Victory gardens -- you speak out

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GROWING YOUR OWN AND MORE: In response to our story about 21st century victory gardens, some readers have let us know about the ways they produce food -– rather than just consume it -– at home.

Barry Erbsen has more than 100 avocado trees, four chickens and a rooster at his three-acre Studio City home, “along with every kind of fruit tree you can think of and then some. I have two vegetable gardens, the smaller of which at this time I’m growing peas, lettuce, bok choy, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, etc.” The upper garden is fallow now, he says, but in summer has tomatoes, corn and other crops. Another reader noted a downside at her urban garden: “One issue you didn’t mention in your excellent article is those people who think it’s all right to steal the things that gardeners grow -- usually before they are quite at their peak. Each year people with plastic bags come up into our front yard to steal oranges. We have been told that we ‘have the best oranges in Santa Monica.’ One season when we had especially good onions, we had to put an electric fence around them (with a warning sign in English and Spanish) so that we would have some mature onions to harvest. My husband accosted one couple who was stealing the immature onions; they complained that the onions weren’t very good. We arrived home one Easter Sunday to discover the carrot crop all pulled up and laid out on the ground. The list goes on and on. We are happy to give away food to people who ask -- but not to people who steal.”

-- Mary MacVean