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!

Fall Part 1: Masks

Fall is Here!

The Autumn equinox came and went (september 22nd this year) and still Sacramento continued to bake at around 100° temperatures. Then suddenly we had a blissful 70° day and the hint of a breeze - fall is around the corner! While digging through my old files I came across an article from Martha Stewart’s Living magazine that I tore out back in 1997:

The article was on Halloween and gave a quick how-to on creating masks using leaves and petals. My daughter and I were completely smitten with the project - we thought, what a great way to display the fall colors! My daughter and her friend made the masks for Halloween and they came out beautiful. We purchased one of those half-face, unadorned masks as a template and then glued the leaves right on. Honestly, when they were finished they were art pieces. We sprayed them with a clear varnish (get this at a craft store) to protect them and after they had served their purpose as costume pieces we put them in a keep-sake frame. My daughter still has hers, it has held up amazingly well over the past twelve years.

Fall Part 2: Butterflies!

On another rather surprising autumn note, in late September my Passion Vine was the birth place of over 100 vibrant butterflies. I was concerned to see so many of them so I went online to see if there was someone who could tell me more about them. I found a website that identifies butterflies so I emailed a picture of my butterfly colony and the caterpillar. That same day a man named Ken Davenport responded telling me that my butterflies were called Gulf Fritillaries (Agraulis vanillae). He said that they are from the tropical family and they generally live in Southern California. He also mentioned that they migrate from “permanent populations in the San Joaquin Valley and Bay Area [to Sacramento]” and that are sometimes brought into the area via imported nursery stock. When Ken lived here in Sacramento years ago he never saw a Gulf Fritillary himself. They can be pests to some gardeners, but mainly they are a delight to butterfly enthusiasts. Aside from chewing off every leaf on my passion vine (which doesn’t worry me a bit because it will come back), they haven’t touched anything else so I fit into the delighted category and am feeling fortunate to play host to the butterflies. Watching them is like seeing little fairies dressed up in bright orange dresses flitting around the garden!

Fall, part 3: Speaking Events and pruning

I have also begun to think about the season’s growth in the garden and what will need pruning. It is still early to cut back the ornamental grasses, not until they go dormant or straw-colored will they need a clipping. Fall is the time to plant bulbs so I will have to make some decisions on what I want to see come spring. My tomatoes are still producing fruit as are my eggplants and salad greens. By the way, don’t forget to plant more salad greens for the fall and winter. I found six-packs at Emigh Hardware.

Speaking of Emigh Hardware, I will be giving two presentations there on October 17th at 10:00 a.m. and another at 12:00 noon . This time we will be indoors in their Casual Living building, so there will be plenty of room and a large screen to view the presentation. Along with me will be a representative from Rainbird, bringing drip irrigation components. He will explain how and what to use for a drip system as well as have a table for hands-on working. Emigh prefers to have people RSVP so that they can accommodate for everyone, so if you’re planning on coming, give them a call: (916) 482-1900

On that same day that I will be speaking at Emigh is the UCDavis Arboetum’s plant sale: Saturday, October 17th from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. This is a great opportunity to buy plants that you may not have seen before. They have a lot of natives and drought tolerant species - it’s worth checking out... I’d love to, but I’ll be presenting! On the website you will find a list of what plants will be sold, directions and a map.

Finally a quick note on the bulbs you will start seeing in nurseries about now: Daffodils, Tulips, Narcissus, Crocus and more. Interesting fact:

The Crocus - the Crocus Sativa, are the flowers that produce the tiny yellow/orange stigmas - not the stamen - that are hand-picked and dried to make Saffron. An estimated 75,000 blossoms are needed (225,000 stigmas) to produce one pound of saffron! Saffron has been used by many ancient cultures including the Sumerians, Phoenicians, Minoans, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Persians. The saffron powder is used in medicines, perfumes, flavoring and as a dye.http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ecoph3.htm#saffron

Enjoy the cooler weather and changing colors of October!