Table of Contents:
Fruit Trees
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago;
the second best time is now.”
- old Chinese proverb
Backyard trees will yield fruit all year round in Central California if the correct varieties are planted. Training new trees is easier than restoring older or neglected trees. Fruit trees also provide shade canopy, beauty to the home and neighborhood, and habitat and forage for wildlife. You can protect the bark of young trees with a tree guard to prevent rodent damage. Properly cared-for trees yield higher quality fruit and will live significantly longer.
How to get started:
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Decide on planting sites and varieties. Allow space for a tree’s full growth potential. Give your trees as much sunlight as possible.
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Learn to espalier against walls and fences in small garden areas.
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Practice the principles of good pruning; fruit trees need to be trained and pruned to develop proper shape and form.
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Choose dwarf or standard varieties based on space, cost and time. Dwarf trees bear sooner and are easier to prune and harvest.
Materials:
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a shovel, fork and rake
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compost, organic fertilizer, mulch
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bare root trees
Resources:
Compost
Composting food scraps and the green waste from your yard produces high-quality, low-cost fertilizer or humus. It recycles vital, often-wasted nutrients into the soil food-web and reduces the quantity of garbage you send to landfills. Vermicomposting, the use of manure worms to create excellent soil amendment, works well for those with limited time and space. Compost tea is the fastest way to build quality soil and repair damaged soil. Easy and inexpensive to make, it is effective as a fertilizer, a plant booster and a disease suppressant.
How To Get Started:
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For traditional compost, use layers of browns (leaves, hay, dried plants and weeds) and greens (kitchen scraps, young weeds, grass clippings). Keep the pile moist and aerated.
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For vermicomposting, you’ll need a worm bin, bedding, worms and kitchen scraps.
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Compost tea can be brewed in a five-gallon bucket with a sieve to hold compost and an air-pump and air-stones to aerate the mixture.
Materials:
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a containment structure made of wire, wood or plastic; a cover to control moisture
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a worm bin (SC County ‘wormshops’ offer free and low-cost bins)
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bedding (paper, compost, coconut coir); worms (Eisenia Foetida)
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a five-gallon bucket, a paint-bucket filter or nylon stocking for the sieve, an air-pump, air-stones (pet stores carry them)
Resources:
Edible Green Spaces
Patios, windowsills, rooftops and back porches can be converted into efficient garden sites. Impermeable surfaces don’t need to be obstacles to urban food production. A garden in even the smallest space can produce a good quantity of nutritious food and beautify your home environment.
How To Get Started:
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Observe the growing conditions: exposure to sun, wind and rain, soil types, water sources, slope.
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Decide what you want to grow. Consult your gardening neighbors. Small home gardens should include root and fruit crops, leafy greens, edible flowers, medicinal herbs and legumes as nitrogen fixers.
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Salvage recycled materials to create planting arenas.
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Harvest ‘wild edibles’ in your garden; provide habitats for beneficial insects and birds.
Materials:
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seeds, cuttings and transplants
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pots, planter boxes and sundry containers; trellises
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sunlight: a minimum of six hours per day for vegetables
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mulch and compost
Resources:
Plant Propagation
Plants can be propagated using a variety of methods. Gardeners commonly use cuttings, layering, divisions and budding/grafting to produce free plants. Both woody and herbaceous plants propagate well; some will root within two weeks. A greenhouse is not necessary for successful propagation although maintaining high humidity around the cutting in critical.
How To Get Started:
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Learn the four main types of stem cuttings: herbaceous, softwood, semi-hardwood and hardwood; the plant’s growth stage influences whether the cutting will root.
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Take cuttings from the upper part of a robust, disease-free plant. Avoid cuttings with flower buds. Early morning is the best time to take cuttings.
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Create a warm, humid place to tend the plant-start; clear plastic bags or gallon milk jugs with the bottom cut away work well.
Materials:
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containers: 4” pots, six-packs, shallow trays
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planting medium: perlite, vermiculte, coarse sand, peat moss, soil
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a sharp knife or scissors
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rooting hormone (optional)
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cold-frame made from scrap wood (optional)
Resources:
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For the Gardener Series, Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems
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California Master Gardener Handbook: UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Publication
- plantpropagation.com
Seed Saving
Seed saving is an important agroecology process that preserves the genetic diversity of food crops and perpetuates heirloom plants. Seeds you save from your garden are accustomed to your climate and soil and adapted to the pests in your area. Saving garden seeds each year is also a great cost-saving measure and an easy way to duplicate your favorite vegetables from last year’s harvest. A supply of seeds is also a smart component of your disaster-preparedness kit. Save a minimum of twenty-five seeds per species.
