Backyard garden project

Here’s an ad I will post on Craigslist.org soon.

Free 10 x 15 garden, close to 16th Street BART

Hello, good gardening folks of San Francisco. I have a nifty offer for you today.

Here’s the story:

A few years ago, I moved in with my roommate Ben from Buffalo. Ben likes bees, beer, lifting weights, software engineering, and plucking mandolins. We had access to a big back yard nobody else was using, full of weeds and stray cats and broken grills. So, Ben got some dudes down to help make a raised bed garden. He filled it with mulch and seeds, and put chicken wire around it to keep cats from peeing on the greens. I wish we could have paid our rent in kale and other assorted members of the Brassica genus. We just cooked it up and feasted like kings.

The legendary Ben:

After a while, Ben moved in with a lady and a dog, and his bees flew away to sunnier places. The garden got weedy and I was sad to see it neglected. You see, I like gardens, but I have other projects, and I’m super busy working on my home business that runs 24/7 on the internet. So I put out an ad like this one.

The response was fabulous. I hear that this neighborhood has community gardens with 8-year waiting lists, so space is in demand. In the end, 7 or 8 community-minded nature-loving folks made an informal gardening group. They emailed each other to meet, and had me let them in (and occasionally help) to grow stuff. That’s what I was hoping for, just to see a nice looking back yard that might benefit the neighborhood a little. The fringe benefits were delicious. Actually, I was expecting they would do regular harvesting, but I got to eat a good deal of the fruits and vegetables of their labor. After a while people moved on to other stuff. That’s totally cool, since you shouldn’t work for free. It lasted a good part of a year.

Cool people:

Now, I’m putting the offer out again, but this time I’ll do you one better.

Here’s the deal. You (and other responders), if approved to hang out on this property, can coordinate with each other to grow stuff. But this time, I’ll pitch in my own hard earned cash. That’s right, I will hook you up with a modest budget. You grow, I buy seeds. You dig, I buy shovels. You spread cow poop for happy plants, I’ll buy mulch. Just tell me what you need and how much it costs, and save the receipt. You can use my sink, bathroom, hose, and dog too. I might also (sometimes) get my hands dirty to give a little help, and get you coffee and donuts, or kombucha and cheetohs, or whatever keeps you digging. No need to give me anything (unless you want to), just use the place.

A few more things: This is a 5-unit apartment building. It isn’t my property, I just rent, but I’m the only one with direct access right from my back door. The back yard is secure and tenant-access only. It’s rarely used, but on occasion, other people do bring out their dogs or throw a kid’s birthday party with a spider-man bouncy castle. You can consider it almost always available. Legal jibba jabba: you have to sign a liability waiver, so the landlord won’t get sued if you accidentally impale your foot on a rake or get bitten by a weasel. I have an unofficial arrangement with him, so your access depends on good graces with everyone in the building. Access is possible for as long as I live here (I’m leaseholder until whenever.) To get approved, just send a brief email saying why you want to grow stuff. I can’t promise to answer all emails- sorry. If you like gardening and want space, just hit that send button and let’s see.