New Ploughshares Nursery Blog

Hi everyone!  My name is Jeff Bridge and I am the manager of Ploughshares Nursery.  As many of you know, Ploughshares is a non-profit nursery, part of the Alameda Point Collaborative.  Alameda Point Collaborative provides housing and services to families and individuals facing homelessness.  Every dollar spent at Ploughshares helps in that effort.

Please accept my apology in advance for any blogging faux pas I might commit as this is my first blog attempt. At 47 years of age I feel lucky that I never acquired the technophobia that inflicted other people in my age group.  I enjoy social networking but sometimes struggle a bit with all the buttons and interweb gadgets.

I started at Ploughshares a little more than a year back and feel priviledged to particpate in growing this little nursery on the edge of the old naval base.  Our focus on permaculture style gardening continues but we have expanded our selection of plants and other things gardeners need.  Ploughshares now has pottery and garden statues and a plethora of organic and I.P.M. products to deal with challenges local gardeners meet in their home gardens.  If you are a person looking for easy-to-grow natives, drought tolerant plants and edibles, look no further than Ploughshares.  We offer gardening work-shops and expert advice on garden design and maintenance. 

Last year Alameda Point Collaborative launched a Landscape Apprentice Program led by no other than Ruby Bridges elementary school's 'Farmer' Deborah Lindsay.  Apprentices learn basic, intermediate and advanced horticultural skills necessary to maintain over thirty-five acres of old navalbase property. We hope that next year we will be able to offer landscape design and installation services to Alameda residents.

The most exciting thing to report is that construction of our new nursery building has begun.  The new nursery will be constructed largely from recycled materials and will showcase different sustainable technologies.  A living roof not unlike that found at The California Academy of Science and a solar power array will top hay-bale walls.  A rain catchment system and a gray water sytem with associated planting area will help us water our permaculture landscape.  Thanks to a donation from the Big Ass Fan Commpany we will enjoy a cool breeze on hot summer days under,....well,... a REALLY big fan.  The structure will act as an ecological education center and retail building which we hope to make available to groups like Bay Friendly and Master Gardeners.

So come down and check us out!  We are growing and I hope to post many more blog entries over the coming months with information about our plants, edible gardening and urban farming related work-shops and products.
Cheers!