A urban farm in San Francisco | General Homesteading Discussion | Forums

Article is a little old, but that's a pretty sweet set up

Summer Fog Farm began as a clean-up project seven years ago, before an injury forced me to retire early from my job on the Golden Gate ferries. The back yard behind my apartment in San Francisco’s fog-bound Richmond District was so choked with weeds and brush I could hardly fight my way through it. With the help of friends, I started clearing it out one day, and I’ve never looked back. My next-door neighbor built me a dozen redwood-sided raised beds that took up almost the entire lot, and I planted them with whatever caught my fancy—mostly unusual lettuces and greens from Italy, especially bitter chicories and wild plants such as milk thistle and stinging nettle. Many consider these latter crops to be weeds, a misguided view, in my opinion, but more about that in a moment.

Dense plantings of mixed greens make this compact urban plot stunningly attractive. The 2-ft.-tall 4x12 raised beds are so close together that there's barely room to walk.

An elderly French neighbor saw what I was up to and invited me to garden her back yard as well, and so began Summer Fog Farm. I sold the greens I grew to a handful of top-flight restaurants around the city, and, for a time, it seemed as though my urban market garden might blossom into a bona fide business. At one point, I even took on a partner and contemplated a city-wide network of backyard mini-farms. But health problems have scaled back my gardening activities.

Today I’m content to coax a lot of greens and a little supplementary income from my 30-foot by 60-foot back yard. For maximum production in this maritime climate, where the temperature is rarely anything but cool, I rely on raised beds, row covers, dense plantings of scatter-sown blends, and the magic of rock powder, my soil amendment of choice. If I have a competitive edge as a small-time grower, it’s thanks to my continued focus on greens that even San Francisco restaurants have trouble finding elsewhere.

Trade secret: Grow uncommon greens
I’m just a mile and a half from the Pacific Ocean, in a cool, damp microclimate where the challenges are getting enough direct sun exposure, warming the soil, and ensuring adequate plant germination, to say nothing of slugs, snails, and mildew. I don’t even attempt such hot weather crops as tomatoes, corn, peppers, basil, and beans.

Instead, I grow cool-weather greens of every kind: radicchio, spadona, ceriolo grumulo, rustic arugula, puntarelle, dentarelle, red dandelion, erba stella, the list goes on. I also grow mâche, miner’s lettuce, and a number of peppery cresses. My emphasis on bitter and wild greens turns out to be a win–win situation. I myself am enamored of growing, cooking with, and eating bitter greens, and my best customer, Chef Reed Hearon of Rose Pistola, can’t eem to get enough.

Where to begin to describe my love affair with bitter greens? My mother served salads of escarole and frisée back in the heyday of iceberg lettuce, and after my father opened a French restaurant, I developed a taste for Belgian endive. When it came time to plant my raised beds, I naturally went looking for bitter greens.

The first escarole I grew was ‘Sinco’, from Shepherd’s Garden Seeds (this business is now closed). I was so pleased with ‘Sinco’, I ordered every green available from Shepherd’s, literally. Then I dove into the Cook’s Garden catalog for cutting chicories, spadona, and dandelions. I also ordered from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Ornamental Edibles, andRichters. To my delight, bitter greens not only grew almost effortlessly in my back yard but proved highly resistant to insects, slugs, and snails.

I kept going, growing every bitter green I could find, reading about them in cookbooks, listening to chefs with Italian grandparents. From what I could gather, Italians use such greens beyond salads. They add them to pasta dishes and soups, stuff them into ravioli and fish, toss them on top of pizza. My involvement went on and on. The word got around I was growing exotic greens, and pretty soon I received a phone call from San Francisco food writer Paula Wolfert, who has an overwhelming enthusiasm for and an encyclopedic knowledge of Italian greens.

more here

http://www.vegetable.....-francisco