Backyard solutions
“It’s technically possible that the traditional older suburbs could actually produce all of the food needed to sustain the people living there. The amount of open space - both public and private space in backyards - means that you’ve got a population density not that much greater than some of the densest traditional agricultural landscapes in the world.”
With crude oil now more than $US110 a barrel and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries announcing this month that it will not succumb to demands for raised production quotas, dark predictions of an imminent descent into a global energy crisis appear to be coming true.
But the permaculture co-founder David Holmgren, who has been warning of such events for decades, believes the energy crisis heralds the beginning of a low-energy future - a future that may involve a return to 1950s suburbia.
These days Holmgren is a quietly spoken farmer in his 50s, his ponytail the only hint of the radical visionary behind the frameless spectacles.
Thirty years ago Holmgren was a university student who came up with the concept of permaculture, a blindingly simple idea: why not design our living spaces so that human needs for food, water and shelter imitated natural self-sustaining ecosystems?
Bill Mollison, a university lecturer who had worked as a wildlife biologist and helped to start the Tasmanian Organic Gardening and Farming Society, was Holmgren’s mentor and co-creator of the idea.
Leaving as dux of his Fremantle high school in 1973 to hitch-hike around Australia, Holmgren became fascinated by a growing culture of self-sufficiency that he…
Bruce F:
Hi Stan,
Holmgren is a terrific role model and his ideas on permaculture are terrific.
I can’t say that his work is unapproachable, but for many people, it’s tough to know where to start. I’m “in between” what Holmgren represents and the status quo, and trying to drag more people in my direction. I’ve found some interesting sites that talk about the practical realities of doing that,
Homegrown Evolution is one - http://www.homegrownevolution.com/2008/05/steal-this-book.html
They’ve got a sense of humor, seen in this video “How to catch and eat a rat” - http://www.homegrownevolution.com/2008/01/how-to-catch-and-eat-rat.html
As long as I’m dropping links, here’s one on how to make your own solar panels - http://www.mdpub.com/SolarPanel/index.html
Our project of growing vegetables on city rooftops is going well. We’re making adjustments as we go along, and attracting some interest from local non-profit groups who might want to build on what we’ve done. I’ll plug it again here -
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7458996@N06/sets/72157603652656573/
29 May 2008, 11:48 amWinston Warfield:
My wife is from Trinidad, so I’ve had the pleasure of numerous visits with my out-laws and the extended family. Trinidad has two seasons, wet, and dry (it’s tropical and hot year-round, with delicious trade winds). When you travel outside Port-of-Spain, a large city by Caribbean standards, you can see quite a bit of what we refer to as sustainable living. It’s taken for granted, and I have to chuckle at how we Americans find this so remarkable. I’ve marveled at the rainwater catchment systems on roofs in the rural region where my wife was raised, directing the precious stuff into big, black plastic cisterns for the dry season, or just to have as backup. As foodstuffs are prohibitively expensive in supermarkets, people raise their own veggies in the yard, or across ‘da road’ in a jungle clearing, and a few raise ducks in the backyard. Meat of any kind is out-of-reach for any but the comfortable upper-middle class. Unfortunately, this led to the disappearance of my deceased father-in-law’s considerable herd of cattle due to rustling, as his kids grew up and no longer could be counted on to “tend cow”, which meant being guards in additon to milking and re-tethering to new grazing ground.
29 May 2008, 2:01 pmpeggy:
Here are some thoughts from a person who has tried and is still trying:
1) Whenever you are trying to grow stuff, start small. Grow one or two tomato plants, or whatever, in pots, relish your success if one of your plants produces even one tomato, or whatever, and grow a bit more next year.
2) Have good variety in your diet, otherwise you will get sick of eating what you grow.
3) Make friends with your neighbors, and cultivate those friendships as though your life depended on them.
29 May 2008, 8:45 pmRequired:
3) Make friends with your neighbors, and cultivate those friendships as though your life depended on them.
Word.
30 May 2008, 10:44 amJames M:
Bruce: Thanks for the links and for your personal example.
Some friends and I are going to be putting in a roof garden atop our live / work warehouse in Oakland very soon. I wouldn’t say all of us are complete novices — some of us are just rank amateurs. In any case, this kind of advice and counsel, from local folks and from the intarwebs, is going to be essential for us.
We are going to definitely go with Earthboxes or some likeness thereof — thanks for the tip — plus the odd half-wine-barrel I’ve managed to accumulate. First, though, we’ve gotta build a deck (in progress) so we don’t destroy our roof. I think, given the space we’ve got access to, when all’s said and done it will be one of the bigger gardens of its type in the area.
One thing I’m curious about, without having bothered to research it at all, is what kind of pests / blights one can expect from a rooftop garden. Are these minimized due to the location? No need to answer that unless you feel really compelled or have a good personal story to share — I’m sure it will come up in our research.
Also, for Bay Areans: Tomorrow (Sunday) there is a workshop with Heather Flores of “Food Not Lawns” fame, which you can find out about here.
