New Urban Sprouts Website

We are so pleased to announce that our new website is up and running. We are officially moving all of our blog activity to our new www.urbansprouts.org site. Please check it out and bookmark our new page.

Oxalis Challenge at Ida B.

I recently learned from my students that oxalis, an invasive and aggressive weed for many San Francisco gardeners, is also called sourgrass, whose flower stalk can actually be chewed. Although oxalis has another beneficial function, that is, to prevent soil erosion on slopes, I can't help but feel that every time I'm up at one of my schools, it's a renewed battle between oxalis and gardener.

Last week, I issued a challenge to my students at Ida B. Wells to pull out as much oxalis as they could from our two main beds, which would be documented as before and after pictures on this blog. Although some students went right to work, others required much more coaxing; many students seem to have an inherent dislike of weeding, even if it's just the patch in front of them. At the end of class and after three huge piles of oxalis, it still looked like we barely made a dent in the ratio of oxalis to vegetables. Note to self - next time, to prevent oxalis takeovers, try mulching early before the rains start.

Before weeding around the fava beans...


After weeding (one student's work)...



Mulching with straw with my afterschool class...

Urban Sprouts Video!

I am very excited to bring to you a glimpse of a day in our gardens. Thanks to our new Flip cameras, you can see Urban Sprouts in action preparing freshly harvested collards into delicious, simple, gourmet snacks!

Students at both Martin Luther King middle school and International Studies Academy have gotten excited about sharing their perspective of the garden to the community and each other. In the near future I hope to use the Flip camera as a medium of communication between the two schools.