How To Get Started:
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Grow some of your plants to maturity and allow their seeds to dry naturally on the plant or remove them and let them air-dry. Make sure they are thoroughly dry before storing them.
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Tomato seeds need to be fermented to remove the pulp that inhibits germination. Squeeze the pulp into a jar, add water and let it set for a few days; the good seeds will sink to the bottom. Dry before storage.
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Store seeds in air-tight containers at around 40 degrees F. Control moisture by adding a few grains of rice to each container.
Materials:
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fully mature and dry seeds
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heavy plastic or foil ziplock bags, film canisters or small glass jars
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a refrigerator or a cool, dark, dry space
Resources:
Fermenting Fresh Pickles and Sauerkraut
The lactofermentation of foods is an ancient and widely practiced method of
preserving food as well as enhancing its taste and nutritional value. This procedure
involves utilizing the bacteria naturally present in vegetables. Most every culture
uses fermentation to preserve foods such as sauerkraut, pickles, salsa, kimchee,
olives, and kvass.
How To Get Started:
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Gather and clean containers.
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Find a cool spot to ferment; 60-65f is ideal.
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Gather ingredients.
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Clean, cut and measure ingredients.
Materials:
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Nonchlorinated water (Use filtered, boiled, rain, or distilled water.)
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Containers – Crocks, mason jars, Food Grade plastic jars or buckets
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Knife and cutting board or mandoline
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Kosher or Sea Salt (no additives)
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Fresh vegetables (cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, garlic,
onions, etc.)
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Spices (black pepper, cayenne, caraway seeds, mustard seed, bay leaf, etc)
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Dishpan to collect overflow if fermentation is vigorous
Resources:
Sheet Mulching
Sheet mulching is a method of controlling weeds and invasive plants that mimics the litter layer of a forest floor. It improves soil and plant health such that you no longer need to turn the soil. The earthworms do the tilling.
How To Get Started:
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Knock down tall weeds and woody plants or simply trample the area.
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Add soil amendments – enriched compost, manure, or worm castings to “jumpstart” microbial action.
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Lay down a weed barrier. Well-overlapped cardboard works well. Make sure it covers the ground without any breaks to block light and air.
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Add a fairly dense layer of weed-free compost. Grass clippings, seaweed or leaves are ideal.
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For the top dressing, use weed-free leaves, straw, woodchips or sawdust. Replenish this layer periodically as it decomposes.
Materials:
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cardboard or newspaper (without the glossy sections)
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organic mulch
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manure
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soil amendments
Resources:
Urban Foraging and Gleaning
Foraging is the pre-harvest gathering of excess fruits and vegetables to put free food on your table. Some communities have developed networks of fruit tree owners who share with each other. Gleaning is the post-harvest collection of produce left in farmers’ fields which is often donated to food banks and pantries. Gleaning and foraging can be transformative acts that change the way we see our neighbors and neighborhoods.
How To Get Started:
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Learn to think in new ways about the source of your food.
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Walk your neighborhood’s streets and alleys to find unused fruit trees.
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Search on-line for fruit and other produce.
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Be a responsible forager: ask permission when necessary, be kind to the trees and plants you harvest and don’t over-gather.
Materials/Abilities:
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a phone and internet access
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a bit more time, interest and energy than you spend grocery-shopping for the same amount of food
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a willingness to talk with strangers about food
Resources:
Backyard Chickens and Ducks
Raising backyard poultry will provide you with fresh, organic eggs that are rich in omega 3 fatty acids. Chicks and ducklings raised by hand are friendly; they are easy and inexpensive to maintain compared to other animal companions. Duck eggs contain more protein, vitamins, calcium and iron than chicken eggs. Incubating eggs at home will create a diversity of chicks with unusual characteristics and gorgeous markings.
How To Get Started:
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Read poultry books and websites.
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Ask City Hall about quantity of birds and placement of coops.
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Design your coop and run for easy care and good maintenance.
