Planting Justice

03/04/2025

🤩 Are you between the ages of 15 and 18 and looking for something to do during Spring Break? Join Planting Justice on Wednesday April 2nd from 12 pm to 4 pm for a paid outdoor workday! Bring your water bottle, sunblock, layers, a hat, and shoes and clothes that you can get dirty (the landscape will be muddy!). We will provide tools, gloves, and lunch. Payment will be distributed at the end of the day.

Are you wanting to join us? Please fill out this interest form by 5pm Friday, March 14th. We will contact you back with a confirmation. There are only 20 spots available, so submit your form today!

🤩 ¿Tienes entre 15 y 18 años y buscas algo que hacer durante las vacaciones de primavera? ¡Únete a Planting Justice el miércoles 2 de abril de 12:00 pm a 4:00 pm para un día de trabajo al aire libre remunerado! Trae tu botella de agua, bloqueador solar, capas, un sombrero, y zapatos y ropa que puedas ensuciar (¡el paisaje estará embarrado!). Proporcionaremos herramientas, guantes y almuerzo. El pago se distribuirá al final del día.

¿Quieres participar? Completa este formulario de interés antes de las 5:00 pm viernes 14 de marzo. Nos comunicaremos contigo para confirmarte la participación. ¡Solo hay 20 lugares disponibles, así que envía tu formulario hoy mismo!

03/03/2025

The conference is almost here!

A great way to kick off this year's events is with the Urban Foodscape Tour, organized by and featuring Planting Justice! Come learn more about what we do, how we are growing a more resilient food system in 2025, and see where some of the magic happens at The Mother Farm!

We are honored to be a part of this event, and hope to see you at the farm soon!

[Photo of 3 folks posing in front of the Planting Justice Mother Farm, from the linked article, courtesy of Bay Area Green Tours]

https://buff.ly/PTYUAqu

02/28/2025

In a Fowl Mood? Let's Chicken Out Together!

12 Noon - 2 PM, Saturday, March 15

Community members are invited to the farm for a community conversation about getting started with chicken and poultry husbandry!

The PJ Mother Farm Team is beginning our journey towards adding chickens into our ecosystem, and we're excited to invite everyone to come learn along with us.

Come hear resources and tips recommended from folks at different stages in their chicken-keeping journey over light snacks and refreshments. Feel free to bring some tasty treats to share!

RSVP here:https://buff.ly/41xRxKj
For questions or issues, contact Kathryn at: [email protected]

02/24/2025

Don't miss our second, FREE winter pruning workshop @ Planting Justice Mother Farm in El Sobrante, CA!

Instructor: Julio Madrigal, PJ Mother Farm Co-Manager

Join the Planting Justice Mother Farm team at our 4-acre orchard and food forest in El Sobrante to learn how to winter prune specific varieties that grow well in the East Bay Area. Sign up today!

Thursday, Feb. 27
1 P.M. - 3:30 P.M.
Avocado, Sapote, Apricot/Ume, Rose 🥑 🌹

This workshop is free (though donations accepted!) and limited to 30 people.

The 7-member PJ Mother Farm team nurtures two trees or bushes of each variety to grow scion and cutting wood for propagation at our East Oakland Nursery, so we're able to grow over 1,000 varieties of fruit on limited land, and the fruit from our pairs is a supplemental bounty to share with our community and distribute to neighbors in need.

Scan the QR code or link in bio.

02/21/2025

Mother Farm Scion Wood and Cutting Wood available now!

Our 4-Acre Orchard in El Sobrante is home to an incredibly diverse collection of fruiting trees and shrubs; currently housing over 1600 varieties across dozens of plant families.

Apple, apricot, avocado, blueberry, currant, elderberry, fig, feijoa, peach, pear, plum, pomegranate, seaberry, quince, tea plants, and many, many more are now planted in roughly 1 mile of water harvesting swales crossing the contours of an open south-facing hillside here.

2025 is the first year of offering some of our collection to the public as scions and cuttings. We look forward to our trees and shrubs giving new life to more trees and shrubs. We only send out scion and cutting wood from Dec - April, we collect the scionwood when it is dormant to send in late winter to early spring. All wood is currently available for sale and for next year's sales we will start taking pre-orders in the fall.

