The Campus Garden Initiative

June 12th, 2009 - Info for future gardeners....

(see pics below to see what I'm talking about)

• Don't plant in the circle of death! By this I mean the area under the two giant conifers out back, it's a perfect habitat for slugs.  As plants get closer to the trees, they show considerably more signs of munching.  It may be time to find some slug resistant edibles that we can plant here.
• Morning glories = weeds, you can pluck and mulch them in place
• Stay updated on the dates of the ho-down parties on the row, you can snag the extra decorative hay bales and use them for mulch afterwards.  A warning from Sarah though, the hay is prime slug habitat, so I used it to mulch plants like the citrus trees that are fairly immune to slugs. 

Other updates:

• Sarah and Jeremy put in a drip irrigation system in hedge-side bed, it hooks up to the faucet on the back of the house. 
• Of the herbs we planted this year, the lemon balm and sage are going crazy.  Lavender, oregano, and thyme didn't do very well next to the big rosemary bush.  The basil behind the rosemary is finally picking up after being in the ground for about a month already!
• Two of the moringas died :( and another five are looking pretty sad, but the other ten or so seem to be okay. The ones in dry soil with the most sun are doing the best.

June 10th, 2009 - The neighborhood surrounding Hamm has some beautiful residential gardens.  Maybe they could give us some tips on flowers in the future.

June 6th, 2009 The gardener's version of claims to fame don't involve spotting famous people per say, but catching snapshots of their landscaping techniques.  I drove by Sergey Brim's house the other day and saw a very cute, giant herd of goats nibbling away at the lawn.  Google recently implemented this natural lawn-mowing practice at their Mountain View Campus as well. It's a low-carbon alternative to using lawn mowers, and you get free fertilizer to seal the deal! There's something very calming about employing animals rather than machines to manage natural systems.  I wonder what Stanford would look like if the ditched the heavy stuff and adopted a proprietary campus herd of goats instead.  Of course, all those goat leftovers would make playing frisbee on the oval a bit more hazardous.


For the record, I had some misgivings about taking a snapshot of someone's backyard.  However, I did refrain from taking a satellite shot and posting it on an online map tool. 

May 23rd, 2009

Shams got a beautiful shot of one of the hummingbirds that comes to drink out of the fountain every morning.

May 9th, 2009

Big workday in the garden, put in a lot of the veggie starts Sarah brought over as well as 17 moringa trees and A LOT of tomato plants. I also had fun photographing the bees in the bottlebrush hedging the back of the garden.  I spotted three types of species, although I couldn't really tell you what exactly they are (European, a fuzzy one, and a black California native bee I think).  I'm glad the garden is attracting so many pollinators, this bodes well for future Hamm plants.

April 30th, 2009  - I joined the Earth Systems spring tour of the cactus garden.  Christy Smith, the Cactus Garden Volunteer Coordinator and manager of the restoration project at the garden, gave us a great historical overview and info about all the different species in the garden.  The garden, originally called the "Arizona Garden" has been the official make-out spot for Stanford students over the past century (and you thought all the action happened at Full Moon on the Quad).
There are truly some bizarre cacti there too, things that look like they might pop out one of Dr. Suesses' Lorax. If you want to learn more about these amazing prehistoric-looking beings, you can join Christy for the cactus garden work day every third Saturday of the month. This lady knows her cacti. What's more, she maintains the garden on a shoestring budget, relying on donations and help from the surrounding community to keep this Stanford treasure alive for everyone to enjoy.  

April 26th, 2009

Danny and Peter from DripTech installed a gravity-powered irrigation system at Hamm last week.  All told it cost about $225 including the barrel and materials, but it'll greatly improve our water efficiency once we have crops over on that side. They actually do most of their work in developing countries with small farmers, but I thought it was a great, simple solution to our water needs as well.


I'm planning on spray painting the barrel green to make it less conspicious, but I'll leve at least one strip clear so we can easily measure the water level.  There's a spigott near the barrell that allows us to manually turn the system on and off.  Right now we fill it using the hose, but ideally we'll have a rainwater cachment system someday to keep our water usage down.

April 27th, 2009

Wild mint is the bane of the northern California gardener, once it escapes your herb garden, there's no stopping it.  That is, unless you live in a house with 26 people who love mojitos.  The mint grows fast, but it doesn't stand a chance against Hammarskjold's appetite for fizzy, cold, minty, delicious, lime- and rum-filled cocktails.