Foodscaping

Mission High School Greening Project

2011-11-14T16:46:00.000-08:00

I have been a long time resident and fan of the Mission District, and of course the Mission Basilica, the birth place of the city of San Francisco. When I found out I had the opportunity to work on the design of the gardens for Mission High School, I was absolutely honored, such a beautiful and historic building.

I wanted to do a design that reflected the history and the architecture of the building

The courtyards were built in traditional Spanish style, beautiful but in different stages of disrepair. I had this odd feeling of having just stepped into Havana, Cuba.

I took my first design clues from the ceiling of the main lobby, which was covered in Moorish geometry

I wanted to incorporate that same design pattern and apply it to the courtyard. Can't go wrong with geometry on a traditional Spanish courtyard

So here are the initial concept designs

The Jay Pugano and the students at Mission High created this video where I present the concept ideas to the school community

Full Design Description Video

The original design has a zome at the center, which everybody loved. Unfortunately the funding we had was not enough for the zome, but we are looking at ways to fund-raise and make the zome a reality as an outdoor classroom/ art piece.

The design was approved by the school community so we moved forward with the construction, which had to be completed during the summer while the students were out on vacation

It was very exciting to see all that concrete broken down and allowing the earth beneath it to breath again

The funding for this project came from Proposition A Bond Program which is financed, in large part, by two local bonds passed by San Francisco voters in November 2003 and November 2006. These are facilities bonds, intended to improve SFUSD school sites by bringing them into Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance.

The San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance was able to successfully advocate for schoolyard greening by securing a portion ($7 million) of the Proposition A voter-approved school bonds.

This money was distributed amongst 45 elementary schools in SFUSD which received $150,000 to green their schoolyards. Mission High School was allowed to apply for a grant to get some of this funding too.

They were awarded $100,000 for this project, which might sound like a lot, but turns out that concrete removal in SF is very expensive. So we focused our funds on the removal of the concrete and the placing of infrastructure (planter beds, irrigation, etc)

The planting was going to be left out to be done by the students and the school community.

That is the fun part anyway, so basically we wanted to create a canvas for the students to be able to plant and create a garden

It was exciting to the stars from my design come to life

Accessible raised planters were installed

Sub drain irrigation was installed for the stars

The pathways were filled with decomposed Granite and the planting areas with soil

The stars were planted with no mow turf

The small courtyard got planter beds with wide seating edges so that the students could sit on them and eat their lunch there.

By the end of the summer the students came back to two remodeled courtyards with plenty of space to plant a garden, however much work still needs to get done by them.

They got started right away and most of the planters on the small courtyard have been planted.

It is beautiful to see this space get transformed by each of the students giving it a personal touch.

For the past four years I have built a public altar for day of the dead at Garfield Park. This year I had surgery and I was not up for the task. I was excited when my friend Karina Borgogno shared her idea of building an altar for Wangari Maathai, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and founder of the Green Belt Movement. Wangari was an inspiration to Karina and her idea was to have an altar made of all living edible trees, plants, herbs. I was happy to participate at the altar building as support and help her. I suggested we donate the trees and plants to Mission High after the event.

Here is Karina talking to the kids about Wangari and telling them the story of the hummingbird.

With the help of the students, we planted 2 fig trees and two plum trees. 2 on each courtyard.

Big Thanks to Susan Boshoven, Biology teacher who coordinating the planting with her students and who has done a lot of work for the Greening project at Mission High

It was a really fun day and Karina showed those kids how to plant trees

Thank you to all the students who participated.

Thank you Karina for being a humming bird with me

GIVE AND TAKE: THE EAST BAY’S GROWING FOOD-SHARING CULTURE

2011-10-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

Edible East Bay Magazine wrote this nice article on Sharing, and the Algarden Urban Farm and the work that Giancarlo and I have done there is featured.

Give and Take: The East Bay’s Growing Food-Sharing Culture

By Sarah Henry

Pictured: Some of the homemade goods offered at the East Bay Homemade Food Swap. (Photos courtesy of Becky Spencer.)

Sharing has made a comeback. East Bay residents are now bartering, trading, exchanging, swapping, or simply giving away an abundance of homegrown produce or homemade food in a variety of creative ways. Of course, gardeners who grow their own veggies have always doled out surplus squash and spinach to neighbors (or as the San Francisco Chronicle recently wisecracked, arugula and cilantro, the Berkeley equivalent of summer’s backyard bounty).

But these days, guerrilla gardeners and DIY preservers and picklers have raised the bar on the sharing circuit. Hardcore urban homesteaders exchange honey and eggs for goat milk and rabbit meat. Some even give their excess goodies to local restaurants or food artisans on the sly, in return for a share of the finished product—handing over, say, a bag of Meyer lemons that will find their way into fresh pasta dough.

Resourceful local residents who don’t have land but are willing to offer their labor use local email lists to find homeowners who have a place where a produce plot could thrive, if only somebody would plant one. Happy produce matches have happened this way, with both parties reaping the harvest. Similarly, Neighborhood Vegetables, a loosely organized garden work group overseen by veteran organizer Laurence Schechtman, pairs people in Oakland and Berkeley who need help with their gardens with people who want to till the soil. Beans and beets have been known to change hands at these gatherings too.

Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library lets people “borrow” seeds, Albany hosts a garden swap on Tuesday nights where folks drop off fava beans and snap up Santa Rosa plums. A similar crop swap started in July in Berkeley on Monday evenings; Phat Beets holds a produce and plant exchange in Oakland on Saturdays.

Some folks help themselves, others a whole community. Anna Chan in Clayton (also known as the Lemon Lady) and Natasha Boissier of North Berkeley Harvest take the sharing concept a step further: They glean excess produce in their areas and drop off bags of fresh fruits and vegetables for hungry mouths at community soup kitchens and homeless shelters. The newly opened Urban Adamah, a one-acre educational farm with Jewish roots in West Berkeley, plans to give away much of its produce to people in need in the neighborhood.

Here are three local efforts to share resources that result in good grub for all.

Patricia Algara and Giancarlo Muscardini: Algarden

Pictured: Giancarlo Muscardini at work in the borrowed West Berkeley garden space he shares with Patricia Algara (with bees). (Photos by Nicki Rosario.)

She’s a landscape architect with an urban ag focus, but without land of her own. He’s a proponent of permaculture who wanted to plant produce in his neighbor’s yard. Patricia Algara and Giancarlo Muscardini met a few years ago when they were both eyeing the same double lot of lawn in West Berkeley that was crying out to become an edible oasis. They decided to team up, approached the owners about borrowing part of the yard, and after a legal agreement addressing liability concerns was drawn up and a fence with a locked gate was put in place, a demonstration urban farm was born.

The homeowners provide the land, Algara much of the ongoing labor (the initial garden design and buildout was a joint effort by Algara and Muscardini), and water is piped from Muscardini’s residence next door. His permaculture principles, which emphasize using resources on hand rather than bringing in supplies, informs the entire space. Old cardboard boxes, for instance, form the sheet mulch.

Currently, the space holds a greenhouse, beehives, and garden beds boasting loads of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. A rainwater catchment project is in the works.

It’s a win-win all round. For homeowners Matt Haber and Jane Diamond, who both work full time for the Environmental Protection Agency and have spent a lot of their off-work hours gutting and renovating their 1880 Victorian home, it’s a delight to have an aesthetically pleasing edible garden in their formerly grass-filled yard. “We had grand plans to put in a garden, and we did plant a lot of fruit trees when we first got here,” says Haber, who has lived here since 1984. “But fixing up the house took up so much of our time we just didn’t get to the yard.”

Algara, who grew up in Mexico, where her grandfather tended a family garden full of tomatoes, lettuce, and corn, is grateful to now have a space where she can grow her own food. The fact that she can also share her knowledge and excess bounty with others makes it all the more satisfying. Up until recently she hosted weekly Friday lunches in the garden, which featured foods grown on site. (The local chef who cooked for these meetups has since relocated, so Algara has moved her community meals to San Francisco, where she lives.) Algara and Muscardini hold regular garden work parties and permaculture workshops that are open to the public, at which visitors are educated on the myriad benefits of growing their own food. (Check Algara’s blog for details on upcoming events.) “We’ve done so much with this garden in such a short amount of time,” Algara says. “I hope we serve as an example to others about what can happen when people pool their resources.”

