Group Effort: Habitat for Humanity housing in Sacramento

Grand opening for Habitat Housing!

These houses are not free - they are low-income and offered at a 0% interest rate but the homeowner still pays the mortgage, taxes and insurance. Many different groups volunteered to build these homes and each family had to put in 500 hours of work on the house, not mention all of the qualifications involved. On the day of the dedication, the Young Democrats were putting up the framing for the next house. The Peace Corps. and many others spend time on the project.

These four homes on Forrest Street, Sacramento, is Habitat's first multi-unit endeavor. I designed all of the yards, and they are all drought-tolerant with no lawn and very little maintenance.

These homes made Gold Standard in the LEED Certification (Leadershiop in Energy and Environmental Design). This project shows that homes can be built on a very small budget and also be energy efficient. It should be noted however that PG&E donated the solar collectors that run the A/C unit. These are extremely expensive, and without the donation, the houses would not have them.

One of the families

(After handing them a bouquet of flowers)

Rosalind Creasy and Edible Gardens

Last Sunday I attended a lecture and slide show by Rosalind Creasy. Creasy is a landscape designer whose focus is on creating edible landscapes. She has written many books on the subject. Her earliest book, The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping was written about 27 years ago. I overheard one woman in the crowd saying that it can be had on Amazon for $600.00! (I saw that a new copy sold for $93 on Amazon though) Creasy has many books that are quite reasonably priced. She has published books on herb gardens, salad gardens, French gardens, Italian gardens, heirloom tomatoes, flowers, rainbow vegetables (as in “colorful”), peppers, Asian and Mexican style gardens (I purchased The Edible Mexican Garden).

I was very inspired by her presentation. It is important to be clear about the time and maintenance an edible garden requires... which is a lot. However it can be more than worth the time and effort to adopt Creasy's ideas and incorporate them into your own garden. Many of my clients have made room in their yard for small vegetable plots or vegetables planted in raised beds. It’s amazing how much you can grow in a small space. John Jeavons has written a book called, How to Grow More Vegetables that gives great advice on how to plant intensively and reap abundant harvests from small spaces.

Creasy pointed out that she grows peanuts and sesame bushes, paprika that she swears by (saying that [compared to the quality she gets from her plants] the brown powder you buy in the store is not worth the money or the packaging!) I took home a catalogue called the Seed Savers Exchange - that has a variety of organic seeds far beyond that of small nurseries or catalogues. Visit the site to order a catalogue.

My Garden

What I am doing with my garden:

After hearing Rosalind Creasy speak I was excited by all of the possible edibles I could plant. I decided to plant bok choy, a mix of lettuces, broccoli, purple cauliflower (from Peaceful Valley Farms), as well as cabbage and arugula for my winter garden. I’m still harvesting the last of my golden cherry tomatoes and eggplant. As a staple in the garden, I have artichokes and chard growing, along with marjoram, rosemary, thyme, oregano, pears, and mandarine oranges.

On another note, soon I will be pulling up my dahlias and transplanting them to my garden borders to create more room in my beds. I will also pull up and transplant my strawberries to containers where I can better regulate the slug population...it’s all out war over who gets my strawberries! I am going to go over to the nursery and pick up a couple of blueberry bushes (you generally need more than one to cross pollinate), because I love blueberries and the shrubs are lovely - although deciduous.

In a time when the economy is looking bleak and so many people are working fewer hours and therefore contributing less to household income it makes sense to become self-sustainable (at least more so). There is plenty that we can do: grow more of our own food, catch rain water to recycle in our gardens and garden to reduce stress! I love to be out in my garden, especially after long hours at my desk. I love to wander around the beds and check what’s growing...

Rain Water

Remember the children’s song “Rain, rain, go away, come back another day!”? Well, it looks like we have to change the lyrics to “rain, rain, come again!” California’s water supply is short.

We did get a rather large amount of rain over a two day period last month...said to have blown in from a bigger storm overseas. When I heard that rain was coming I decided that this time I would catch it and use it for my garden... why not?

I went over to The Home Depot and purchased two 55 gallon plastic trash bins with lids ($13.89 each), and two 20’x 4” ABS (plastic) drains. I removed the downspout from my gutters and attached the ABS drain (using wire to hold it in place), and then positioned the trash bins under the spout with the drains leading into them. The rain started somewhere after midnight. By 8:00 a.m. the next morning my trash bins were overflowing, I could have filled 10 of them!

I learned something important: I could catch enough water during the winter months to water my entire garden all summer. That’s the idea. Implementing a system that makes it worthwhile however seems to be a little more complicated, namely, hooking up a pressurized irrigation system to the water tanks. The trash bins that I used were fine to catch the water, but now I have to use a bucket to move the water from the bin to my watering can. I use the water only for my potted plants which are close to the source...otherwise I would have to haul it to the back of the yard and that’s a lot of work.

Emigh Hardware sells an 80 gallon holding tank with a screen on the top and a hose spigot on the bottom. Attaching a hose makes it much easier to water plants, a more ideal solution. Still, any type of irrigation system requires water pressure to force the water out of the ends of the pipe. This pressure normally comes from the water main and therefore would have to be supplanted by a pump in my water barrel system.

A client of mine contacted Gutterglove Company who installs special gutters that filter water caught in gutters and then dumps it into a holding tank. The tank sizes vary depending on how much you pay. Unfortunately, the representative from Gutterglove had no idea how to hook up a pressurized irrigation system with a hose. My client is contacting another company, and hopefully they will know how to do it.

Many people are starting to implement their own gray water systems. A system of using use the recycled household water (showers and sinks) to water their garden. The water also goes into a tank (instead of the sewer system) and gets some filtration, and then is pumped out to the garden. These systems are used for particular areas of the garden.

All of these methods are worth checking into. Next month I’ll post the findings on hooking up a system to irrigate, using pressure, from caught water. For now, consider buying a holding tank from the hardware store that will allow you to catch water and hook up a hose. It’s very satisfying to water your garden from water that came naturally, and not from the usual source that you paid for!