Create a Food System for Your Small Space
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UPDATE: A few of our readers brought up some good points regarding the keeping of chickens in an urban space. Of course, neither Chelsea Green nor author R. J. Ruppenthal advocates keeping chickens in cramped or otherwise inhumane conditions. The nature of excerpts is that some important contextual information is left on the cutting room floor: readers are only getting part of the picture.
We asked R. J. to weigh in on the discussion in the comments section below.
END OF UPDATE
The following is an excerpt from Fresh Food from Small Spaces: The Square-Inch Gardener’s Guide to Year-Round Growing, Fermenting, and Sprouting by R. J. Ruppenthal. It has been adapted for the Web.
If you’re reading these words, chances are you that you live in a city and don’t have a lot of space. You have a small home with an even smaller backyard, a townhouse with a patio, or an apartment with nothing more than a sunny window. Regardless of what kind of space you have available, though—a rooftop, balcony, staircase, garage, storage space, windowsill, or countertop—you can probably utilize it for food growing. We may be limited by the amount of free space we have, but not by our imaginations. This book is about imagining what’s possible, about putting those ideas into action, and about producing good, fresh food for yourself and your family, even from tight spaces.
No one can ever be entirely self-sufficient in the city. But in most urban spaces, with enough creativity and dedication, you can grow a sizeable portion of the food your family needs. You may even decide to specialize in one crop, such as chicken eggs, mushrooms, or carrots, leaving you with more than enough to fill your family’s requirements for that food and still have enough left over to sell or trade for other things you need. By reading this book, you will learn some ideas and strategies for making productive use of your available space. You will learn what equipment and resources you need to get started. And you will receive my encouragement along the way, because it’s important to me that more people start reconnecting with their food sources. Think of this as an enjoyable “mini-course” in urban food production.
As you learn more about the possibilities, think about which spaces you can use for your food production. If you have space outdoors and want to start a small garden in the ground or in containers, then the most important considerations will be light and warmth. Most gardening experts will tell you not to even think about vegetable growing if you get less than 6 to 8 hours per day of
direct sunlight, but in fact you can raise many types of vegetables on much less light than this. It is true that to grow fruiting vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, or berries, your space needs to receive at least 4 to 5 hours of strong, direct sunlight per day (preferably more), plus some reflected light and residual warmth. If your light conditions are no better than this minimum, then I would recommend starting with smaller fruiting vegetables such as cherry tomatoes, which need less light energy to ripen than the larger varieties. The same goes for peppers: If you’re right on the edge of not having enough light and your summers are warm, you might be able to coax a few banana peppers or chili peppers to ripen, but probably not the larger bell peppers. Bright, warm, south-facing walls can add some reflective light, and a porch or patio light with a compact fluorescent bulb will help too. If your outdoor growing space is light poor, then look to legumes, root vegetables, and leafy greens. Bush beans and peas can handle partial shade, as can carrots, beets, and other root vegetables. Leafy vegetables such as spinach, chard, rhubarb, broccoli, cabbage, and kale can produce even in a shady spot that has some reflected light. Potatoes, herbs, onions, and garlic can function in partial shade also, but they are much more productive with more sunlight. Consider trying a variety of veggies at first to see what works on your site; you may be disappointed by some, but pleasantly rewarded by others.
You also can use outdoor space for growing mushrooms or for a chicken coop or bee colony, giving you a sustainable supply of fresh eggs or honey. Chickens can live in a coop or hutch on a minimal amount of space, whether it be on a lawn, porch, patio, or mounted on the side of a wall. Their manure can fertilize your garden too. Chickens are useful primarily for egg laying, and their eggs are a renewable resource that provides balanced protein and good nutrition. A beehive can take up even less horizontal space than a chicken coop, does not need sunlight, and takes less work than owning a dog. Raising a colony of bees in a medium-sized hive can provide you with 100 to 150 pounds (two or three big buckets) of your own honey each season.10 If you can’t eat it all, remember that local honey is expensive; you can either sell it or trade it (along with extra beeswax) for something else you need.