There have been unexpected benefits to the cooperative project. “I enjoy having people spend time in the garden; I’m glad it serves the community,” says Haber. “And even though we ate pretty healthily before the garden, I eat a lot more kale now. When you have food that fresh you feel like you just have to eat it.”

Zonotopia

2011-07-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

I know this is not garden related but....

This summer we are working hard on the design and production of Zonotopia for burningman 2011

Check out the design video and if you can help us by donating to our online fund raising campaign

http://www.indiegogo.com/Zonotopia

Zome Mani Padme Zome

Permaculture crash course

2011-06-20T19:28:00.000-07:00

On Saturday we had a permaculture crash course at the Algarden. It was taught through the Institute of Urban Homesteading and Ruby Blume (aka sparkybeegirl) was there co-teaching with Giancarlo and I

It was a beautiful day for an outdoor class and the setting was really charming

It is impossible to cover all of permaculture in a one day class, so we focused on the principles and some of the design elements

We started the day with a tour of Giancalo's food forest and the Algarden History

He talked about bamboo, where to plant it, how to plant it, and why to plant it, or not...be very careful with bamboo

Bamboo is great for carbon sequestration and great to build garden projects but if not planted carefully and the right species it can take over.

He showed us his plant guilds and how stacking functions worked in his garden

Showed us the chicken coop

The rain water catchment system

The relationship between nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators, and Insectaries

He is a wealth of information

And at the Algarden tour: potato towers, sheet mulching, mushrooms

Planting beds with cooper edges to prevent snails

Quick stop for a strawberry tasting

The herb garden to attract beneficial insects and to create magical potions

We talked about gardening for the bees allowing everything to go to flower and seed. The bees love it!

After the tour we moved on to class discussion on the permaculture principles and how to apply them in our life

After that we took a lunch break with an amazing pot luck

My favorite garden student/teacher Muluk came to join us for part of the class

After lunch we had some Personal Ecology/ community building activities led by Ruby - very California (not on the Permaculture manual)

After that we moved on to some design elements and a soils demonstration.

Check out our compost. It's about 110F hot, hot, hot

Sparkybee girl was feeling at home teaching next to the hives

Hey you got a matching hive! Did you call the bees before coming to class?

Giarcarlo showing off the soil in his garden.

He has been working this beauty for nine years. 100% organic matter.

I have never seen any body so proud about their soil

They were impressed!

We finished the class by planting a guild under the apricot tree. Nitrogen fixers, dynamic accumulators and insect attractors

I hope you had as much fun as I did during this class.

Thank you so much for coming to our class

Algarden Cafe Dinner

2011-06-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

We had our first Algarden Cafe "Candlelight Dinner" at the Zomicile and it was beautiful!

I'm really delighted with the outcome, it was delicious and charming. And overall I believe everybody had a really good time.

I want to start by thanking the team that made this possible. Starting from the left Pei-Yee working on the awesome desserts, Chef Stephanie did and outstanding job converting my veggies into delicious culinary combinations and the amazing Rob Bell, who made the tables, the Algarden cafe sign, helped me set up and bar-tended.Thank you so much! I also want to thank Giancarlo Muscardini, our head farmer, who was not able to make it to the dinner, but he is a huge part of making all this food a reality.

And here is the spread

Grilled favas

Lettuces, strawberries, blue cheese, edible flowers

Red beets, beet greens, chard, chives

Dinosaur and russian kale, lemon, borage

Daikon radish, radish greens, preserved lemons, arugula

Parsnips, chipotle aioli, parsley, lemon

French lentils, fava greens, onions, roasted potatoes, eggs

The flower arrangements came from the garden too, cilantro and carrot flowers.

The desserts were equally impressive

Strawberry and lemon curd pastries

Honey and pistachio caramels

Meyer lemon and lavender bars

It was really delicious and people were happy and excited to be participating in this true farm to table experience

The setting was lovely and I was amazed at the incredible combination of flavors and the amount of food that we got from the garden. We served dinner for 20.

This is how the veggies looked before, freshly harvested the night before the dinner

We talked about our mission for doing this work and bringing people closer to their food source. In this case the produce traveled 13 miles, a mere one percent of the national average for any food item on the grocery store!

I was very happy to see every body enjoying themselves and I'm looking forward to planning another one later this summer

Keep your eyes open for the next Algarden dinner, you do not want to miss it!

Thank you very much!

Algarden Candle Light Dinner

2011-06-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

Algarden Candle Light Dinner

I'm joining forces with Chef Stephanie for this special farm to table candle light dinner

What: An abundant buffet dinner

When: Thursday, June 9th at 7:00pm. Limited Space, RSVP through your spot here:

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1609282407

Where: The Zomicile 2149 Harrison St. (At 18th St. Mission District, SF)

How Much: Dinner is $30 + cash bar (non alcoholic mint iced tea included)

For those of you who have not experienced the Algarden because it was in the East Bay, you now get to enjoy it in the Mission, as a 4 course candle lit dinner at the Zomicile, Foodscaping's new home.

If you are unfamiliar with the Algarden cafe history and Mission here is a little bit of background.

In the winter of 2010, after two years of working the soils at the Algarden, we had a bounty of food, way more than what I and the neighbors could eat. I teamed up with Julia Abbassi creator of the community supported bread box "Pandora's box" to collectively advance our passions for urban agriculture and local food production through the establishment of the Algarden Café. We prepared meals that celebrate local agriculture, fresh ingredients harvested at the peak of ripeness, and strengthened of the relationship between producers and consumers.

For this event I'm joining forces with Chef Stephanie. Chef Stephanie's cuisine honors the organic, local and seasonal ingredients abundant in the bay area. Her approach to cooking is with a balance of positive intention and playful ingenuity.

The meals for the Algarden cafe are composed nearly entirely of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, honey and eggs from the garden, and each course is intended to showcase the ingredients so customers can fully appreciate the flavor, texture and experience of eating farm-fresh food.

The Algarden Cafe’s goal is to build community and increase awareness and value for locally produced, organic fare through the common medium of food.

Join us fot the Algarden cafe dinner in San Francisco on Thursday June 9th.

RSVP at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1609282407

Irrigation work Party

2011-05-31T08:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you so much to everyone who made it out to our work party on May 7th. We had a great day and got a lot done.

Special Thanks to Jose de Jesus Leal, who arrived with a huge amount of irrigation materials which he donated to the Algarden and he helped us get started with the irrigation process.

The water for the Algarden, as I have mentioned before, comes from Giancarlo's house next door. One of the first projects at the Algarden was rerouting the water line and installing 3 hose-bibs. We used one of those to set the irrigation line.

Alex and Megan were amazing helpers in digging the irrigation trench

At one point Alex, in his usual inquisitive skeptical self, asked if adding all that plastic tubbing for the irrigation was congruent with permaculture principles. Giancarlo who was walking by and heard the question jumped in to answer with a big YES, because having that irrigation was going to free us from having to spend 3 hours everyday watering the garden, and that is a huge energy saving. I also added that drip irrigation is a lot more water efficient and we do not loose any water to evaporation. I think he was satisfied with the answer.

We also worked on building another raised planter bed. We are doing this because we have a pretty bad slug infestation which makes it impossible for us to get plants started from seed, the slugs just eat them away. So Giancarlo's brilliant solution to this is having a cooper edge on the wood and that way the slugs can not enter the planting beds and eat our starts.

Almudena and Lisa did a great job at pruning the fruit trees

Jaime was the sheet mulching star!

The garden is looking great and it is thanks to all of your help. Thank you so much for helping us keep this garden going!

You never leave empty handed when you visit the Algarden.

Varroa mites

2011-05-20T10:22:00.000-07:00

Bees have been a wonderful addition to my life. I can say that I have been forever change because of them, my perception of the world, the environment and relations has been altered in a way that can not be undone. I continue to learn and bee amazed by them. However, this no simple hobby. I jumped into becoming a bee keeper without much thought and with the understanding that bees are easy, you just get the boxes going, they do their thing, and then you just take the honey. WRONG!

