December workday coming up!

Join us on December 2nd for a workday at the gardens! It promises to be sunny and dry, so drop on by and enjoy making your neighborhood a nicer place to live :)

Jobs we will work on include:

• Planting Salvia canariensis plants at PRG
• Trash picking and weeding at PRG
• Turning the compost at PG
• Sweeping and trimming the paths, as usual.

Quick trip

On Saturday I spent a productive couple hours at the garden getting a few tasks done.

I cut back two Salvia leucantha (Mexican Sage) to get them ready for new growth and more flowers. You can see the before and after - you just cut them down to about 6" and leave the new growth to pop up from there.

I like to leave a few flowering S. leucantha all year round for the hummingbirds, so the rest of these can be cut back over the next couple months.

I also moved an Agave shawii into a better spot - there are some pups forming so hopefully that will spread out more.

The homeless encampment in the back of the garden is still gone, but the hole at the bottom fence appears to have been reopened.

Lastly I cut back some Santolinas and trimmed up and few other things. We got lots of rain so lots of weeds will soon follow... but the Chasmanthe are sprouting so look out for those orange flowers soon.

Big cleanup and homeless update

The Clean & Green Team

Today we had the hardworking Clean & Green Team come to PG, led by Paul, as well as a DPW packer truck to take away all the green waste and compost it.

They managed to completely remove a pile about 20' long, 10' wide and almost 5' high - tough work on a sunny and pretty warm morning!

Thank you Julia, Marissa, May, Paul and the crew - and Chris for moving all the debris up to that spot in the first place!

Before

While the team worked to move the huge pile down to the front by the truck, Matt and I investigated the homeless encampment in the back of the garden. There was nobody home, and it looks like all belongings were gone too, so we spent a couple hours dismantling the encampment, picking up all the trash, and cleaning the area.

We also cut back a lot of fennel and filled the hole in the far bottom fence with a large blue Agave americana - better than barbed wire!

Spiky fence

Now, I don't think this is a permanent solution - halfway through the job a homeless person came down and asked if there was a hole there to go through, and I said no... but I expect it will be back. Agaves, yuccas and opuntias do a fearsome job repelling humans, but only when they get established, which is hard to do when they get ripped out or clambered over.

Hope these ones make it - the opuntias we planted many years ago are gamely trying to form the impenetrable hedge I know they can, but they're a quarter the size they should be, with many broken branches.

After!

A whole lot of the 1 gallon pots of Agaves and Aloes growing on in that back area had been trashed by the homeless encampment, and I threw a number out. Matt planted a dozen pups in the "pup farm" along the off ramp street edge. They'll grow on and recover there, in relative safety, until we can transplant them to their final spots.

Homeless concerns at PG

Hi friends,

Please read: need a bit of help here.

It's been a long time since we've seen homelessness at this level in San Francisco. City services are struggling to provide help to thousands of people affected by homelessness, and the often related issues of substance abuse and mental illness.

I recently met with various people to discuss this: Sophia Kittler, Legislative Aide in the office of Supervisor Cohen, Randy Quezada, who works in the office of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, Stephanie Muller of the Delancey Street Foundation and Eileen Loughran, Health Program Coordinator at San Francisco Department of Public Health, as well as various local community leaders.

We discussed ways to prevent encampments from growing in front of buildings, and in the gardens we have built, and the meeting was not a moment too soon – at our volunteer day last weekend we saw that an encampment had started at the back of Pennsylvania Garden.

There’s a real emotional push and pull between wanting to help people, or leave them in peace, and dealing with the needles, crack pipes, broken glass, feces, trash, fires, and verbal or other physical threats from encampments.

In order to protect the people who enjoy our gardens – visitors, volunteers and wildlife – I want to outline the steps needed to prevent this encampment growing out of control.

1. Call 311 or use the 311 app (https://sf311.org/mobile ) to report the issue of an encampment at PG or PRG. I’ve already done this, but it’s not about me calling 10 times – a faster response comes from 10 people calling once each, according to the city.
2. Call 911 if you feel threatened at all.
3. Call Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-6364 if you see an animal in an encampment that is suffering, or behaving aggressively. 

Can you take a minute to call 311 or use the 311 app today? Randy Quezada outlined the services offered to these encampments – they’re not going to get a police ticket they can’t pay, and his team has had success getting people off the street.

Thanks for helping – I hope we can resolve the issue for real one day soon.

Annie

Volunteer day: rain TBD!

Aloe ferox flower!

Despite a forecast for a gloomy, rainy Saturday morning the weather in Potrero Hill was sparkling sunshine and perfect for gardening. Probably as a result of the forecast we only had a few hardy volunteers, but a lot was accomplished.

A few months ago I took some cuttings from the Coprosma "Marble Queen" and rooted them. Four nice 1 gallon plants resulted, and they were ready to go in - a perfect replacement for the Impatiens we pulled out last time, under the cherry plum trees.

Small Coprosmas

Hilary and I prepared the holes and planted the plants, with lashings of compost and solid watering bowls to help funnel rain into them.  Hilary watered them in too - hope we get some more rain so they are off to a good start! I'll be making more cuttings of this plant in spring for sure.


Matt cut back several shading branches from the cherry plum trees, and we used them to protect the new plants by making a barrier to the pathway.

Hilary!

We also planted three Mexican marigolds, Tagetes erecta, which came from our pal John, in the middle back bed, and moved a Dietes to accommodate. Hope they take off!


Matt worked on removing the stump of a huge agave that had flowered behind the wrong way sign. he manfully hacked it out and replaced it with a little Agave "Butterfinger" pup which should be very impressive one day.

Stump: removed!

Matt also moved a few other Agaves around - some about to outgrow their spot - and had a good time wrestling them. And Leslie headed on down to PRG and collected a vast amount of trash - along with a fridge - for the city to pick up. Thanks Leslie - lots of deferred maintenance down there that needs to be done, and it's time someone stepped in. I submitted a 311 request, and as of today it appears they picked up the trash. Good news.

Tiny Butterfinger in there...

During the week Chris accomplished a huge feat - he removed all the compost bins contents and piled it at the top of the garden. This is a huge amount of work, but frees the composters to generate useful compost again, so that was well worth doing. Thanks Chris!