SF Gro - http://www.sfgro.org/

SF Gro Community Garden List - http://www.sfgro.org/sfgardens.php

Garden for the Environment - http://www.gardenfortheenvironment.org/

Alemany Farm - http://www.alemanyfarm.org/

Quesada Gardens Initiative - http://quesadagardensblog.blogspot.com/

Starting a Community Garden - http://www.arts4all.com/elca/page8.html

This is just a great example of what some planning and a little time can do. In the photos below you’ll see some very well established Ceanothus, Manzanita, Salt Bush, and Sage that provide food, protection, habitat, and beauty to what is normally a generic ornamental endeavor or concrete paved over what was once a nice piece of earth. There are even Beach Strawberries growing up the driveway.

Alemany Farm empowers San Francisco residents to grow their own food, and through that process encourages people to become more engaged with their communities. We grow organic food and green jobs for low-income communities, while sowing the seeds for economic and environmental justice

Learn More at www.alemanyfarm.org

Here are some photos from a recent sheet mulching project we did at Rose Bay’s home in Glen Park. Sheet mulching works on the concept of composting. You layer organic matter out on a space where you would like to later have a fertile garden bed, then you cover it with a “sheet” of some sort, in this case we used cardboard, but you can use newspaper if you prefer. The sheet acts as a weed suppressor, moisture absorber and also breaksdown as a carbon source for the composting process. The mulch that you add on top, any leaf or garden mulch will do, acts as a moisture absorber as well as creating a microclimate for biological processes that happen on the microscopic scale.

Check out these photos, you can click on them to enlarge the images.

First we assessed the space she wanted to have as vegetable beds for spring planting. We noticed there was an invasive Pampas Grass plant which had taken up quite a residence in the garden. We wanted to remove it both to improve the sun penetration and growing space, but also to prevent it from spreading its seeds which can help to encourage more native plants to germinate. Since we’re sheet mulching, we’re just going to throw the green “waste”, soon to be food for future plants, on the ground to be composted in place, below the cardboard.

Then, we spread all the plant matter out over the garden making an L shape and a center mound with a path between them. We will add to these piles with fennel stalks and other organic matter around the garden: rose clippings, blackberry branches, vines, grasses, you name it, we added it to the sheet mulching piles. They will all breakdown into a nitrogen food source for future plantings. Saving money that may have been invested in fertilizer, and reusing the resources that are already present in your backyard!

The next step is to layer the mulch piles. In this case, we used manure from a local police stables, and some finished compost. Both of these will contain microbes and bacteria that will help break down the nitrogen and carbon components in our mix to a usable food source. It will encourage beneficial mycelium growth and just an overall rich soil health with earthworms and other creatures burrowing holes to provide air and drainage, and mixing all the nutrients up in the process. Look at all that work nature does for you!

The next step couldn’t be easier. I saved some cardboard from a recent solar panel installation (they use big pieces of cardboard so its great for sheet mulching, any solar installation company will have plenty for you) so we used that. Be sure to use only natural colored, non-dyed cardboard so that you aren’t leeching any significant chemical residue into the garden. You want to do your best to have level piles so that the cardboard rests well on top. You also want to pay attention to the flow of water off the cardboard, so its not creating an erosion issue. You want the cardboard to slowly absorb the water into the pile. After you have laid the cardboard out, hose it down so it is good and wet and ready for the mulch topping.

The last step is spreading a mulch over your cardboard sheet. In this case, we used Rose’s massive supply of fallen avocado leaves. You can collect leaves over time to use, or you can also get free mulch (shredded wood and leaves) from landscapers and wood chipping companies that would end up just dumping or recycling the mulch. After you have evenly spread the mulch, it might be good to hose it down to if its not wet already. The most important thing with sheet mulching, just like composting, is to maintain even water moisture throughout the pile. You want the absorption of water to be like that of a wrung out sponge. Or just evenly moist. You could plant some crops right away by cutting holes in the cardboard and placing them in, but this can sometimes lead to snail infestations (they love to live beneath the cardboard). If you have the time, its best to wait a couple of months to pass for the mulch to settle and begin to fuse and transform into healthy rich soil.

As you can see in this last picture. We didn’t completely eradicate the Pampas Grass. We put a tarp over it to hopefully suppress and weaken it during these cold winter months, and then we’ll go back and pull it up after a month or so.

Sheet mulching is that simple! It can be a little work, but the easiest way to think about it is, you’re composting in place. So instead of bringing all your organic material to a pile, and once it’s ready, bringing it back to your vegetable beds, with sheet mulching, you’re composting your veggie beds. Saves you time, money, and offers many ways to experiment with the outcome. You can transform clay, or sandy, rocky soils that are hard and compacted into rich and fertile, loamy soils after a few months of good sheet mulching. Try it out!