Perhaps, there was a time when it was that simple but, Veroa mites have really changed everything in bee keeping. There are chemical ways to treat the mites but the mites have become resistant and are now a huge problem affecting our bees. I had a mite problem last year and a tried the powder sugar method and it kind off work keeping the mite levels down but they were not gone. however I got away with it. But this year the problem can not be avoided any more, I have a serious mite infestation. I knew this because I could see many bees with deformed wings.

As you can see in this images, the mites get into the larva cells to lay their eggs. And they cal lay up to 4 or 5 eggs per cell, they especially like to do it on the drone cells because they have the same incubation period. The mites attach to the pupa and feed from it which cause the bees to hatch with deformed wings.

This are drone cells which were completely infested with mites.

I tried to remove all the drone cells from the hive and then fed them to the chickens

The chickens love it!

So that takes care of some of the mites, but there are still a lot of them in the hive, and lots of them attached to the bees. I was resistant to using any chemicals to treat the mites, I have read and heard all kinds of information, everybody has a different opinion. It is hard to know what to trust, so I'm going with my intuition and with the comfort of knowing that this is the process of learning and some mistakes can be made on that process. All I knew for sure was that I had to do something with those mites. I went to a lecture by Randy Oliver from Scientific bee keeper and he pointed out that although mites themselves won't kill your hive, their presence will debilitate your hive and can be a factor to cause its death. He suggested a few natural miticides made out of acids and oils. You can read all about them here.

http://scientificbeekeeping.com/varroa-management/

I decided to use Apilife VAR mostly because of all of his suggestions this seemed like the easiest to apply and after some research it seemed to be a safe option. It is a tablet made out of concentrated Tymol oil. The bees are resistant to the amount of oil but the mites are not so they leave the hive. I used half of the recommended amount and repeated the treatment after 10 days. Here is a research paper I found on this product used in Switzerland.

http://www.culturaapicola.com.ar/apuntes/sanidad/varroa/timol_varroa_i.pdf

I broke the tablets into small pieces and placed it on top of the brood. I did noticed that the bees moved away, the smell is strong and the bees did not like it.

I'm very happy to report that after the treatment, I have not seen any mites. Lets hope it stays like that.

After I finished dealing with the mite problem on Stella, I checked on Gloria (the new captured swarm) and noticed that there was no queen, not sure how that happened but I could not find a queen and there were no eggs so I knew there was no queen. I immediately got on the phone to try an order a queen and everybody in California and Hawaii was sold out till mid June. I could not wait that long so I needed to have the bees make a new queen. Any fertilized egg can be made into a queen, the bees feed that egg royal jelly and make a bigger cell for a queen and Voilà you got a queen. The problem is getting that queen to survive her nuptial flight and get fertilized. And then not knowing who she's mating so you do not have any guarantees on the type of bees that you will have, the queen can mate with up to 10 different drones.

This is another one of those controversial issues in bee keeping. Ideally you want to have a mated queen that is hygienic, mite resistant, and docile. But then, there is the other argument you want to develop genetic diversity in your hive and have bees that can adapt to your local environment. Yes, I want both, I do not have an answer on this issue. As I was dealing with the mites on the other hive, I could see the benefit of having a mite resistant breed, but at this moment I had no choice, I had to take the risk and try to get a queen made by my bees.

To do this I had to transfer a frame with fertile eggs from Stella (who has a queen) to Gloria (Queen-less)

As I checked the brood on Stella I found a few queen cells already made. This was good news for Gloria, I queen was already being made so I transfered those frames.

But it was bad news for me, having queen cells is an indication that the hive is ready to swarm.

Ideally you want to prevent your hive from swarming, so I took a few brood frames and moved them over to Gloria and placed empty frames in Stella giving her more room to grow and hopefully preventing it from swarming.

Queen cells, as you can see in this picture, are much bigger than a regular bee pupa cell

I love the reflection of the sun on the nectar in this images

There were two queen cells in this frame and a some fertilized eggs, I hope Gloria gets a queen soon.

Spring is a very busy time for a bee keeper, if you are thinking of becoming a bee keeper allow yourself plenty of bee time in the spring.

Thank you very much to Aimee Goggins who took the mite close up pictures and the picture of me in action.

Urban Homesteading- The book

2011-04-22T19:52:00.000-07:00

My friend Ruby Blume from the Institute of Urban Homesteading along with Rachel Kaplan wrote this beautiful book on urban homesteading

http://urban-homesteading.org/

The book is awesome, full of colorful pictures and great description on how to do things and why to do them, they have a good explanation on the politics of why to do this type of work, join this movement and remove your self as much as you can from the established system.

The most exciting part of this book, for me, is that there is a write up about me and the work that I have been doing at the Algarden with Giancarlo

Here is what they wrote about me, Giancarlo and our project at the Algarden. Enjoy.

"Patricia Algara is a landscape architect who practices urban agriculture on a double lot in Berkeley, CA that she borrows from aneighbor. Having come from a family of farmers in Mexico, working the land isinstinctive to Patricia, but when she came to this country, she feltoverwhelmed by the difficulties of finding a place to farm. During a winterstorm a fence got blown away revealing an empty lot with perfect sun exposuretwo blocks from where she works. She met Giancarlo Muscardini the neighbor to the right of the unused lot, she asked him about the empty space that was a huge contrast to his own lush garden, edible garden and orchard. He knew the neighbors and had dreamed of doing something on the next-door site for a long time.

"It drove him crazy to see the neighbors mowing the weedsevery other week. So together we wrote a formal proposal for the use of theland," Patricia recalls. “We met with the neighbors. They were excited buthad some issues. I had a lawyer draft an agreement so they aren’t liable ifanyone gets hurt. They didn’t want an open community garden, so they fenced theproperty in a way to keep it private for them and usable for us. I have keys and can bring people and wehave work parties and events, but always in collaboration with the owners’needs.”

Together,Patricia and Giancarlo designed and built the garden. During the first work was done on setting up infrastructure—putting in agreenhouse, and garden beds, but mostly amending the soil which was really hardclay so that things could grow. Water was piped into the garden fromGiancarlo’s place next door. “When we first started, it was all grass so we hada lot of work to do," Patricia says. "It’s been two years and it’s finally a working garden. Wesheet mulched, and did compost and used a chicken tractor and did what we couldto build the soil. Everything here is done through permaculture principles andthe soils are much better now. They can still improve, but now they areproductive and there’s a lot of food.”

Patricia and Giancarlo get food from thegarden, as do the owners and people who live in the units below Giancarlo’shouse. To share the excess produce, Patricia hosts an informal Friday lunch whereall the food is prepared using the fruits and vegetables from the garden. Thefood gets harvested the night before to assure the freshest and most ripeflavors. The menu changes every week depending on what's in season. The lunchis also an opportunity to show people how the vegetables plants look while they are growing, theirbenefits to the garden and their nutritional properties, is mostly a way toexpose people to local, organic, fresh flavors and get them excited to growtheir own food.

As this demonstration urban farm project keeps growing, Giancarlo is inspired to deepen the permaculture design of the garden, as well as his own garden on the other side of the fence. He’s looking toward planting more fruit trees, trees which can be coppiced (cut back to encourage the growth of straight suckers which can be used for building and garden projects), a more evolved food forest, and planting biomass-producing trees which add further nutrients to the soil.

Patricia’s success with this garden leads her to work on food security projects in Richmond, one of the most impoverished communities in the Bay Area. “The more I learn, the more I see how this needs to happen everywhere" she says. "It is so daunting at an environmental level to understand what is going on, and sometimes it feels like a huge thing I can’t do anything about. But growing food is something I CAN do."

"The more research I do, the more I see what a big impact food production has on so many aspects of the environment. We can have an impact every time we eat, breaking away from industrial agriculture, the fuel to transport the food, and the toxins that are used to grow it. If everyone grew something, one little small thing, it would matter. Food is basic. We need it 3 times a day. At least! Even if you just have a little window, you can grow mint. And that’s one less thing to buy at the store.

