I haven't tried this because we have been inundatd with rain so far this year in South Central PA. But when I moved into my urban spot here, I wanted to collect rainwater, and with all the rain barrels being so expensive I thought it would work just as well to use a plastic trash can ($10-$20). You would not have an outlet valve at the bottom unless you installed one yourself, but that may not be an issue for you.

I guess it is possible to get big plastic drums from places for cheap after they are used for whatever purpose they originally had (transpoorting liquids and such?) but I have yet to find an easy source for that.

TanzyJane,

A book:
I would highly recommend for any urban homesteader the book "How to Grow More Vegetables..." by John Jeavons. The book is based on principles (called GROW BIOINTENSIVE tm) that Ecology Action has been investigating since 1972. They wanted to know how little space could be used to _sustainably_ produce a complete vegetarian diet for a person. It turns out to be remarkably small. Its a fascinating book that shows one how to live in peace with nature and produce a lot of food with greatly reduced labor and resource inputs. I'm going to be trying out some of their compost-cropping ideas after next month's paycheck arrives (I need to order my buckwheat seeds :^)

Rainwater Harvesting:
At our house use an old food-grade plastic barrel with the top cut off to collect rainwater for our dogs. Please be sure that you don't let the rainwater stand in the barrel long without using it, dumping it, or somehow controlling the mosquito larvae. In this day of West Nile virus, mosquitos would be frowned upon by your fellow urbanites. My father uses a few gambusia affinis a.k.a. the mosquitofish to eat the larvae in his barrels. They are native to Maryland and you can find lots of references out on the web as to their effectiveness. You can also put a screen mesh over the barrel to keep the mosquitos from laying their eggs in the first place. No eggs = no larvae. Here is a link from the Maryland Green Building Program that you might find useful.

Ha! I guess my family fits the bill, although I've never used the term urban homesteaders before. Here are some things we do in an urban environment that are along those lines:

We harvest all the rainwater (when we're blessed enough to get rain, ha) in white plastic 55 gal. drums that are recycled from food uses (make sure not to get ones used for petrol products before!). Like Stargazer's comment above, don't let any harvested water set stagnant too long. Get it into a healthy pond system or use it for drip irrigation.

Check your local envisonmental regulations to see if greywater is OK to use on landscaping in your area. We can use greywater (water already used in the laundry or the shower, but not in the toilet) to water the yard (but not lawn) here, and we set up a low-tech system with our washing machine--exit hose dumps used water into a 55gal. drum that sits 3' high. Drum drains from its very bottom into wide (5/8 or more) garden hose, no attachment on end, by gravity feed. End of hose goes into a thick mulch basin at the base of trees (extending to the drip line). We water all of our trees and fruit trees by doing the laundry. Note that greywater cannot sit still for more than a few hours--it should always be moving through and out of the system.

We also keep 2 pair of domesticated ducks for insect control (no grasshoppers, cutworms, or cockroaches here!) and for the eggs and for the fun of it.

We grow a lot of herbs and have a dozen fruit trees in various stages of growing up. We don't do much veggie growing, mostly because I love my drought-hardy perennials and because we have great access to a wonderful farmers' market where people with more land and water than us share their bounty.

We're composting with worms (any trying real hard to keep the ducks from eating the little workers!) and this year I've gone nuts for making compost teas. We mulch everything heavily with used duck bedding and a pretty top layer of shredded composted wood from the city's free mulch program. We purposely live in a smallish house that is only 5 minutes from my office to avoid the time & resources drain of commuting from a bigger house out in the sprawl.

Its amazing what you can do yourself. Look to see if there is a Habitat RE-Store in your neck of the woods. Its a place were contractors and others leave off their used or extra building matierials (everything from light fixtures to doors to tile to plumbing parts to lumber) as a donation to Habitat for Humanity and Habitat sells it to the public for cheap. It can really make you an obsessive owner-builder-homesteader!

Good luck to you!

Hi! You may want to check out

www.pathtofreedom.com
This site details their sustainable urban homestead project. Loads of great links, photos and an excellent daily blog!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sustainable Urban Living

HAVE YOU CHECKED IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR "THE INTEGRAL URBAN HOUSE" BY THE OLKOWSKIS? IT HAS LOADS OF INFO ON ADAPTING AN URBAN HOUSE TO SUSTAINABLE LIVING SYSTEMS... K.

Can anyone recommend a book or resource for information on how to get the most out of a very small (fenced, thus limited direct sunlight) back yard. I'm especially interested in ideas for urban townhomes. There are a lot of them in the Houston's Inner Loop. Really, the only space they have is their roof and a sliver of a back yard. Also, there are a lot of lofts in the inner loop area. What are some ways that owners can tap into natures bounty given the concrete jungle they live in. This page has some good pictures of the lofts I'm talking about:(especially those in the downtown area): Houston lofts