The beginnings

Originally inspired by dreams of an herb garden for tea, I have launched a mini edible garden with plants for tea, cooking, and beyond. It’s nothing special yet, just the beginning adventures of testing out my green thumb, but I plan on expanding it.

After combing the web for advice, frolicking around SF gardening stores, and playing in my beautiful backyard, I have a hodgepodge of herbs and vegetables planted. I found a good selection of starter plants at Cole Hardware and Sloat Garden Center.

Here is a list of plants I gathered, suggested uses, and growing advice:

• Chocolate mint: Great for tea, mixed drinks, or with strawberries. A hardy plant that requires full or partial sun and moist soil. Mint tends to aggressively take over garden space, so I keep it in its own planter.
• Spearmint: Great for tea, mojitos, or mint juleps. See above. Generally same instructions for growing all mint varieties.
• Lemon balm: Great for tea or in chicken, seafood, herb butter, etc. Related to mint, but with a lemon aroma. Partial shade and dry soil.
• Rosemary: Great for tea or with roasted potatoes, chicken, or Mediterranean dishes. Requires full sun (but can handle some shade) and drained soil. Little water once established. Needs a lot of room for root growth, upward growth, and to breathe.
• Sage: Great with tea, poultry, or in white bean dip. Full sun and moist soil, but not too particular with soil.
• Green onion ‘bunching’: Requires full sun and well-drained soil.
• Baby Spinach: Requires full sun or partial shade and well-drained soil.

Planting options

My backyard can go from sunny to shady in a step or two around it. Since the tree coverage and shade is a bit scattered, I’ve decided to keep my edibles in planters then maybe plant them later after testing different spots in the yard. Per shopping at different stores around SF, I’ve found that circular planters are plentiful but rectangular planter boxes are scarce. After searching for planter boxes all over the city, I decided to purchase one and then buy materials (1″ x 12″ redwood panels) to make a second. I found all my planter box items at Discount Builders Supply. [Stay tuned for a later post for DIY Planter Box project.]

Harvesting

From researching the plants, I’ve learned that harvesting generally involves cutting leaves an inch or a few above the base of the stem or right above the node. Harvesting should be done occasionally to maintain the plants. Green onions should be harvested young, at 6-8″ height, by cutting 1″ above the root. Then, cover with an inch or two of soil and the plant should re-sprout.

Here are a few examples of these trends:

1. My friend Maia, a very talented artist, would occasionally visit a landfill at the edge of San Francisco for inspiration. This specific junkyard has a very scenic view of the water and around the time of frequent visits to it she painted a beautiful triptych of waves.

2. San Francisco’s waste management organization, Recology, has a program called Artist In Residence (AIR) which was created to inspire and educate people about recycling and resource conservation. AIR provides specially selected local artists with studio space, resources, and discarded treasures from its interim dump site before items are sent to landfills or recycling plants. AIR had a reception and showcase on January 22nd and it happens that a friend of a friend, Erik Otto, was the resident artist. I wasn’t able to attend the event but here is Erik’s blog post.

3. In March 2008 I traveled to Berlin to visit one of my best friends from college. One day we visited a place on Oranienburgerstrasse called, “Tacheles”, a salvaged building turned art collective/warehouse. Inside is an open, five-story, graffiti-filled warehouse with exhibits and a funky coffee bar on the top floor as well as a junkyard with junk to art projects on display. This East Berlin building went through many lives and is a good reuse and renovation story. More information about the site can be found here.

Other thoughts:

a. What are the facts and figures regarding air pollution caused by landfills? According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), municipal solid waste landfills are the second-largest human-generated source of methane emissions in the US. From this an estimated 32 million metric tons of carbon equivalent were released to the atmosphere in 2007 alone. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas contributing to climate change. More details can be found here.

b. Are there other cities with similar programs?

I haven’t found anything notable. If anyone else has examples, let me know!

c. Have other artists incorporated waste into their works?

I came across a few articles about Trash Artists on the Web Urbanist, a site about “sensational, educational, and inspirational art, design, photography, and visual culture”. Check out these posts about 7 Innovative Artists Who Create Art from Trash: Projected, Recycled and Other Amazing Art and 20 (More) Amazing Works of ‘Garbage Art’: From Pottery Sculpture Parks to Giant Newspaper Portraits.

I also stumbled upon an article in the NY Daily News called Salvation from the trash to heap: Brooklyn artists to the rescue in a fix. It discusses a Brooklyn, New York collaborative called Fixers Collective. This group of artists and enthusiasts meet on Thursday nights to help one another creatively repair or repurpose junk.

The visit: The employee helping me was incredibly nice. I was provided the devices after filling out minimal paperwork and she went through our water usage history, provided feedback, and set up an appointment for an on-site Free Water-Wise Evaluation.

The SF PUC employee pulled up water usage history over the last few years via a new online system that will be available to customers in the future. Our numbers were actually quite good, except for three months of outliers (between 2 and 14 times our usual amount) likely due to leakage. I was informed that ideal usage is 5 units (or 748 gallons) per person over 60 days.

Potential water-savings: I’m really excited to evaluate this in the future. Here is a rundown of what is EXPECTED:
+ Low-flow showerhead: Water flow reduced to 1.5 gallons per minute or less. This could save thousands gallons per year.
+ Kitchen/bathroom aerator: Water flow also reduced to 1.5 gallons per minute or less. In combination, they could potentially reduce usage by 4%.
+ Toilet flapper: Warn out flappers could allow leaks/more water flow into the toilet. Replacing it within two years is ideal. We recently replaced ours so I stored the new device.

Next: I will providing updates about (1) the Water-Wise Evaluation next week and (2) our water usage in the upcoming months.