Indoor space can be used for gardening too if there’s a sunny spot on a windowsill or in a room: container vegetables, herbs, and small fruit trees are all possibilities here. The more vexing question is how to use shadier spaces such as extra rooms, closets and cabinets, garages, storage areas, unused bathtubs, and kitchen counters. Perhaps you never thought of these as growing areas, but where there’s space, there’s growing potential! I have a very vertical sprouting operation on top of my refrigerator that produces 2 to 3 pounds of sprouts per week for eating and wheatgrass for juicing. You could also raise gourmet mushrooms or brew ginger beer, wine, or kefir in that space. Start a worm bin on a balcony or in a garage for composting organic wastes or for fishing bait sales. There are many possibilities for using even shady urban spaces in a productive way.
If horizontal space is limited, don’t be afraid to think vertically: I have seen chicken cages mounted on vertical walls outside a person’s home, and many small gardeners successfully grow strawberries or tomatoes from baskets that hang from an eave or rafter. A dwarf fruit tree or berry bush can make the best use of a dusty patch of ground or large container, giving you a vertical harvest without using much horizontal space. We will cover a number of strategies to make the best use of available space and light. Think about what you might want to try in your space and then read the chapter on it. Each chapter gives you some idea of the needed facilities and helps you understand how to succeed. I’ve also included more information on additional resources in each chapter if you decide to actively pursue a particular strategy in greater depth. Since lack of light is the most common limiting factor in city gardening, consider the following brief overview of possibilities, each of which we will cover at greater length in the coming chapters.
Full Sunlight
This is the easy one: Here you can grow anything you can fit, including fruits, berries, and vegetables of all kinds. Your main limitations are likely to be climate and space, but thankfully you do not have to worry about a lack of light.
Low Light
Leafy green vegetables, bush beans and peas, and perhaps root vegetables may grow very well in partial shade. If you have at least some direct sun each day, you can try smaller fruiting vegetables, such as cherry tomatoes and banana peppers. You can also try berries if you have the space. In the chapter on fruit and berries, you will find an explanation of several types that may grow well in partial shade. You could also place a chicken coop or beehive here if the space is right.
Shade
Mushrooms do well in shade, and chicken coops, beehives, and worm bins can handle it also. If the space is indoors, you can use shady areas for raising mushrooms, growing sprouts, or as a place for your chosen fermentation, be it for yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, ginger beer, or other fermented foods.
April 19th, 2009 at 4:27 am
[…] Create a Food System for Your Small Space : Chelsea Green […]
April 28th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
I wonder how many chickens I can pack into the storage space behind my car. If I cut off their feet would it might help. I bet I could keep 6 chickens in a milk crate and so can you. It is the first step to going green.
April 28th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Basically you’re recommending confinement chicken farming for apartment dwellers. Let’s try to be human without also being terrible exploiters of those around us. Those chickens have their own reason for being and desire to enjoy their lives too, even if you couldn’t care less. How deeply immoral.
April 28th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
[…] a ton of information available online — check out these resources from Chelsea Green Publishing, Earthfirst.com, and Patti Moreno, the Garden Girl. If you’re looking for awe and […]
April 28th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I’ve got to go with “malta” on this one: I’m all for greener living and home food production, but keeping chickens in cages in “minimal space” to produce eggs, as if they were just egg-machines, doesn’t strike me as humane. I’m against industrial confined animal farming. I don’t see that small farmers adopting those same techniques is an advantage. Let the chickens have some sunlight and green grass to roll around in. If you don’t have enough space to let a chicken or two roam free, then grow some veggies to trade for the eggs of someone who does.
April 28th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Yeah, this is just ridiculous,
“If horizontal space is limited, don”t be afraid to think vertically: I have seen chicken cages mounted on vertical walls outside a person”s home,”
I think living in a cage stuck on the side of a building for life for the sake of eggs is appalling.
April 28th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
We used to raise chickens- had several hundred. And let me tell you- they do best in terms of production when they are happy. This means they can move around, run, chase bugs, and even make those ridiculous looking super short flights that chickens do so well. Stacking them on top of each other in tiny cages is inhumane and far from ideal.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:57 am
Folks also might consider joining up in a yard sharing arrangement with friends, family or neighbors who have more space. Apartment dwellers might gather a yard share group together and make a roof garden. Not all landlords will go for this but many are open to the idea - especially if you make sure they are included in the harvest. You can get a lot done in a group, shared time, tools, space and strength mean you can get a lot more done.
