The Integral Urban House

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URBAN GARDENING

An example of "applied ecology" at its best is the Integral Urban House garden, which—even in the dead of winter—is lush with foliage and brimming with vegetables. Because the size of the IUH lot precludes the planting of long rows, crops are sown in raised beds that surround the house. (Plant varieties are rotated from bed to bed to keep specific soil nutrients from becoming exhausted in any one section of the garden, and seedlings are grown in the greenhouse so that the beds are always occupied by mature—or nearly mature—plants.)

The variety of fruits arid vegetables raised on the 125' X 60' IUH lot is nothing short of astounding. Small avocado, fig, and quince trees stand above raised beds closely planted in potatoes, broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, corn, peas, beets, carrots, celery, spinach, chard, and squash. Salad greens, scallions, and herbs are grown on the porch (adjacent to the kitchen), while nearby are perennial patches of strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus. In addition, dwarf fruit trees— espaliered to the north wall of the house—will soon provide lemons, plums, and three kinds of apples.

IUH staffers use no chemical fertilizers to bring forth this bounty of luscious edibles. Rather, a one-inch-deep layer of compost-made from kitchen garbage, rabbit manure, grass clippings, sawdust, and other wastes—is maintained on the garden's beds to [1] act as a mulch which keeps weeds down and [2] make the soil light, airy, and rich in nutrients. (No tilling is ever needed.) And, thanks to laborsaving techniques developed especially for urban gardeners by Bill and Helga Olkowski, each IUH resident spends only 15 minutes per day in the vegetable patch . . . a regimen, certainly, that even the most work-shy city dweller could find agreeable!

Because of the rich diversity of plantings in the garden, insects rarely pose a problem. (Small plantings of many types of crops tends to prevent mass infestation by any one kind of pest.) And when insects do pose a problem, biological controls—such as natural insect predators and specialized diseases that affect only the pest in question—soon "settle the hash" of the unwanted intruders.

To further make the point that anyone— even apartment dwellers with no access to cultivatable land—can grow their own food, Integral House residents have created a rooftop garden of containers filled with pure compost. (The compost is not only rich in plant nutrients, but is lighter than soil and thus lessens the load that would otherwise be placed on the building's rafters.)

LOW-COST MEAT

The Integral House's food-raising efforts extend not only to the growing of fruits and vegetables but to the production of animal protein as well. The latter, in this case, means chickens and rabbits.

All together, about 15 chickens—layers and fryers—inhabit the Institute's urban homestead. Four hens live in a "composting house" on the roof, where—in addition to laying eggs within ten feet of the breakfast table—the birds produce rich manure for the compost heaps. The remaining cluckers are kept at ground level, on the shady north side of the old Victorian building.

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