Learn more about our products here. https://buff.ly/4gRA6Jo

02/19/2025

Free Winter Pruning Workshops!
@ Planting Justice Mother Farm Propagation Orchard in El Sobrante, CA

Instructor: Julio Madrigal, PJ Mother Farm Co-Manager

Join the Planting Justice Mother Farm team at our 4-acre orchard and food forest in El Sobrante for two workshops on how to winter prune specific varieties that grow well in the East Bay Area. Sign up for one or both!

Saturday, Feb. 22
9:30 A.M. - 12 Noon
Elderberry, Asian Plum, European Plum

Thursday, Feb. 27
1 P.M. - 3:30 P.M.
Avocado, Sapote, Apricot/Ume, Rose

These workshops are free (though donations accepted!) and are limited to 30 people each session.

The 7-member PJ Mother Farm team nurtures two trees or bushes of each variety to grow scion and cutting wood for propagation at our East Oakland Nursery, so we're able to grow over 1,000 varieties of fruit on limited land, and the fruit from our pairs is a supplemental bounty to share with our community and distribute to neighbors in need.

Register today!

02/18/2025

Apologies, but the East Oakland Nursery will be closed on Tuesday, Feb. 18th, 2025 for a Planting Justice staff meeting.

You can still shop online! And we will be back open Wednesday, Feb. 19th.

If you haven't checked out our online store, we've got an amazing selection of rare fruit trees and plants, and we ship all over the US.

This month, we're featuring white pine strawberries. Known for their Pineapple flavor, these wonderful strawberries are beautiful too! Sometimes called pineberries, these white berries with red seeds can also make a great ground cover. Pineberries also have good disease resistance and are easy to grow. If you want an aromatic strawberry that has notes of pineapple and apricot flavors and will provide another layer of complexity to your garden, give pineberries a try.

02/10/2025

BAY AREA COMMUNITY!

As our Planting Justice team grows, we need bigger spaces to host our staff meetings!
We’re looking for venues that can accommodate 60 - 100 people.

We’d love to partner with community-minded & justice-oriented orgs that can host us for free, low cost, or in exchange for space trade!

You probably already know, but we are a nonprofit organization dedicated to food sovereignty & justice in system-impacted communities through education, organization, empowerment, and plants!

Got space! We'd love to connect! Email us at [email protected]

02/08/2025

🌱We're Hiring! Become Our Next Operations Director! 🌱

Are you a master of organization? A systems guru? A budgeting wizard? If you thrive on keeping things running smoothly and believe in food sovereignty, economic justice, and community empowerment—this might be your dream job!

As Operations Director at Planting Justice, you’ll help grow our impact by streamlining operations, managing budgets, and supporting our mission-driven programs at our farms and nurseries across the East Bay.

💰 Salary: $85,000+ (negotiable) + benefits & professional development
📍 Location: East Bay, CA (Hybrid – remote & on-site)
📅 Apply by: February 16, 2025

✨ What You’ll Do:
✅ Oversee finances & budgets with our team
✅ Develop systems for transparency & efficiency
✅ Support staff & program operations across our sites
✅ Collaborate with our Communications Director & Leadership Team
✅ Ensure our mission continues to thrive!

💡 If you’re a strategic thinker who loves keeping an organization in top shape, we want to hear from you!

📩 Apply today! Send your resume, cover letter, and references to: [email protected]

02/06/2025

The Planting Justice Mother Farm team is excited to be tabling and volunteering at the 2025 California Rare Fruit Growers-Golden Gate Chapter Scion Exchange at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill on Saturday, February, 8.

This is a plant nerd’s dream! There will be hundreds of varieties of fruit scions and berry / vine cutting available to share, along with rootstock and grafting equipment for sale, and workshops on how to graft and what to grow in the Bay Area.

The Scion Exchange is a wonderful opportunity to learn how to graft, have someone graft a tree for you, and talk to experts about rare varieties, Bay Area growing conditions, pests and diseases, and anything fruit.

Now’s the time to create those multi-graft trees in your yard that fruits all season long!

While there, stop by the Planting Justice table to say hi, and to see if we carry any scion wood you can’t find anywhere else. See you there!

01/29/2025

Happy Lunar New Year! 🐍 🎉 🎆

For all those celebrating, we hope this is an opportunity to rest, rejuvenate, and lay the foundation for a successful and flourishing new year!

Food sovereignty is at the core of Planting Justice's mission. An aspect of food sovereignty that often gets overlooked is communities having access to culturally relevant food, which includes being able to grow those plants locally, when possible.

