As I began moving into my house this year, I started imagining my future homestead, specifically the food forest I envisioned growing in my backyard. I didn’t have much experience growing plants, so this semester I decided to take my first horticulture class at CCSF. Since I would already be on campus every Monday, I also added a Pilates class in the afternoon. Pilates was great, and definitely something I’d like to keep alongside my training. But horticulture was the real gem, and I want to share a little more about what I learned and how it sparked my own gardening journey!
Class Environment
Despite taking classes at CCSF over the years, I’d never noticed the extensive gardens scattered throughout campus. There are multiple greenhouses, garden beds, several different gardens, and even a fire pit with an outdoor pizza oven. Our classes were 3.5 hours long, with lab work for the first half and lectures later in the evening, when it got too dark to continue working outside.
The hands-on lab work was where I gained the most experience with plants. We learned how to propagate cuttings, create seed bombs, upplant, weed, harvest, prune, and plant trees. We also had the opportunity to take many of the seedlings home to experiment with ourselves. For one homework assignment, we had to germinate 100 seeds and that is where my own gardening journey really began!
My Garden
At the start of the year, I had a backyard that was mostly overgrown with weeds. I have a few trees and rose bushes, but I wasn’t maintaining or managing them very well. In early March, I started my seed germination assignment indoors. As the seedlings sprouted, I applied what I was learning in class and moved them into larger containers. Before long, they outgrew those too, and I needed to find them some new real estate outdoors.
My yard was in no shape to house my new edible plants, so I bought a raised garden bed and filled it with fresh soil. The plants absolutely thrived in their new environment, but along with all that growth came new pests. One day, I went outside to discover that my bak choy plants had been completely decimated (I believe by birds). I bought a mesh screen to keep the larger pests at bay, and after that, I mostly had to contend with just a few nibbles from caterpillars and other insects.
As I continued tending to my little garden, I started learning the lifecycle of each plant. My bak choy was the first to flower, so I harvested all the heads and left one plant to flower and go to seed. I learned how to harvest my lettuce and mustard greens in a way that allowed them to keep producing leaves, while I got to enjoy fresh salads and stir-fried greens along the way.
This class has been invaluable to my gardening journey. There is still so much to learn, but it’s been fun to see how much I already know from simply getting my hands dirty. With a busy summer of travel ahead, I’ll be taking a little break from the garden, but I’m looking forward to picking it back up in the fall!
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