The City People's Book of Raising Food - Olkowski, Survival
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The City People's Book of Raising Foodby Helga & William OlkowskiContentsINTRODUCTIONChapter 1WE START OUR GARDENChapter 2URBAN EDEN? OR, WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT THE CITY?Chapter 3DOING THE BEST WITH WHERE YOU AREClimate, Microclimate, and MiniclimateTemperatureWindLightChapter 4WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT JUST PLAIN DIRT?How Soil HappensSoil CharacterSoil TextureA Touch Test for Your SoilWhy Does Texture Matter?MulchingRules on WateringStructureHow to Improve the Structure of Your SoilChapter 5WHY COMPOST?Methods, Slow and FastThe Way We Do ItChoosing a Location and Making BinsCollecting the MaterialsHow Much Dry to How Much Green or Fresh Material?Building the PileTurning the PileUsing CompostChapter 6WHAT DO PLANTS NEED?See Hopk n's Cafe!The Mysteries of pH or Soil AcidityWhat Have You Got?NitrogenRecognizing DeficienciesChapter 7CARROTS OR BOK CHOY? -- DECIDING WHAT TO GROWNot Much Space?Time: A Big VillainPreserving Food While Preserving the Planet Quantity, or Counting CaloriesQualityChapter 8STARTING WITH SEEDSHow To Study Seed CatalogsSaving Your Own SeedsPlanting IndoorsMaterialsProcedureOutdoorsWhen and How to TransplantTransplanting Trees: An AsideGarlic Cloves, Tubers, and Other PossibilitiesChapter 9MAKING FRIENDS WITH THE NEIGHBORS, OR ADVENTURES WITH CHICKENS, RABBITS, BEES, AND WORMSChickens or Manure, Eggs and ThoughtsHaving the Birds on WireHaving the Birds on the GroundFeeds and FoodsSelecting BreedsBaby ChicksOther DetailsHarvestingMeat RabbitsHutchesFeeders and WaterersBuying and SexingBreedingFeedingButcheringTanningOther Sources of InformationBeesAn Ant-Proof Hive StandBees and DiseasesSources of InformationRaising EarthwormsChapter 10MANAGING WILDLIFE IN THE URBAN GARDENWildlife in the CityEntomophobiaNatural ControlsCarnivorous Insects: Parasites and PredatorsAnother Look at InsecticidesThree R's and an SThe First R = ResidueThe Second R = ResurgenceS for "Secondary Pest Outbreak"The Third R = ResistanceWhat the City of Berkeley DidAn Integrated Control ProgramBiological Control in the Urban GardenResistant PlantsWhat Should You Do?Chapter 11WE TAKE TO THE ROOFContainer GardeningDrainageThe Problems of Weight and WearA Meat and Greens SystemChapter 12HOW ABOUT A COMMUNITY GARDEN?Chapter 13CONFESSIONS OF TWO CRAZY ENVIRONMENTALISTSLong-Term Survival StrategiesUrban Agriculture: Reasons WhyLife Style ChangesLawns: "What for Art Thou?"The FutureWhy Crazy?INDEXIntroductionI have always wanted to live on a farm. But I have always lived in the city. In this country, most people live in cities. In fact, all over the world, with a few excep-tions, the trend is towards urbanization.City people are a funny lot. They don't spend much time thinking about what keeps them alive-their life-support systems. There was a time when I didn't think about it much either. Oh, of course, I knew people need air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat. But fresh air was obviously free and available and I didn't worry about the water that came through the pipes to my house, or the food that I bought at the store. If the vegetables and meats looked attractive, if they were a reasonable price, if they didn't look too hard to prepare, I bought them, took them home, prepared and ate them.Well, we're all a bit more sophisticated now. We've heard about pesticide residues on foods, fertilizers contaminating water, lead in the air we breathe, the energy crisis, and other environmental disasters. If you are like me, you may have reached a point where the list is too long and upset-ting to confront. You don't want to hear about another problem unless at the same time someone suggests what you can do about it. This is such a book-about the prob-lem of producing food for city people and what you can do about it.Consider the tomato. It takes large amounts of energy to produce the synthetic fertilizers used by the tomato farm-er. Fossil fuels are heavily involved in modern agricultural technology and in the production of pesticides that such farming methods may seem to demand. Fossil fuel energy is also necessary to bring the tomato to the store where it is sold. How many of us walked home with our groceries this week? No doubt most used a car to bring the tomato to the kitchen, thus doing our bit directly toward energy consumption and air pollution, too.And at the end of all that environmentally disastrous activity, what have we got? A tomato that hasn't seen the farm in many a day, a variety with a skin tough enough to withstand lots of mechanical handling, hopefully with pesticide residues below the FDA allowable tolerances. Nothing exactly to cheer about.So what's a city person to do? Grow some of your own. I think that one can grow a good deal