“Food is the gateway drug to a more sustainable lifestyle. You start to become aware of the cycles of nature, the cycle of the moon, what’s happening with the seasons and the climate, and you start to pay attention to the world. And it has a trickle down effect—just doing this changes your behavior. It happened to me. Seeing this garden and the changes it’s brought me makes me want to work so that more people can see this and do this. And it’s not that hard. It’s a basic human thing. It’s easy and we should all be doing it."

Here is a scanned version of how the page looks on the book. I highly recommend you buy the book, it is a great resource.

Capturing a swarm

2011-04-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

It is not every day that a swarm of bees finds you.

Last Tuesday as I was walking to work, Luis, one of the day laborers on the Algarden street, who sometimes helps us out at the garden, ran to me and asked me if I wanted I swarm of bees. It was early and I was still waking up so I was trying to understand. what, where, when how?

So he explained that a swarm had landed at the base of an avocado tree on the yard of his friend and that he could take me over if I wanted to go capture it.

One of my hives died over the winter so I was down to one hive. I had been thinking of getting a second one but had not had the time and mental bandwidth to coordinate it. I think it is always good to have at least two hives, that way if you loose one you can always make a split and continue being a bee keeper. In my case, my hives are named after my grandmothers, Stella and Gloria, and I would not want to be without either of them.

This event was very serendipitous.

I had an extra small box at the garden so I went to grab it along with my suit and smoker and off I went with Luis and Maria (who took all this pictures and videos - Many thanks!) to find the bees.

So exciting, there were about 10,000 to 20,000 bees hanging on to the leg of a plastic chair, the owner of the house put this wood box over them to protect them and his kids from being stung.

I grabbed first a piece of wood that had a good bunch of them and moved them to the box, I could tell the queen was not there because they were not staying they were flying back to the chair leg.

So I pulled the chair out carefully and placed the leg on top of the box and jerked it so that most bees fell into the box.

I could tell the queen was there because the bees were staying on the box this time.

However there were still a lot of bees on the other box that needed to be moved to my box.

I used a piece of cardboard to carefully pick up the bees and move them to my box.

And there is most of them

Hard to tell exactly how many but a lot!

So I covered the box and Luis helped me to tie it up and take it back to the Algarden.

Luis was pretty excited to be a part of the action, his son-in-law is a beekeeper in Guatemala so he is used to being around bees and I think this brought back some good memories for him.

I left the 5 frame box with only two frames for two days. I had to build new frames so it took me a while, but after two days I came back to transfer the bees from the small box to a full 10 frame box and I had all the frames ready to go. This video shows what we found when I opened the box, the bees had already built a beautiful comb on the empty space of the box and it already had some nectar and pollen. Very hard working bees.

It's good to have Stella and Gloria back together at the Algarden. Welcome!

Many thanks to Maria for taking pictures and video and to Luis for his help and for connecting me with the bees.

Arigato gozaimasu Japan!

2011-04-17T16:52:00.000-07:00

PechaKucha was devised in Tokyo in February 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has turned into a massive celebration, with events happening in hundreds of cities around the world, inspiring creative worldwide. Drawing its name from the Japanese term for the sound of "chit chat", it rests on a presentation format that is based on a simple idea: 20 images x 20 seconds. It's a format that makes presentations concise, and keeps things moving at a rapid pace.

http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

This month's PechaKucha was a special world wide fundraiser for the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan, with the theme "Inspire Japan."

I was invited to present my work and even though it was lots of work to prepare I was very happy to thread the story of how I have been inspired by Japan to do the work that I do. It was beautiful to have an opportunity to go back and look through my over 2000 pictures of Japan and remember my time in that beautiful country.

Here is the 20 slides that I created and the text for each slide below.

When I wasbeing born and my family was waiting for me looking at babies in the nurseryroom, my grandfather kept commenting on the cute Japanese baby. When the nursecame out to correct him, I was the Japanese baby.

Well, I’mnot Japanese, I just have small eyes. But that has not kept me from fully embracingJapanese culture. Geisha and Hello Kittyare just some of the characters that I have impersonated and I often dream ofbecoming an anime heroine and fly the skies with Astro boy.

.My firstsummer of graduate school I went to Kyoto to study Japanese gardens. I was inheaven, spending my days strolling through some of the most beautiful gardensin the world. There are 4 basic types of gardens in Japan: Pond garden, Zengarden, Tea ceremony and Paradise garden.

However mostof them share elements, particularly as it relates to traditional Japanese architecturebuilt to frame the landscape, and the raised floor which can be used forsitting and observing. This creates a connection with nature, a place tocontemplate the change of the seasons.

Anothercharacteristic of Japanese architecture is no walls, so the inside and theoutside are always connected. The landscape is intended to be seen from aseating position; the layout design of the tatami mat is an important elementof the space.

Pathsare an important element of the garden, they are set in a naturalistic way tomake you feel as if you are in the country side, a place to relax and forgetthe city. Paths create the transition mood in people to prepare them for thetea ceremony. Steppingstones need to be placed for short stride considering a woman in a Kimono.

Barrowedscenery is another common element where gardens take advantage of the mountainsbeyond the property. Beyond the walls of the rock garden are cherries, maple,evergreen trees and pines that change through the seasons.

Zen gardensrepresent different elements in nature. Gravel represents the ocean; the rackingrepresents the ripples in the water. Rocks represent mountains or different animals based on theirarrangement and the mounds of grass represent the land.

You mustalways have a washing basin in front of the tea house to wash hands and mouthto purify yourself before having tea. Another important element is having aplace for fire to heat the water and a sink to wash the bowls.

My firstreal project out of school was a play area for a school in Tokyo. The project seniordesigner of the project said to me “you have been to Japan and studies gardens,you can design a tea house right?” And I confidently nodded but ran back tolook at my notes in panic. This was exciting and yet terrifying.

The tea housefor this project was to be an outdoor classroom and the garden a play area withborrowed scenery of play equipment. The tea house had to stand to the test ofhundreds of kids, and meet American ADA regulations so traditional materialslike paper walls and paths with stepping stones were out of the question.

We tried toincorporate as many traditional elements in our outdoor classroom/ tea housebut using different materials and being creative about the representation. Thewash basing was a rain water catchment. The path was an ADA ramp to theelevated platform. The concrete floor was scored in the same size and patternas a tatami mat.

Our garden hada climbing wall and a play mountain to provide space for seating and gathering.A “river” flowed from the mountain into an ocean of sand play area with ripplingconcrete colors. Instead of stepping stones there were characters scored in theconcrete.

Workingon this project was great but it also confronted me with the realities of workingfor a landscape design studio – Lots of time in front of the computer! As Isearched my notes and looked through my pictures I kept being reminded of theJapanese idea of connecting people with nature, building restaurants on top ofrivers, eating next to waterfalls.

Eatingwith and in nature, growing food in the city. Feeling nature, being surroundedby it. I realized how much I needed that connection with nature in my own life.So I began searching for land and during a winter storm a fence was blown awayrevealing an empty lot 2 blocks away from my work.

I meet theneighbor of the empty lot who had been dreaming about doing something with it.Together we designed and drafter a phasing plans to present to the owners. Theyliked the idea but had some liability concerns so we got a legal agreement andthey allowed us to use the space to grow food.

We had lotsof help from friends and neighbors to convert the space into a beautifulgarden. We composted to build soil nutrients, planted seeds, got chickens andbees and created a habitat for pollinators.

After twoyears we had an abundance of food from the garden, more that we could eat. Soinspired by the Japanese idea of eating in nature, my friend Julia and I startedthe Algarden café, an informal Friday lunch at the garden with food from thegarden.

The lunch isan opportunity to show people how the vegetable plants look while they aregrowing, their benefits to the garden and their nutritional value. Mostly thelunches are a way to expose people to local, organic, fresh flavors, get themexcited about growing their own food and outside connecting with nature and oneanother.

Food is thegateway drug to a more sustainable life style. You start to become aware of thecycles of nature, the moon, the seasons, and climate. It changes your behavior.

I gotinspired by Japan to do this work and I hope my work can inspire Japan torebuild and restore its beautiful nation.

Thank you

Arigatogozaimasu Japan!

