An organic volunteer garden in Mountain View.
The Heritage Park grand opening was this past Saturday, Dec 10, 2016. It was pouring down rain but there were still loads of people attending!! (and for gardeners, rain is a good sign) The park is a beautiful and unique space from the historic Immigrant house to the fruit trees, demonstration garden, and home for the bees. If you haven’t had the chance to see it for yourself, stop by and take a stroll. Thank you City of Mountain View for creating this space for all of us to enjoy.
Drip irrigation is a great way to use less water while getting the water to where you want it. When we started last year at Viola’s garden, one of the first things we did was install a drip irrigation system. Tod, our expert gardener, set up all the lines and has been accommodating and installing more lines to irrigate new areas of the garden as we expand. This year, we have changed the garden set up a bit and put in a new bed so Tod thought it would be a good idea for me to try it out as I personally have never installed drip irrigation and would love to learn how. Here is my first attempt at installing drip irrigation.
Since I haven’t done this before, the whole thing feels a bit overwhelming to me. I went to Orchard supply and stared at the 50 some odd sections with these tiny fittings that say things like 1gph, 1/4″ in-line dripper, etc. They are cute little things but how was I going to parse it all?!?! Luckily, I met this really helpful woman at Orchard supply that spent some time explaining things to me. The first piece of advice she told me was that “there is no right way to do this, you can put it together in so many different ways to get water to where you need it” Perfect – just what I needed to hear – I didn’t have to do it a certain way. So I have posted what I did below. I thought my experience may be helpful to some reader as you may be like me and know the benefits but never actually installed it yourself. Just remember, there is no right way to do this!
I already had a supply line thanks to our existing irrigation. It is a brown colored tube that takes water from the water source to a number of feet out but doesn’t have any holes in it. I could either attach another tube to the end of this supply line or put holes in the supply line wherever I need them. It looks like this (see brown colored tube):
Then I got a little gadget that punctures holes into the tube. I used a little ‘connector’ that connects and seals the hole I just punctured into the tube to another ‘1/4″ dripper’ line that I wanted to use. A ‘dripper’ line already has holes preset. This worked for what I wanted because it was already approximately the spacing for veggies in a bed. I passed the dripper line under my bed so you don’t see it. The very end of the dripper line I folded over to make a kink and taped it to hold (I even used the tape that came with the dripper hose). That’s it! Here is what it looks like all finished.
The rocks are simply helping the hose lay flat since they come coiled up and need some time to unwind. It really was pretty easy to install. Btw, 1gph means 1gallon per hour. There are a number of different levels, 1gph, 2gph, 4gph to control how much water is released.
Last night, March 5, 2015 @ 6:30pm (Thursday) was the first community meeting for input on 771 Rengstorff park design. Thank you to everyone that came to the community meeting and expressed your support for shared gardens.
It was really amazing to hear so much support for creating a wonderful space open to the public that preserves and maintains the existing elements such as the trees and garden. There were many thoughts shared from residents and seemed to echo a vision of a space that is natural with paths and benches, a shared community or demonstration garden likely where the existing garden is, and historical features like the immigrant house and highlighting our agrarian past. People really wanted it to be bicycle and pedestrian friendly for access (yay!), and a learning space for kids (and everyone) to explore and learn about their natural world and food. Hopefully the bee hives that are there can stay as they too are an important part of the ecosystem.
Some features that make a garden a great fit for this space:
I have been starting seeds both for my own garden and the Soil&Water volunteer garden. I wanted to stay as organic as possible and wanted to find a source that I can trust. It was important to me that the seeds are non-GMO and hopefully not owned by Monsanto (Seminis). I did a lot of research and found a number of resources but the information out there is extremely confusing. If you start digging, many organic gardening resources are actually owned by Seminis.
After a lot of research, I was relieved to learn that a local nursery, Summerwinds, appears to have only non-GMO seeds from two companies, Lake Valley Organics and Botanical Interests. Both of which appear to not be owned by Monsanto or Seminis. Lake Valley Organics also has taken the safe seed pledge. I also visited Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (rareseeds.com) in Petaluma, CA. That experience was awesome. They are located in this old historic building and have more seeds than you can imagine along with books and gardening tools. I was definitely inspired and walked away with a bunch of great seeds and a book on fermentation.
We were so lucky to be invited to the Google teaching kitchen for a gardener’s harvest event. We have wanted to create a cooking demonstration component using our garden’s vegetables and this event was great inspiration.
Wonder what Soil&Water has been up to this summer? We have been gardening! Our temporary site, Viola’s garden, went from barren flat to a lush garden using all organic techniques and as little water as possible (including some greywater use from collected shower warm-up water).
We were so lucky to meet a very generous and special family that allowed us to use their unused garden space in the interim until we get a permanent site. We started in May 2014. Volunteers came every week to participate. We designed the garden, amended the soil, set up drip irrigation, and of course, planted. The harvests were shared among the volunteers and with the family.
Check out some of our photos from this summer.
We have learned a lot from our first garden using this volunteer-run model but most importantly that this model can work depending on how it is structured. We have had lots of very dedicated volunteers and enjoyed a lot of yummy garden-fresh organic veggies. We continue into the fall with a winter garden.
We made a lot of new friend’s excited about this project but only captured a few photos.
To the new friends: I hope you will stay involved and help to convey your support of community gardens to the City of Mountain View so we can demonstrate just how important this project is to the community.
This little guy has taken up residence at Viola’s garden.
This weekend, Sunday, October 12, 2014, is Family Day at the Lazy Foot Chicken Ranch. Soil&Water will be helping to support Living Classroom and all the great work they do. They are helping us to share our story and what we are trying to do by inviting us to have a booth at the event too.
Lazy Foot Chicken Ranch
160 West Portola Ave
Sunday, October 12, 10am-3pm
This event is just in time for all the halloween pumpkin patch fun that you seek for your kids. There will be all sorts of activities………garden tours, a pumpkin patch, visit the chickens, local chicken and bee experts, pumpkin painting and other activities for kids.
There will also be live music and homemade Vietnamese Pho made on the premises.
This should be a great event you don’t want to miss.
If you go to this event, stop by and say ‘hello’
The Living Classroom inspires our children to learn and value our natural world through garden-based education. Funds raised will help to grow their already amazing education curriculum to other local school districts! www.Living-Classroom.org
Check it out for more information:
http://www.living-classroom.org/images/stories/events/2014_10_FamilyDayChickenRanch_V3.pdf
The Trailblazer is a morning of fun, healthful activities for the whole family with 10K and 5K races and a trail walk that begins at 8:30am. Soil&Water will have a public interest booth at the race to help spread the word about our organization. Please stop by and say hello. We’ll definitely have a fun garden-related activity. (Also, we need volunteers too!)
The Friends of Stevens Creek Trail is an organization dedicated to extending Stevens Creek Trail and wildlife corridor from San Francisco Bay to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Stevens Creek Trail was started in 1993 and currently extends 4.5 miles from Shoreline Park to Sleeper Ave in Mountain View. Cupertino opened its first section of trail last summer. Los Altos and Sunnyvale are studying possible routes.
All events start and finish alongside Stevens Creek Trail at 1065 La Avenida Avenue, the Mountain View campus of Microsoft Corporation, the host and presenting sponsor. If you are interested in helping out or finding out more about our organization, please find the Soil&Water booth at the Microsoft campus (1065 La Avenida Avenue, Mountain View) between 7:30am & 10:30am.
http://www.stevenscreektrail.com/wordpress/trailblazer/