31 May 2008, 5:22 pmBruce F:
James M.,
Thanks for the compliment. I don’t know if it’s because we’re on the roof or not, but all our cucurbits were hit with mold/mildew/squash vine borer. Everything else, aside from a little blossom end rot on the tomatoes, did well.
I’m curious about your rooftop garden and hope you’ll post something on it. It sounds like a great project.
I’d encourage you to look into some kind of automated watering system if you’ve got a bunch of containers. I’m pretty confident that my idea of a central reservoir supplied by a Hudson valve that feeds all the container water reservoirs using the water level principle is a real solid solution. No moving parts, timers, easy to set up and maintain. And uses the absolute minimum of water. You could also feed it with a rain barrel with a slight change. The (easy to learn) trick is getting it initialized/primed.
I’ve got it running here, so far so good.
I came here with the intention of dropping another useful (at least to me) link.
Los Angeles Eco-Village has put together a good linky resource page. It has the subheading “Some helpful resources and websites for living more sustainably in cities”
http://www.laecovillage.org/Resources.html
4 June 2008, 6:51 pmDavid:
I have heard this from Holmgren and many other permaculture people who, to their credit, are trying to focus on positive solutions for our planet.
Unfortunately, the problem with this possibility is also the problem with the permaculture movement in general. That is, they tend to focus on the technical and physical aspects of growing food and other products sustainability, without examining the underlying economic and social structures that make large-scale commodity farming possible and “necessary”.
So in other words: yes, it is physically possible to grow all the food we need in our back yards. But this would also require a large percentage of the population to not only practice but be trained in biointensive agriculture. In other words, it would require a fundamental, radical, and intentional (which is to say, revolutionary) shift in the basic way society is organized, not to mention the nature of the qualitative relationships that constitute it.
Which is fine by me, but not for the people who imagine gardening unproblematically in their back yards. Unfortunately for permaculture, it’s not as simple as replacing one’s lawn with a garden.
4 June 2008, 8:08 pmStan:
Straw man. False dichotomy.
Not an either-or prop. One cannot happen without the other… technological/design reorientation and ideological-political hegemony. If the problem now were that the people with the design emphasis were operating to the exclusion of the political emphasis on the left, then I’d say you are bending the stick the right way. In the political world, however, it is exactly the opposite. This is contrary to anything I understand about historical materialism, just for starters… which says (in the old 12-step dicho) you can’t think your way into right acting, you have to act your way into right thinking.
If I were to ask myself which is more difficult to do — “train” people to practice intensive polyculture, or “train” people to organize for transformative social change — I’d have to guess the IP is easier and more broadly acceptable/accessible.
There are several interlocking aspects to ideological/political hegemony. One is the legal monopoly on force. Another is control over the administrative apparatuses of the state and its fraternal twin in civil society. Another is popular culture. Another is domination of the cultural episteme and affect.
The left had power, and in most cases attempted to forge a new understanding (episteme-affect) by fiat, without tampering with the basic assumptions undergirding industrialism. Didn’t work.
The reorganization has to emerge from the practices. If political power is taken by military means, then the reorganizaiton of the state and society will be heavily inflected by the practices of the military.
Political reorganization is necessary, but it must come directly out of a defense and expansion of new practices. IP is one of those practices. Try to bypass it, and your “power” is a small boat in a big sea.
5 June 2008, 6:07 amCharles:
This is contrary to anything I understand about historical materialism, just for starters… which says (in the old 12-step dicho) you can’t think your way into right acting, you have to act your way into right thinking.
^^^
5 June 2008, 12:23 pmIf that’s so, how come Marx and Engels spent so much time thinking ? 100 collected works worth of writing . Well , it was sort of thinkingaction.
freeacre:
I think a lot of radical restructuring will be occurring soon with little or no organization required, simply due to increasing prices of gas and food. For many people, it will be cost prohibitive to maintain 2 vehicles, two commutes to work, daycare, and assorted extra expenses that are incurred when one works (professional clothing, lunches out, etc.). It will be cheaper to have one person work away from home (or at home, if possible), and the other primarily raising food, cooking, preserving, and taking care of children at home to cut costs. Forget about taking the kids to soccer games out of town on the weekends. That’s over. The children also then can be a help, rather than an expense. The couples will need to divide the responsibilities depending on the realities of who can do what the best. The ones who figure out a way to work together efficiently and happily, will be the most successful. Success will be judged on who has plenty of food, eggs, meat on the table. Who has a way to get where they need to go reliably. Kids will not longer look forward to Ipods and cell phones for X-mas. They’ll get a puppy or rabbit or a lamb to raise. And, they will be happier.
Women will not need a counselor or an instructor to teach them it is no longer necessary to get their hair done and a manicure regularly. Those things just go away by themselves once the wallet is on “empty.”
We’ve been doing this for a few years now. We are older, so we don’t have children to support. But we live outside a real little town, have been gardening and reaching out to neighbors, trading and gifting things…and it feels really good. We can live comfortably on the social security check now.
When people begin to see other people coping quite will with the new reality, I think it will catch on like wildfire. I think it will come more through songs and stories, like the consciousness shift in the 60’s. It will spread out of necessity and also through the fact that the lifestyle change feels good to do.