Preserving Mayer Lemons

2011-04-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

As every good Mexican, I love limes! I put lime juice on pretty much everything, limes are wonderful.

I have now discovered Meyer lemons and I have to say, there is something really special about them, they are tart yet sweet and their peel is almost as good as the juice. They are delicious.

I also have an abundance of them so I'm always looking for new recipes.

Mayer lemons (Citrus × meyeri) is a citrus fruit native to China thought to be a cross between a true lemon and either a mandarin or common orange.

It is great to have such an abundance of this wonderful fruit but I needed to figure out how to preserve it. I looked up recipes for mayer lemon preserving and found a few, I'm trying them all.

I'm starting with Limoncello, I have done this before and it is pretty easy, it also makes for great conversation when shared with friends. Peel the lemons and add the peels to the vodka, let it sit for about 40 days in a dark area and enjoy with simple syrup. I hope this one will be ready for my friend Juan's wedding.

I made two types, I added mint leaves to one and scented geranium to the other for a more herbal flavor

it is also a good reuse for tequila bottles...

So now the question is what to do with all this left over lemons with no peel.

Lemon Jam!

You have to completely take out the white part to avoid bitterness and add other lemons with peel for flavor. Just take off the ends and cut them in very fine slices.

Mix that with sugar and cook at low heat. I added ginger slices too.

Let it simmer until it looks cooked

And jar them

It's great on toast

I also did some Moroccan lemon preserves, which is kind of like pickling them. To make the preserves the lemons get cut in 4 (like a cross from top) but not all the way and then stuff them with sea salt. They are placed on a glass jar and covered with lemon juice. They do not get boiled on the jars, they will ferment and the jars need to be opened every week or so to allow the air to get out. It is hard to know at first if it is working or not because they are fermenting and it seems as if things are not working but if you are patient and wait two months your lemons will be ready. I made a few jars with different spices, chili peepers, bay leaves, coriander, cinnamon.

Once the are ready I chop them up small and use them in pasta or to marinate fish or chicken.
They will last all year on the jars, no need to refrigerate,

Another way to preserve lemons, which I learned today from a client, is juicing them and putting the juice on ice trays to freeze, and then keeping the cubes on a freezer bag. That way the cubes can be thawed and used whenever they are necessary.

Take advantage of the lemon abundance now by preserving them and enjoy them all year.
Good luck and send me some more recipes if you have them.

Algarden Cafe debut in SF

2011-03-20T20:58:00.000-07:00

Algarden Candelight Dinner

What: 4 course Vegetarian dinner, featuring mustard greens, snap peas, kale, chard, cabbage and meyer lemons
When: Saturday, March 26th at 7:00pm. Limited Space, RSVP by Wednesday morning
Where: The Zomicile 2149 Harrison St. (At 18th St. Mission District, SF)
How Much: Dinner is $30 + cash bar (non alcoholic mint iced tea included)

Good news City people: the Algarden Cafe is coming to you!

For those of you who have not experienced the Algarden because it was in the East Bay and on a week day, you now get to enjoy it in the Mission, on a weekend night as a 4 course candle lit dinner in the Zomicile, Foodscaping's new home.

If you are unfamiliar with the Algarden cafe history and Mission here is a little bit of background.

In the winter of 2010, after two years of working the soils at the Algarden, we had a bounty of food, way more than what I and the neighbors could eat. I teamed up with Julia Abbassi creator of the community supported bread "Pandora's box" to collectively advance our passions for urban agriculture and local food production through the establishment of the Algarden Café. We prepared meals that celebrate local agriculture, fresh ingredients harvested at the peak of ripeness, and strengthened of the relationship between producers and consumers.

Unfortunately Julia had to move away but chefs Rachel Brand and Anna McGaraghan took over and were able to continue the tradition with new recipes.

The meals are composed nearly entirely of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, honey and eggs from the garden, and each course is intended to showcase the ingredients so customers can fully appreciate the flavor, texture and experience of eating farm-fresh food. The lunches are served at the garden itself and include an educational lesson, which typically focus on the ingredients used in the meal. Topics have included seed saving, cross-pollination, the wide world of Brassicas, the use of chickens in a garden for fertilizer, pest management and egg production.

The Algarden Cafe’s goal is to build community and increase awareness and value for locally produced, organic fare through the common medium of food. The café is a small-scale endeavor but since its inception we have attracted a wide range of customers, some already interested in local food and others who have become interested since experiencing the café and eating in the garden. We have also catered for a local conference on Regenerative Landscapes in Urban Areas for staff from cities of the greater Bay Area. At the conference, our

model was highlighted as an on-the-ground example of how to implement the principles and values that many of the cities espouse.

Join us fot the Algarden cafe in San Francisco this Saturday.

RSVP by Wednesday to patricia@food-scaping.com

Blessed Bee

2011-02-14T13:39:00.000-08:00

After 2 years of being a bee tenderer, I finally decided it was time to join the San Francisco Bee Keepers Association. Over this last two years I have read and researched a lot about bees, I have gone to classes and workshops, and I have asked many questions to a lot of people. I went into this with pretty much zero knowledge and two years later I can tell you I know a lot about bees, but as with most things in life, there comes a point when you know so much to realize that you don't know anything.

Last week as I was inspecting my new hive 'Gloria' I noticed something really odd. There were multiple eggs per cell. See the picture below, you can see the multiple eggs per cell.

This can happen when working bees start laying eggs if there is no queen.

This was not the case with my hive because the queen was present in the hive. Here's a picture of my lovely queen.

Here's a picture of a normal egg laying patter. Only one egg per cell.

I did some research on this and I could not find any answers, so I went to the bee keepers meeting to ask the experts. Turns out they were just as perplexed as I was and did not know what was happening. One possible answer might be that because my queen is new (I got her last year in September at the end of the season, so she is just starting to lay eggs) she is still learning how to do this and might correct her behavior. Hopefully that is the case otherwise they recommended I get a new queen.

I am happy I finally joined the SFBA, there was some really good information presented as well as the devastating news of so many hives dying in the city. It is really important to continue our efforts to learn and understand what is causing the deaths of this hives.

I am looking forward to another year with my bees and continue to learn about them and contribute to the bee association.

Foodscaping the business is born

2011-02-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

Friday February the 4th was the official birth date of Foodscaping as an official business.

I found this to be an auspicious date as it was Chinese new years and a new moon, a good time to start new things. Plus spring is everywhere in the city and I can't help but feel inspired with so much beauty.

Foodscaping will offer design and installation of edible landscapes as well as consultation on any urban farming related issues.

I have been doing this for awhile but I have finally registered as a business. There are many factors for me doing this now, but one of the biggest ones is having a beautiful space to run my business from. Last month we signed the lease on a shop on Harrison St. and 18th which will be the headquarter for Foodscaping. I will be sharing the space with Rob Bell and we will eventually have a store/gallery selling local artist stuff as well as urban farming paraphernalia.

There's lots of work to be done to remodel the space before we officially open it, but for now I want to invite you to celebrate the opening of my business and a soft launch of the space Tuesday night, starting at 6:30 at 2147 Harrison St.

We will have drinks and magic curry cart will be there serving some food

Hope you can join us to celebrate the birth of Foodscaping.

Bee-ings altar

2011-01-14T21:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I have written. I have no good excuses, simply that I've been busy and unmotivated to write. Today after I heard Obama's speech on the attack in Tucson, I felt moved to write again, his words summed up what I have been feeling and have not been able to express.

There is a lot to tell about what has happened at the Algarden and what I did this fall. I taught a Foodscaping 101 class at the Algarden, built Zonotopia at burningman, taught a Social Factors in Design class at UC Berkeley Extension. But today I will focus this blog entry on the bee altar for Dia de Muertos that Rob and I built at Garfield park. While an altar might seem like an unrelated post to Foodscaping, I will try to explain.

Last year was a difficult year for me, it was a year of hard decisions that kept me up at night. I had the opportunity to move back to my home town in Mexico and pursue a long time dream of researching the work of my grandfather while teaching Landscape Architecture at the State University, in the very same Architecture Department started by my grandfather and my great uncle. At the same time I was personally confronted with the reality of the devastating war on drugs. Something that had seemed far and unrelated to me became a reality check when my 15 year old cousin, Miguel Ramon "Mike" was abducted by members of organized crime.