of food in the city, and have fun doing it. It was done during World War II-they were called Victory Gardens. The apartment dweller can grow tomatoes and cucumbers inside in a sunny win-dow, citrus and bell peppers too. A window box salad, of loose-leaf lettuce, radishes, green onions, cress, baby car-rots, and turnips, is a real possibility. There may be room for a planter box of food plants on the roof or in a court-yard, and even room to raise meat rabbits. You may be able to share a backyard or patio with a friend who has some outdoor space, or join forces with your neighbors in working on an empty lot, unused city-owned land; or you might talk your local parks and recreation people into let-ting you use a portion of a city park. Other city people have found a way. You can too.Of course, not every city dweller wants to raise his own food. Even if you want to, you would have a hard time trying to raise all of it. But you can raise quite a lot. I know, because for the past four years my family has raised all of its own meat and vegetables in the middle of the city. We have taught hundreds of others to do the same. You can do it too. This book is to tell you how.This is a record of some of our personal experiences and some of the "book learning" we found essential to our success. We hope it will be useful to you.Helga OlkowskiP.S.: We've had a lot of help and encouragement from many friends and acquaintances, students, other teachers, and associates. To all these people whom we cannot thank individually we dedicate this book, but particularly to Drs. E. Williams, James Vlamis, and Bob Raabe, who helped us develop the Urban Garden Ecosystem class at the Universi-ty of California; Tom Javits, who helped carry on the class and spread the word about city food growing; and all fu-ture urban gardeners.Chapter 1We Start Our GardenWe sat at the kitchen table one day, and Bill said, "Look at the world. The world is in bad shape." We started thinking about it. The more we thought, the worse we felt."If things fall apart, we're helpless," he said. Then, as they often will, Bill's thoughts drifted to his stomach. "What we need to do is grow our own food," he said."Where?" I asked nervously, peering out into our small backyard which at that time consisted mostly of a dying willow tree and two large, irregular holes. I had fancied having a Japanese garden out there. You know, with fish ponds, stepping stones, miniature trees, and all the things that could convert a space the size of a handkerchief into a vast panorama of unspoiled nature. About ten years prior, I had even gone so far as to dig holes for the ponds, and in a few unusually rainy years an inland sea had briefly mate-rialized. Usually, however, the yard was distinguished mainly by a good crop of weeds."Forget the Japanese garden," Bill said. "We are going to turn the yard into a farm." The next thing I knew he had managed to locate our camping axe and was cutting down the willow tree.Don't feel sorry. I did a little, but I was also relieved. That willow tree had taught me a valuable lesson. I had bought it once on an impulse, while touring a nursery in the hot, central valley of California, far from where I live on cool, foggy San Francisco Bay. A variety unsuited to my own climate, it soon succumbed to a fungus which was slowly killing it. Plants out of their native area are frequently stressed and are more susceptible to the different and strange organisms of other regions.Once the tree was down, and as much as possible of the root system removed, we surveyed our little plot. It is long and narrow, running north and south, bounded by a two story apartment house on the east and our own three story castle on the west. Not too promising, presenting the typi-cal problems of a city garden--not very much space, not very much light. We are typical city dwellers too, not hav-ing much time to give to farming. Both of us are working full time, coming home to supper tired, with only a little daylight left. Weekends are busy with preparing lectures and reading papers."I believe in building winning situations," Bill said. "Let's start small!" And so we did. Allowing for the shade cast by the fence and hedge along the south side of the lot, with a digging fork we turned over the dirt in the small area we thought would get the most hours of sun during the day.In a way we were complete beginners. I had done quite a bit of ornamental gardening before (mainly in the front of the house, so as to create a nice impression when one came up the walk) but not much food raising. The botany I had studied in college didn't seem very helpful now. I felt real-ly ignorant. I didn't know what to plant where. What could stand partial shade? The soil seemed like a clay out of which you could make pottery. We guessed the plants might find i...
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