STAN: Excellent point. This won’t happen on a mass scale out of ideological affinity, but out of necessity. It’s the politics that are scary.
6 June 2008, 1:43 amMichael:
Idea share;
Low/No cost seep irrigation system.
Required materials; Plastic bottles, a tack or similar pointed object of small diameter.
Optional materials; Stakes, twine.
Method; Aquire one plastic bottle (I used 2 liter soda bottles) for each plant you wish to irrigate.
Puncture the bottom and lower inch or so of the bottles with your tack.
Place the bottles next to the plants you wish to irrigate.
Fill with water. This can be accomplished by hand but a hose works very well. Do this regularly according to a schedule you determine to be optimal for you and the plants.
Water seeps from holes minimizing loss due to evaporation and maxmimizing the amount delivered to the roots of the plant.
Two observed issues;
The bottles tended to fall over once empty requiring adjustment. This could also cause material loss in areas of high wind.
Possible remedy low effort; Tie the bottles to stakes using a small amount of twine.
Possible remedy high effort; Place a number of small stones in the bottle sufficent to weight it down. This is so high effort as to be pointless although it might be an activity that could occupy a smallish child while you are otherwise engaged. You could give them 25 cents for each bottle filled up one inch with small stones. After they finish you could explain about worker/boss relations and how they might want to try to get more payback for their time.
Dirt tended to clog the seep holes.
Possible remedy, low effort; Punch more or bigger holes.
Possible remedy, high effort; Some books on plant growing describe somthing know as the ‘wicking’ method of indoor irrigation. This involves the use of rope (nylon I believe) to draw water from a reservoir into planters. A similar effect might be achieved in this set up using twine inserted through the holes and trailed into the ground where the plant is set. This would involve more work at the outset but might improve efficency or it might not.)
(This worked fairly well for the two months I did it, the two months you generally have to worry about irrigating in Seattle. I will also acknowledge that I was only watering a few tomato plants but I see no reason it could not work on larger numbers of plants. Probably not on a commercial level though. Hope someone finds this useful. (It just occured to me that this might not endear you to your local homeowners association if you have one.))
rb
6 June 2008, 3:16 pmStan:
Bury the bottles with just the neck and spout above ground; and poke holes midway as well as at the bottom. Once the plants are established, even as the holes are clogged, the water is pulled into the roots by the moisture gradient, and the depth encourages deeper root growth. I did this with a 4′ x 4′ garden I built for the church ministry center with some leftover lumber and about 16 cubic feet iirc of organic compost, and it looks like a miniature jungle even as our temps are already nearing 100 and the rain has stopped (drought fear pervades everything here).
BTW, I let my leeks go to seed this year. Five to six foot emerald-green serpentine stalks, with beautiful snowball flowers emerging from Russian-dome pods… peek inside the snowball (that is attracting honeybees like crazy), and you see a geode-like purple interior. Amazing. Never saw this before.
6 June 2008, 7:27 pmMichael:
That sounds like it could work quite well and go some way to removing any potential objections based on appearance.
It is easy for me to envision some kind of ‘water wand’ which could be trigger operated by one hand, somewhat like a pressure washer but not so much pressure. A funnel of some kind would be helpful to allow the wand to be inserted with a minimal amount of stooping, something that is becoming more important to me as I get older. I’m seeing someone walking up and down the rows filling the bottles with one hand and holding their morning coffee in the other. What a fine time to take a nice long look at the garden. Of course you could do the same thing with a regular hose but all that stooping, ugh!
I had a thought; would it be possible to put a small amount of water soluble, slow release fertilizer into the bottles? Well sure it would be possible — so I guess what I mean is would it be desirable?
7 June 2008, 2:21 pmMichael:
Argh!
Spelling errors!
Where the hell is my editor anyway?
7 June 2008, 2:24 pmSandy:
The first use of the term organic in the agricultural sense was by Lord Northbourne in his 1940 work “Look to the Land.”
“The best can only spring from that kind of biological completeness which has been called wholeness. If it is to be attained, the farm itself must have a biological completeness; it must be a living entity, it must be a unit which has within itself a balance organic life. Every branch of work is interlocked with all others. The cycle of conversion of vegetable products through the animal into manure and back to vegetables is of great complexity, and highly sensitive, especially over long periods, to any disturbance of its proper balance. The penalty for failure to maintain this balance, is in the long run, a progressive impoverishment of the soil. Real fertility can only be built up gradually under a system appropriate to the conditions of each particular farm, and by adherence to the essentials of that system, whatever they may be in each case, over long periods.”
http://www.organic.com.au/people/LordNorthbourne/
http://www.amazon.com/Look-Land-Lord-Northbourne/dp/1597310182
11 June 2008, 8:18 pmCharles:
Not only the sub-urbs, but the
super-urbs have increasing open space. Detroit has an ever growing number of vacant lots. Maleek Yakini is leading an urban garden pilot program. For 15 years, Grace Lee Boggs has been urging and organizing the development of same.
The big green struggle in Detroit right now is shutting down the incinerator used to burn solid waste.
23 June 2008, 3:05 pm