April 29th, 2009 at 12:58 am
Oh…and you might try hyperlocavore dot com - a free yard sharing community to find people and organize your yard share.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Author’s Response: In fact, I strongly agree with all of you who have posted. The passage quoted above was an excerpt from the book, and unfortunately, it ends up seeming incomplete or inadequate with respect to the chicken portion…a fact which you folks have rightfully seized upon and pointed out. Chickens need space to roam and run as free as possible, which can still be accomplished in smaller urban living spaces. With a smaller space in the city, you don’t want them running out into traffic, so there generally needs to be some sort of wire fencing, etc. In the book, the space recommendations for chicken cages and chicken runs are based on the number of hens, and I have taken these directly from chicken experts (not factory farming experts, mind you, but people who keep chickens on a smaller scale and treat them like family). Chickens need a place to roost and lay eggs, which does not need to be very big, but they also need a place to run. In the book, I strongly recommend some garden or lawn space for them to roam. Pens in these spaces can be moved around also, giving chickens diversity in terms of what to peck and what to poop on. All in all, these are going to be much happier chickens than the ones that lay most of the eggs in your supermarket.
May 4th, 2009 at 10:02 am
[…] Create a Food System for Your Small Space […]
May 30th, 2009 at 1:19 am
The other day I {tried|{ate|consumed|eaten|ate up|ate on}|{tasted|tried|sampled|savored|savoured}} omega 3 {rich|full|valuable}, free range eggs and they were {really|truly|real|genuinely|very|rattling} {good|pleasant|great|superb|healthy|wholesome|hearty}. Made me {want|wish|desire} to {raise|produce|grow|farm|nurture} chickens of my own to get {more||to a greater extent|more such|more some|more numerous} eggs into my {diet|dieting}. I used to {have|{own|possess}} a {duck|duck’s egg} coop a while ago, now {I’d|I would|I think I } {like|wish|care} to get {started|started out|initiated} {again|over again|once more|once again}.
June 6th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Oh my goodness you guys, with regard to the chicken cages mounted on the walls of the house, they were talking about the COOP. Chickens don’t stay in their coop all day. They strut down the chicken ladder and have a grand old time the rest of the day. This is not inhumane in the least, but rather brilliant I must say.
However, we do NOT allow our chickens to strut around our yard free range all day. They’ll get some “outside of their really big run” time once in a while, but there are way too many hawks and raccoons and other critters living in our very urban neighborhood who would love nothing better than to have a chicken meal handed to them in the irresponsible free range yard. Ample space for keeping chickens more often than not in a run is about 10 sq feet per chicken, if they are the bog hens. About 6 sq feet for banties. The run should be at least 8 feet high so the humans can easily clean it, but also so those flighty hens can stretch their wings a bit and fly to the higher roosts those same and loving humans put up there specifically for this reason.
October 30th, 2009 at 3:59 am
This is a wounderfull post. Keep it up…
December 1st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
In agreement with Amy. Coops are good, and also safe, but yes the chickens need fresh air and fun. Imagine keeping chickens when the weather is -40 with snow and ice on the ground over 6 months of the year. They need those coops, protected from the weather of course often right inside (garage area) with us, but they also enjoy running in the garage or family room (no carpeting of course) and picking through astro-turf mats layed out for them. Would I be guilty of animal cruelty if I also had worms in the compost pile that were sacraficed to their enjoyment? Mom used to take her pet laying chicken “Puck-puck” out of the coop in the evening and watch TV with her tucked in her apron. Much like a crib for a child or a crate for a dog, chickens also love to have their private space . . . it is not always just a ‘jail’ cell. That depends on the humanity and kindness of the human in charge.
December 1st, 2009 at 3:30 pm
Opps, I also forgot to add that I read the book “Fresh Food from Small Spaces” by Mr. Ruppenthal and found it an inspiration. What used to be a 4 month garden season has turned into a year-round adventure for us even though some days we are lucky to have only a couple of hours of sunlight, and crummy light at that. However, we are enjoying sprouting, and what I call “bathtub gardening” in containers . . . with radishes, bunching onions, herbs, tomatoes, and pole-beans. It is so dark here in the winter that we do need lights on in the house just to get around, so we use well placed grow lights that serve double duty, for us and for the plants. Thanks Mr Ruppenthal for a great book that got us started . . . and also some great older ones from the ’70’s like “The Apartment Farmer” by Duane Newcomb and also “Tub Farming” by Mary Johnson . . . both wonderful books too, but harder to find now. - - - Now our only problem is keeping our 110 lb Malamute from eating the tomatoes off the vine, she discovered she really likes those a lot!