As I grappled with this reality and tried to make sense of the situation I realized that there are tens of thousands of people feeling like me, frustrated and powerless against a headless monster, victims of this senseless war and there is nothing we can do.

There is a tradition that bee keepers should always communicate good and bad news to theirs bees, so I have been doing that. I find it therapeutic, and during the most difficult part of my grief, it became a routine, a meditation, I would talk to my bees almost every day. Nothing made sense, but during my time with the bees the world would stop. I could tell them anything and their buzzing calmed me down.

Interesting anecdote: I have rarely been stung by the bees, but on the day I told them I was considering moving to Mexico I got attacked like never before. Coincidence? or can the bees actually understand what I tell them? I don't know...

Then, in July the bees at Hayes Valley Farm were massacred. They were sprayed with pesticides at the entrance of the hive, wiping out two thriving hives and killing about 60% of a third hive. I was quite shocked by the news, I still cannot understand why anyone would do such a thing. It is bad enough to be losing our bees to Colony Collapse Disorder but this saddened me even more as I saw it as a vicious criminal act against innocent creatures.

We had a ceremony for the lost bees at HVF shortly after it happened.

I recently became reacquainted with the term social ecology which holds that "present ecological problems are rooted in deep-seated social problems, particularly in dominatory hierarchical political and social systems." I thought about this as I grappled with the realities of organized crime in Mexico and the real reasons behind Colony Collapse Disorder. It became apparent that they are similar, both my cousin and the bees are victims of corruption at different magnitudes; victims of a big headless monster.

The bee altar was my best attempt at building something beautiful to honor and celebrate the tradition of Dia de Muertos. I wanted to build an altar for the loss caused by organized crime in Mexico and for all the victims of this senseless war. I had a hard time conceptualizing the altar, I had a lot of pain on my heart, but I wanted to keep the festive mood of the celebration.

And so the altar became a hive, and it was dedicated to bees; to all the bees that we have lost due to Colony Collapse Disorder, and even more so for the bees that were killed at Hayes Valley Farm.

One might say, metaphorically, the bees represent the souls of the innocent victims of senseless wars and conflicts.

We still don't know where Mike is. This altar was built thinking of him. I hope that he is at peace where ever he may be.

This was hard to write, it is actually the third time that I have written it. The first time I wrote it, I was cynical and angry, but as I said in the beginning, I got inspired by Obama's speech and rewrote it because "we must speak to each other in a way that heals." I have had a lot of reflection on many fronts and just like Obama, I urge you not be discouraged and I ask you to look forward, to live your life to the fullest even when confronted with things that are beyond our understanding. See the beauty that surrounds us, and nurture the relationships of those who are still with us. Have kindness, generosity and compassion for all bee-ings. Let's live up to our children's expectations.

I leave you with this inspirational music made by bees

and I ask you to sign this petition to ban the pesticides that are killing our bees

http://www.avaaz.org/en/save_the_bees_usa/?rc=fb

I wish I had a petition for you to sign that would stop the killings in Mexico...

New Chefs at the Algarden Cafe

2010-08-10T22:32:00.000-07:00

My great friend, wonderful baker and parter in the Algarden Lunch Julia, decided to move away with her husband, who got a job in Connecticut. I was quit sad to say goodbye to her, especially as I thought of the incredible adventure and learning that had been working with her to create the Algarden lunch.

But today, I'm happy to start a new chapter in the Algarden cooking adventure, and want to introduce the new members of the Algarden Lunch, our wonderful chefs Rachel Brand and Anna McGaraghan.

Rachel and Anna came to the lunch a few weeks ago, they are friends of friends, who came to eat lunch and experience the garden. Serendipitously they were there as I was talking about Julia leaving and needing to find some one to help me out with the lunches and they both were interested on jumping on board.

They bring new creative ideas for recipes and great energy and I'm happy to have them be a part of the team. Here's a little something about them:

Rachel grew up in Berkeley not far from the Algarden and is thrilled to be a part of the Algarden café. A local foods enthusiast, Rachel has taught cooking at The Edible Schoolyard, farmed on the Central Coast, helped to develop school and community gardens, completed a pastry internship at Chez Panisse Restaurant and wrote her Master’s thesis on garden based education. Rachel currently works to develop community college Sustainable Agriculture programs, and can often be found in her backyard with her flock of beautiful chickens. The kitchen tool that Rachel can not live without is a lemon zester.

Anna has always loved to garden and cook, and is excited to be a part of the Algarden Café. She has tended small gardens in every place that she has lived, includinggrowing tomatoes, herbs, and squash on the tiny balcony of an urban studio apartment. She was raised to think that it’s perfectly acceptable to run out in the garden and check on the vegetables while still in pajamas. Anna developed a school garden program in an elementary school on a small Maine island, and also helped to design and implement a community garden on the island. Anna loves to cook for family and friends, and is looking forward to creating healthy and creative meals with Algarden produce! The kitchen tool that Anna could not live without is her cast iron frying pan.

Come and meet them in person and try out their recipes.

Here are a few pictures of the wonderful foods they have been preparing.

I hope to see you there!

Pasta from scratch

2010-08-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Speaking about the pasta that we made, here's the process of making pasta.

Julia and I made this pasta about a month ago. It was a lot of work but it was worth it.

All you need to make pasta is flour, eggs, salt and patience!

Our eggs came from the garden chickens, patience was a little harder to find.

We made our pasta the old traditional way, mixing it by hand.

Started out by shaping the flour into a volcano and slowly pouring the mixed eggs in the middle

being careful of not to destroy any walls of the volcano, or else you have a big mess of eggs. Trust me on this.

This is where patience comes in

Once the eggs and flower are integrated is time for kneading. Julia was a pro at this - I still need practice, and patience...

The secret of kneading dough is to use a well floured surface, press and stretch the dough with the heel of the hand, fold over, and rotate 90º repeatedly until your hands are about to collapse

Kneading is important because it mixes together the ingredients and adds strength to the final dough

Once the dough is ready, the rolling begins.
We borrowed this pasta machine from our friend Maria. She got it in Argentina, she claims everybody in Argentina makes their own pasta.

The dough has to be divided into small balls that pass through the machine 7 times, each time at a thiner setting, turning the dough into longer strips.

After that, the strips go through the machine one more time to be sliced.

et voilà we got fettuccines

The dough was still kind of sticky so we carefully hung the fettuccines to dry on a cloths rack

The problem was convincing the cats this was not a toy for them

They look so beautiful no?

After some time drying we were able so safely arrange them for their final drying

Is this beautiful or what?

The next day they were cooked al dente and tossed with sautéd New Zealand spinach, oyster mushrooms and the Moroccan lemons and herbs that I had preserved a few months ago (recipe coming soon)

It was outstanding!

Thanks to our wonderful photographer Steve Pon

Spreading Seeds in Mexico

2010-08-01T22:20:00.000-07:00

A few months ago my good childhood friends Lizy & Leslie came to visit me from Mexico. I was very excited to see them and show them my life in the Bay Area and take them to some of my favorite places. But I was mostly excited to show them the garden and have them over for the lunch.

Leslie, who is originally from Irapuato, a city know for its strawberries, actually harvested them for the first time and learned how the flowers look before they turn into strawberries. I was so proud of my strawberry patch for being so instructional to a native of the land of strawberries.

Lizy loved the home made pasta even though she does not eat wheat.

To my surprise Leslie went home and made pasta from scratch herself - with cage free eggs. Vamos nena!

It was really nice to have both of them at the garden. But beyond that, I'm continued to be amazed with the impact that it had on their lives. A Buddhist monk once told me to spread seeds everywhere, you never know where and when they will sprout, some times in the most unexpected places and he was right.

Lizy went back home and got her husband and kids to help her tear up a patch of lawn to start their own "huerto familiar" I'm so proud of her. Following is a set of pictures of the work that she did. I hope it inspires you to start your own "huerto familiar"

One week later she sent me this pictures. The seeds have germinated!