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Purchase chicks early in spring and throughout summer.
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For incubation, choose a twenty-one day period when you’ll be home.
Materials:
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a predator-safe coop; ducks need a pool for bathing
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two chicks minimum (poultry are social animals)
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geek mash for the first six weeks, a chick waterer
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lay mash or crumbles, hen scratch (cracked corn, milo or wheat)
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eggs to incubate, an incubator, thermometer and hydrometer
Resources:
Beekeeping
The honey bee is nature’s most effective pollinator; she accounts for 80% of all pollination done by insects. A typical hive yields 20-40 pounds of honey per year depending on weather, rainfall, forage and the strength of your colony. Honeybees are productive insects that thrive in backyard hives. Since millions of colonies have been wiped out by urbanization, pesticides and parasitic mites, backyard beekeeping has become vital to efforts to reestablish strong colonies and offset declines in pollination.
How to get started:
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Read and research, join a beekeeping guild and find a mentor.
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Assemble the hive components, tools and gear.
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Practice keeping your smoker lit.
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Make a sturdy hive stand.
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Order your bees early.
Materials:
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two hive bodies, a bottom board, supers, inner and outer covers, frames, foundation, a veil and gloves, a smoker and a hive tool
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a hive stand to keep the hive off the ground can be made from scrap lumber; put the feet in tins of oil to protect from ants
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a four-pound package of bees
Resources:
Urine as Fertilizer
Human urine is an excellent plant fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Collecting urine is a key step in recycling human nutrients. These nutrients are the major components of chemical fertilizers. The urine your household produces is sterile and safe to use without treatment. Collect it in a jug with a tight cover to prevent oxygen from turning the urine’s nitrogen into ammonia which smells bad and causes some nitrogen loss.
How To Get Started:
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Place a plastic bowl in your toilet bowl.
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After each pee, pour the urine into a container with an air-tight lid.
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Use it fresh. Dilute one part urine to three-to-ten parts water. Use it to accelerate your compost pile or water your established plants. Water at the roots; avoid splashing on leaves and stalks. Water alternately with rainwater or city water to flush salts from the soil. Neat urine can be used as a weedkiller and winter spray for fruit trees.
Materials:
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a plastic bowl that fits into your toilet bowl
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an air-tight storage container
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a bucket for diluting and watering
Resources:
Composting Toilet
Composting feces and urine is an easy, safe and sustainable method for recycling human nutrients. A simple, highly functional composting toilet can be constructed from scrap wood, a toilet seat and a bucket. Covering the excrement with sawdust or straw after each poop eliminates odors. In the event of a disaster where water and garbage services are curtailed, FEMA recommends that excrement be collected and stored in heavy-duty trash bags until services resume. A more pleasant, more ecologically-sound and safer strategy is to include a composting toilet in your disaster-preparedness plans.
How To Get Started:
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Make a bottomless box that will fit over a five-gallon bucket.
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Hinge the lid at the back.
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Using a jigsaw, cut a hole for the toilet seat.
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Fasten the toilet seat over the hole with screws.
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Gather a supply of sawdust or straw.
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Build an outhouse for privacy around your composting toilet.
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Designate an undisturbed area of your yard for composting the humanure.
Materials:
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plywood and other lumber
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nails and screws
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a toilet seat and a bucket
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sawdust or straw
Resources:
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The Humanure Handbook, Joseph Jenkins
- agnet.org
N.B. It is illegal to dispose of human waste on the ground; we recommend building a composting toilet as a disaster preparedness measure.
Earthworks
Water-harvesting earthworks conserve resources and sustain the regenerative living systems of your landscape. Berms-and-basins slow, spread and infiltrate run-off to prevent erosion of soil, seeds and organic matter. Swales are used to redirect run-off. Terracing creates flat planting areas to utilize harvested water and stabilize slopes. Reducing run-off prevents pollutants from reaching rivers, the ocean and aquifers; your soil will naturally filter pesticides and other contaminants.
How To Get Started:
Observe the flow of water at your site. Look for how water flows, pools and infiltrates after a heavy rainstorm. Notice whether organic matter, clay, sand or rocks have accumulated or have been washed away.
Learn the principles of water-harvesting so that you can follow them.
Start with one or two small and simple earthworks. Observe their function in the next rain.
