch or manure. After fully prepping the area and marking out the brick pathways we were finally ready for the fun part; planting! We placed the larger trees in areas where they would have more space to grow, and filled in the rest with Rosemary, Lemon Verbena, Salvia, Cestrum, African Basil, Osteospermum Daisies, Mallow and Nicotina. Within the next few days we will post a list of garden centers that provide native bee plants, if you would like to create one of your own. It doesn't take much space to create a bee sanctuary. More to come shortly, so stay tuned:)

A link to donate !

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=PKF2U7LYK4SHJ&lc=US&item_name=the%20honey%20bee%20project&currency_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted



Here is a SAFE link to donate to our group.
WE appreciate your consideration:)


thanks!

WELCOME ALL!!!!

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG!
We are doing a project locally in the Mission of San Francisco at the beautiful, Secret Garden. It's called the "Bee Project" and it's purpose is to share beautiful garden space with the community while hosting a plot of flora dedicated to honey bees.

We invite you, our viewers to take part in this project either physically or by reading the blog.
Please feel free to email us with question and comments! Your thoughts are greatly appreciated!!

We hope that you can use this resource for creating your own honey bee sanctuary.
And remember that without these important little creatures, our future of food will be grim.

We are very excited to get going on this project. Donations of plants would be greatly appreciated if you have the means.

So far we have $10....not much to get going. But! If anyone is willing to donate, anything at all, $1 or more or plants if you have any, WE WOULD BE SOOO ETERNALLY GRATEFUL!!!!!!!
You can send us a pay pal to honeypielove@gmail.com
and see your donations in action on our blog or at the garden!!!!

More to come soon!
Warmly,
Monica, Amelia and Clara

P.S. COME VISIT THE GARDEN!!!
visit: harrison between 23rd and 24th
www.freefarmstand.blogspot.com

buy jewelry to help support the bees!
www.honeypielove.etsy.com