If you are interested in reading more on small & urban farming in Mexico, La Jornada (a national journal) has this interesting supplement: Harta Milpa

http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2010/07/17/delcampo.html

Sun flower invasion

2010-07-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago some unexpected sunflower seedlings germinated on the zome green house. I thought about transplanting them but as usual I got distracted with some other chore in the garden and left it for later. Later soon became too late. The sun flower seedlings turned into sunflower trees and pooped out of the zome through the opened windows.

I found it pretty amusing at first and cute to have sunflowers coming out of the zome, but they continued to grow and grow and they have now surpassed the zome height (10')

This sunflowers are now about 12' to 14' high with trunks up to 10" diameter

They are spilling over the side

They have completely taken over the zome. I want my green house back!

however the bees and the squirrels are loving the sunflowers pollen and seeds

Look at that guy taking the entire head of the sun flower. I wonder how it lost it's tail.

No dejes para mañana los girasoles que puedas sacar hoy....

Bee ceremony at Hayes Valley Farm

2010-07-26T23:02:00.000-07:00

The SF Examiner wrote a nice piece on the bee ceremony that we did for the lost bees at Hayes Valley Farm.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Farm-honors-slain-honeybees-99215089.html

And youtube video featuring Karina and I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClbUxgrbV6M&feature=player_embedded

Bees - post swarming check

2010-07-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

I had a terrible night of anxiety the other night. I could not sleep thinking that my hive, which swarmed, was not OK and was lacking a queen. Although I had see queen cells, queens some times are eaten on their mating flight. This is the only time queens leave the hive, precisely for their safety. Lately I've seen a lot of birds hanging out by the hive catching the bees in flight and eating them. There are also spiders under the hive that jump on the bees before they can fly. My poor bees, the chances of survival for the queen are slim.

On their mating flight, queens fly really high, up to 100 feet or more, and mate in air with up to 8 to 20 drones that can keep up the flight with her; she keep that sperm through her entire life and lays eggs with different DNA to maintain the genetic diversity in the hive.

Later that day, I found out that it was not my bees who were in danger but the bees at Hayes Valley Farm. Two of their hives were completely killed and a third hive was heavily damage by someone who sprayed insecticide in them. It was truly devastating to see so many dead bees, and I can not understand why would anyone do such a thing. Bees are essential to our survival. One third of all of our food is pollinated by bees, they are an incredible species that feed us, and we have so much to learn from them and their social structure.

We will be having a ceremony for the lost bees today at 4:30 at Hayes Valley Farm.

http://www.hayesvalleyfarm.com/blog/324-two-killed-and-one-attempt-at-the-farm.html

Back to my bees, I still had to do an examination on the hive to see if there was a queen. When a hive swarms it means that half the population of the hive leave with the queen in search of a new spot. So the old hive is left queen-less. The bees left behind make a new queen by feeding one of the fertile eggs with royal jelly, they also build a special longer cell for the queen to grow. I looks like this image below.

It takes about 4 to 5 weeks for the queen to develop, emerge from her cell, go out into her mating flight and start to lay eggs. It had been about 6 weeks since the swarm happened so it was time to look for the queen.

Since I had not opened the hive in those 6 weeks there was a lot of wax build up between boxes

I had to do some maintenance clean up which the bees never like. I had to smoke them so they would go hide and I could remove the wax without hurting any of them.

As usual I was not able to find the queen, but on the first brood frame that I pulled out I saw eggs and larva, this is a clear sign that there is a fertile laying queen, so it's all good.

Look at those beautiful cells full of eggs

and larva

OK, I realize this might be hard to see for the untrained eye, so here's a close up so you can see what I'm looking at, see the white dot in the center of the cell, that's a bee egg.

This close up is of a hatched egg turning into a larva. The egg hatches three days after it is laid and the larva feeds for around nine days before the cell is capped and the larva pupates.

Total development time is 16 days for a queen, 21 days for a worker, and 24 days for a drone

A very successful hive exploration and queen presence makes a happy bee tender.

Amazing fact: a queen bee lays about 1500 eggs every day over a 3 to 5 year life after her one mating flight.

Here's the latest addition for our bees, a small drinking basin with circulating water, they seem to be enjoying it.

Big thanks to my beautiful, amazing and wonderful friend and photographer of this bee session Karina Borgoño

Oyster mushrooms

2010-06-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

The latest super cool addition to the Algarden is the Oyster mushroom towers.

We used two strategies, one is a wire cylinder and the other one is just a waxed card board boxes with holes on the sides. you can see both of them next to me.

I got the mycelium from Kengi at Sunnyside Organics, who had gotten it for free from BTTR Ventures

"a 100% sustainable urban mushroom farm founded in Berkeley, CA by two 2009 grads from UC Berkeley. BTTR grows its gourmet mushrooms on recycled coffee grounds from Peet's Coffee & Tea and is currently diverting over 7000 lbs a week from the landfill. Fresh, local, and healthy food for the community" - from their web site

The mycelium that I got was spent, meaning it had consumed all the nutrients in the coffee grounds, the bags were completely white, the mycelium completely covered the coffee grounds. Basically it was past its prime and could no longer be sold, so we got it for free.

I got the idea to grow mushrooms from my permaculture class. I had a few bags of pure Ash and Walnut wood shaving that Rob had saved for me from his shop. I asked one of my teachers what would be the best use of that material for the garden ans he said: grow mushrooms!

I was wondering how to get started and where to get the mycelum and on my last visit to get plants at Sunnyside Organics Kenji just handed it to me, a lot of it -Ask and you shall receive.

I watched a few videos on youtube on how to do this, most videos had very complicated steaming processes to secure a sterile environment, but since the mycelium was ready to grow we just went for it. This picture shows the wire tower with the mycelium sandwiched in between the wood shavings. I also added a cooper ring at the base because slugs were loving the moisture and eating the mushrooms.

This images shows the waxed cardboard box with holes on the sides for the mushrooms to grow out.

This one mushroom growing on the side of the cardboard box weight 1 pound!!!

So many mushrooms, how do I convince my boyfriend to like them?

Foodscaping 101 class at the Algarden

2010-06-25T17:22:00.000-07:00

This summer I'll be teaching an organic gardening with permaculture principles class: Foodscaping 101

The class will be 10 sessions on Thursday nights from 6 to 7:30pm. starting July 15th and going till Sept 23rd to celebrate the Autumn equinox. (no class on Sep. 2nd)

The class will be hands on gardening and a fun space to share. I want to leave this class ready to convert your strip of weeds into a food forest or whatever you want.

The class space will be limited so sign up soon and tell your friends.

Swarming

2010-05-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

"If you want honey you have to be
prepared to be stung" Rosanne Daryl Thomas

This link has the amazing photo-shot that Matt did of the swarm capturing day

http://www.matthaber.info/Bees/index2.html

Sunday afternoon May 16th I got the call. We had a swarm of bees at the Algarden. I was so excited and happy that this happened this year that I have gotten to know and learn more about the bees to feel comfortable dealing with a swarm and not last year when I would had just freaked out.

Swarms happen because the hive population gets too big and can no longer support all of its members in one hive. The queen then decides to make a new queen and half of the bee population fly off with her in search of a new home. The queen is at the center of this swarm, the worker bees are holding on to each other and protecting their queen while they send out scouts to look for a suitable new home. In the wild this would be something like an empty log but in the city this could be someones basement or walls so it is very important to prevent swarms in an urban setting.

Time was of the essence, I needed to get there and capture the bees into a new box before they migrated to a new location. Unfortunately I was on the opposite side of SF during bay to brakers. Agr I was never so agitated by the endless drunk Elvis', Waldo's and Gorilla's o yeah and the Avatar's-there were a lot of those. Get out of my way Fruit loops I got bees to tend.

I finally made it and there were 2 hives on the apricot tree. I circled them so you can easily spot them. I had to get up there with a ladder, cut the branch and bring that over to the new box hive.

We were all very excited about the action, but I think Kitty was the most, he did not blinked and he was all over the action, even climbing on the roof to get a better view - I love this cat.

I only had one extra box, but since there were two hives we had to improvise another one to place the second hive.