Materials:
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a pointed shovel, a pick and a rake
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stone, brush, logs and other non-toxic local materials for berm construction
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mulch
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seeds and/or live plants
Resources:
Graywater
Graywater is waste water from laundry machines, sinks and showers. California law does not currently allow graywater use from kitchen sinks. A typical California household produces more than ten thousand gallons of graywater per year that could be used for landscape irrigation.
How To Get Started:
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Research California Plumbing Code for permit and design requirements.
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You can use the graywater from your washing machine without a construction permit.
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You must include a three-way valve in your design that will divert the graywater back to the sewer; graywater should be diverted to the sewer during the rainy months of November-April.
Materials:
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3-way diverter valves, flow splitters, spa-flex hose (one-inch minimum diameter), adapter bushings
compatible soaps and detergents
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a hydrator is a ready-made kit of flex tubing, clamps and valves that will connect your washer drain, sewer and landscape
Resources:
Rainwater Catchment
Seventy percent of your total residential water use takes place outdoors, mostly for watering landscape and garden plants. Rainwater is a free natural resource that you can capture to reduce the amount of water you need to purchase. Rainwater can be collected, diverted and used for irrigation, fire
preparedness, disaster preparedness, and drinking. You can build a low-cost rainwater catchment system using recycled materials. Your plants will be happiest with rainwater because it doesn’t contain chlorine. Since the Central Coast of California has an annual dry season that often lasts more than six months, consider collecting around 10,000 gallons during the rainy season.
How To Get Started:
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Calculate how much rainwater you would like to collect in gallons per year by doing a home water use audit (see link below).
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Figure out the maximum gallons per year you could catch.
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Decide if you want to plumb the rainwater into an irrigation system or simply use gravity flow and manual hoses.
Materials:
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several to a dozen 55-gallon barrels
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one-inch PVC pipe
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one-inch baffles for inflow, outflow and overflow pipes
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first-flush diverter valves for each gutter downspout
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primer, glue, silicon sealant
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pipe wrenches and channel locks
Resources:
Toward a New Economic Order:
Livelihood Choices
Our current growth-based, globalized economy, in which most of us labor to derive sustenance, is degrading the Earth’s ecosystems; our very livelihood, therefore, contributes directly and indirectly to the degradation of the Earth’s forests, soils, oceans and air. Sustainable economic development relies on business practices that cause no damage to the environment. Developing such modes of meaningful work will minimize our contribution to economic degradation and will ultimately create an economy of benign subsistence.
How To Get Started:
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Imagine a society wherein all sustenance is benignly created.
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Discuss how such work opportunities could be developed locally.
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Assess the role of business, government and community networks in moving toward broader access to meaningful livelihood.
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Acknowledge the dissonance between our current options and a society with an abundance of meaningful work.
Abilities:
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imagination
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an aspiration for meaningful work
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critical analysis
Resources:
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Inverting the Economic Order, Wendell Berry
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To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work, Dave Smith
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Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher
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www.yesmagazine.org
Local Banking
“The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.”
John Kenneth Galbraith
National banks use your money to make loans that cause environmental and social harm. The quickest way to relocalize our economy is to switch your bank deposits to a well-managed community bank or credit union. Choosing to bank locally is the single greatest point of leverage you have as a consumer.
How To Get Started:
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Identify local banks in your area.
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Research their leadership, profitability and financial safety and soundness.
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Assure yourself that local banks can provide the services you need.
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Switch your accounts.
Materials/Abilities:
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money
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a motivation to allow your money to work locally
Resources:
Peak Oil
“It’s always going to be difficult to come up with sustainable ways to support our unsustainable lifestyle.”
Charles Wyman
Peak oil is the point in time when a maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. Many oil-producing nations have passed their peak, including the United States in 1970. One predicted consequence of peak oil is economic depression. Transportation and manufacturing costs will skyrocket, disrupting traditional supply lines. Oil-producing countries may resort to resource nationalism and stock-piling that will exacerbate global tensions, impoverish local economies and create migrations of economic refugees.
How to get started:
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Imagine a life-style with zero oil-based products and services.
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Make changes in your lifestyle based on the assumption of highly expensive gasoline, natural gas, and electricity.
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Engage in ‘energy descent’ planning with your family, friends and neighbors.
Abilities:
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imagination
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critical analysis
Resources:
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