Survival Boot Camp Class of 2006

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July 13, 2006

Silverlake Homestead Harvest

We have a strict gardening rule around our urban homestead; if you have to water it you have to be able to eat it. As it so happens, the sunniest spot we have happens to be the parkway, that annoying space between the sidewalk and the street, which is technically city property but legally the responsibility of the homeowner to maintain. It’s yet another space, like the vast asphalt hell of parking lots, garages, freeways, car lots, auto repair shops, and junkyards in our car obsessed city dedicated to the needs of the personal automobile.

We decided to flaunt the city’s strict rules about this space which dictates the kind of things that can be planted (basically nothing that would inhibit someone from getting out of their Hummer), and plant a vegetable garden instead. After all it would be great to have some extra food on hand in the next earthquake, terrorist attack or the inevitable zombie invasion. The idea was twofold: to provide vegetables for ourselves and our neighbors, and to do it in a way that would be aesthetically pleasing.

We built two six by six foot raised beds, filled it with quality garden soil, and stuck in two matching wire obelisks for growing beans and tomatoes. Much to my surprise it has been a big success - we had a bumper crop of carrots, beans, turnips, garlic, onions, and beets in the winter and currently we have cherry tomatoes and cantaloupes.

We've also built a solar dehydrator to preserve some of the excess tomatoes as well as figs from the backyard. Plans for this clever device can be found at: http://www.homepower.com/files/fooddeh.pdf.

I’ve encouraged neighbors to help themselves to vegetables from the parkway garden, though few have. What has been nice has been the conversations I’ve had with neighbors while watering and tending the space. Several neighbors have said that it encouraged them to plant their own vegetables, albeit in their back yards. With more people growing vegetables our neighborhood becomes more self-sufficient and a wasted space has been reclaimed.

Kelly Coyne
Erik Knutzen
Urban Homesteaders
Los Angeles, CA

In addition to homesteading Erik works at the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Kelly is a writer and an alum of the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

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