Check out Kitty -meow

I called up Andreas and Amanda because they had been interested on learning more about the bees and want to get their own hive. Amanda got to try out her new cover. I was really glad to have some help and Andreas took all this pictures. Matt and Jane were also there helping out.

Bees are really mellow when they are swarming because they are focusing their pheromones (the chemical they emit when they sense danger that warns other bees) on following the queen. I got up there and was able to hold the swarm with my bare hands. They are warm and fuzzy :)

I communicated my intentions to them so they knew what I was about to do. I learned this at my bee communication class at the Melissa garden.

The first swarm was easy because it was in a small branch. But the second swarm was a little harder because the branch was thicker and heavier. As I cut the branch a bunch of bees fell to the ground. Next time I will be more prepared with a box below in case this happens.

But there were still thousands of them attached to the branch.

How cool is that?

I jerked the branch in top of the box and they all fell into it

Welcome home little ones. I promise to do the best I can to take care of you

I tried to find the queen but as usual I did not.

As we set the bees on the box, a third swarm got formed on the tree from the bees that fell of to the ground so I had to go up on the tree again to collect them. Except this time they were attached to a main branch that I could not cut. I had to gently brush them into a container, but they did not liked that - AT ALL. Up to this point I was not wearing my right glove so I could touch the bees and feel them. They were upset with the brushing and went straight for my hand. I got stung a few times and Amanda who was below me holding the ladder got attacked too. I'm guessing the queen was in that last swarm formation and as I brush them I touched the queen which made them really mad. I transfered those bees to the box and I think the queen was there so they calmed down and slowly they all went into the box.

Wow, that was exciting!!!!

Bee tending 101 for Amanda

We had to move three swarms but really it was just one big one, probably what happened was that the queen flew to different spots and the bees were following and congregating around her scent. Eventually the bees on the second box went into the other box following the queen pheromones so we had just one box of bees.

I added the rest of the empty frames to the box, one frame of capped honey from the other hive so they would have some food to get started and filled the feeder with sugar water. I placed containers with water at the base of the table legs to prevent ants from climbing into the hive. I covered it after most of the bees went in following the queen, and here it is our new hive. Mission accomplished!

Today I have a very swollen hand, that makes it hard to write this, and a huge sense of accomplishment for being able to tend to my swarm and provide them with a new home.

Catering

2010-05-11T16:19:00.000-07:00

The Algarden Cafe got its first catering job. It was for a Regenerative Landscapes Conference at MIG, the design firm where I work when I'm not at the Algarden. It seem appropriate to have a local, organic lunch served at this sustainability talk with different City planners and officials worried about our future.

It was a new challenge for us having to serve at a different location and for 40 people. So we scanned the garden to see what we could harvest and serve for that many people.

The menu:

Wilted Chard and Fava green salad
Kale, leek and goat cheese tart

Berkeley wild yeast sourdough
Double mint iced tea

The lunch was a total success, people loved it and we had enough people to feed everybody.

This are my co-workers

A lot of people came to talk to me afterward and told me how much they loved the idea of having an actual hands on implementation to the planning strategies that they work on. There is a huge gap between planning and implementing, there are many constrains and blocks on the way, but any action as small as it might seem is a step on the right direction. And I do believe that liberating ourselves from the industrial food production is a simple step that we can all start to take. Stop buying food that came from across the world, or is extremely processed, meet your farmers, buy local (food and manufactured goods), plant something and develop a relationship with your plant. Plants are awesome beings and our existence depends on them so lets show some love and respect.

Since the beginning of April, and the lunches at the garden I started to keep track of the produce that was harvested from the garden. Keep in mind that the lot is only 1/8 of an acre.

Here's the breakdown for the month of April:

A total of 101 pounds harvested
100 meals served

Basically a pound of produce per meal

What was harvested?

Kale, chard, collards, beets, horta (beet greens), lettuce, arugula, favas, lemons, sweet peas, Peruvian peppers, mustard greens, celery, radishes, herbs, strawberries, leeks, New Zeland spinach

Not included on that weight but also harvested from the garden animals:

honey & eggs

Earth day

2010-04-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful day full of flowers and strawberries. It was also an excellent day on the moon calendar to plant. It is always good to consult the farmers almanac moon calendar before planting. I've found it makes a huge difference on the growth of my plants.

There was a lot of work to be done to get our summer planting in place.

There is a lot more pressure to grow food now that my urban farm experiment has become a cafe.

I started by taking out the compost to our new beds to be planted and get them ready with nutrients. We had already removed the winter crop-favas which are rich in nitrogen and let the chickens do their job in the chicken tractor.

Look at this amazingly rich compost - It's been composting for about 6 months.

It all went to the tomato patch along with a few buckets of chicken manure -mmhhhhh!

Awesome work team!

This are the potato towers that we started. It is good to grow potatoes like this in chicken wire columns because the soil does not get very saturated and you add soil as the plat grows. When the potato plant reaches the top and the the potatoes have grown you simply pull the tower and the potatoes come out instead of having to dig for them.

We also planted all my little squash, pumpkin and beans sprouts, and corn seeds on the keyhole planter for the three sister as companion plants. They work well together because the corn provides climbing support for the beans, the beans provide nitrogen, and the zucchinis provide leaf mass and shade for the other plants to retain the moisture in the soil

We got a tomato patch!!! 9 different varieties

I will also plant some bush beans so they can provide nitrogen and shade at the base of the plants.

The best part is going back to the office smelling like manure and dirty hands- adventures in lunch time farming

Happy earth day today and everyday!

Algarden Lunch + Bootiesattva Zome

2010-04-18T23:10:00.000-07:00

This Friday we had another lunch at the Algarden and it was absolutely lovely and amazing. It was very special in many levels, one major thing was the presence of the Bootiesattva zome with its magical powers, but the people who came also contributed with their radiant energy, the weather was perfect and the food was outstanding. We also celebrated Tim's birthday. I was happy to see many friends there and also new faces who were recommended to come by friends. We had 25 people, and although I had a hard time keeping conversations, we managed to build the zome, cook, grill, set up and serve the lunch promptly and keep everybody happy during their time at the Algarden.

The menu this week:

Warm cabbage, chard and onion salad with apples and walnuts

Purple kale and leek tart with goat cheese

Grilled young fava beans marinated with olive oil and sea salt

They were the hit! (And the easiest thing to do)

Flowerless sugarless chocolate cake-Special diabetic request

Fresh honey comb

Lavender infused lemonade

The shade structure this week: The Bootiesattva Zome

Here are all the zome parts. Assembly start time 10:08 am

This was the fourth time that we built this zome and we were trying to break our time record. Previous time was 1 hour and 45 minutes

I love this picture -Welcome to my spaceship, beautiful forever!

And my beautiful love - SO beautiful!

Even the poppies got excited

Two zomes in one garden, how lucky am I?

Completion time 11:38. Record time 1.5 hrs. yeah!!!

That's what happens when you work with the zome masters

And now, chilling time in the Zome

It was really wonderful to see everybody enjoying the zome and the food and the garden.

I was about to explode with joy

Happy birthday Tim!

Com'on, pretend like your having fun

Special guest Rockstar Anchi, who came to our garden after meeting with Michelle Obama at her Refugee Farm that promotes urban farming. Go Anchi!

You can read about it here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/16/michelle-obama-visits-san_n_540440.html?ref=twitter#s81733

I have to say that this special event would not had been possible without the help of many people. Starting by the garden owners who continue to support my ideas and generously share their space with us.

A huge special thanks to my favorite mathematicians, Chris, Rob and Steve. You guys Rock. I loved watching you geek out on your math theories under the zome. You are so cool that you are making me start to like math...

Thanks to the chickens who provided us with the eggs for the tart and cleared out the fava been patch getting the soil ready for the next season. This was a chicken tractor improvisation for the day. The chicken crib did fit on my key hole planter.

Thanks to my bees who provided us with a delicious dessert

But they are also responsible for the pollination of 1/3 of all of the food that we eat

And thanks to Julia for her lovely smile, enthusiasm and delicious cooking.

It was truly a lovely event and I feel enormous gratitude for everybody who came and made it possible.

I also feel a lot of excitement for next Friday. I hope you can come!