That’s why seed saving, seed sharing, propagation, and plant sharing are all so important! Growing community grows resilience. We should all be able to grow the edible and medicinal plants that represent our cultural heritage and traditions!

Here are some plants from our nursery you might want to add to your garden in honor of Lunar New Year:

Dragon Head Bamboo for Strength 💪
Peach Trees & Peach Blossoms for Longevity ⏳
Plum Trees & Plum Blossoms for Resilience 🌈
Gray Pines for Longevity ⏳
Jujubes for the fruit used to treat insomnia, anxiety, and digestive issues 🪴

What plants would you like to see us growing at the nursery?

01/22/2025

We are already witnessing the damage this administration can and will cause. Attacking people & the planet with dangerous executive actions and abuses of power. So far, we’ve seen attempts to halting progress on averting climate disaster, recommitting to the federal death penalty, rolling back LGBTQ+ rights, and sowing chaos at the Southern border and undermining long held, basic immigration and asylum policies and rights.

But the dandelion, as a symbol, gives us hope. Because like trans folx, immigrants, refugees, system impacted people, and other frontline communities, the dandelion is strong and resilient, thriving in harsh conditions. Often dismissed and discarded as “just a weed”, dandelions are food for many animals, pollinator supporters, medicine, soil builders, and indicators of overall soil health.

The work we do, we do for the dandelions AKA the people most impacted by unjust systems. And right now, that work is under serious threat. Help us grow healthy communities, dandelions and all.

01/17/2025

Freedom Looks Good On Us is hosting a Freedom Tat Solidarity event in collaboration with Planting Justice!

Sat., January 25th, 2025
319 105th Ave., Oakland, CA
11 am - 4 pm

These freedom tattoos represent solidarity between all incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, and a commitment to the struggle of all system-impacted folks.

All formerly incarcerated folks in the Bay Area who want to show up for solidarity and community are encouraged to register using the QR code link.

01/16/2025

Let's Grow! With most permits approved, we are deep into construction on on our 3-acre Aquaponics Farm & Training Center in Sobrante Park, East Oakland, CA, with a goal to finish by Fall 2025!

Located on the site of the historic Neishi Brothers Flower Nursery and just a few hundred feet from our East Oakland Nursery on 105th, the Aquaponics Farm & Training Center will use eight different systems to grow over 180,000 lbs. of organic produce and nursery starts per year, create 20+ new green jobs, and provide the opportunity for formerly incarcerated and other people from East Oakland to participate in a paid urban agriculture workforce development program including aquaponics farming, nursery management, orchard management, and culinary arts. 🌱 🐟 👩‍🌾 🧑‍🍳 🪴

We are on-track to finish construction by Fall 2025. With your support, we can take our model of community healing to new heights and raise the funds to finish construction on the greenhouses and aqua-barn of this transformational aquaponics center.,

Please consider donating to our Aquaponics Capital Campaign & helping us spread the word! Now more than ever, let's work together to build the sustainable, resilient, compassionate communities we want to see

01/16/2025

Let’s Grow! With most permits approved, we are deep into construction on on our 3-acre Aquaponics Farm & Training Center in Sobrante Park, East Oakland, CA, with a goal to finish by Fall 2025!

Located on the site of the historic Neishi Brothers Flower Nursery and just a few hundred feet from our East Oakland Nursery on 105th, the Aquaponics Farm & Training Center will use eight different systems to grow over 180,000 lbs. of organic produce and nursery starts per year, create 20+ new green jobs, and provide the opportunity for formerly incarcerated and other people from East Oakland to participate in a paid urban agriculture workforce development program including aquaponics farming, nursery management, orchard management, and culinary arts. 🌱 🐟 👩‍🌾 🧑‍🍳 🪴

We are on-track to finish construction by Fall 2025. With your support, we can take our model of community healing to new heights and raise the funds to finish construction on the greenhouses and aqua-barn of this transformational aquaponics center.

Please consider donating to our Aquaponics Capital Campaign & helping us spread the word! Now more than ever, let’s work together to build the sustainable, resilient, compassionate communities we want to see!

01/11/2025

01/03/2025

🌱 New Year, New Opportunity! 🌟
Are you ready to grow into your next role? Planting Justice is hiring a Retail Nursery Manager to lead our groundbreaking space in El Sobrante.
📧 Applications are rolling—don’t miss out!

Email us at [email protected]: 1. Resume 2. Cover Letter 3. References
💼 $65K-$70K + benefits!

More info: https://buff.ly/3VZb1EM