2009 was a reasonably good year- producing lots of tomatoes, eggplants, beets and cucumbers. I also tried a new variety of heirloom peppers that never materialized. The various heirloom tomatoes and eggplants, in particular, were really good!

I was still battling the same battles of squirrels attacking my soil and digging up seeds. I finally got some common sense and built small cages around the boxes. These cages are built of a sturdy 2 foot tall thin-metal fence, which is 7 feet long by 5 feet wide, neatly surrounding the 6′ x 4′ boxes. As roofs to these cages I put chicken wire which I twist tied to the fence. I bought some greenhouse plastic cover as well, which I think I will use when we get into the high 30s and below in terms of temperature.

These cages have been in place for abut 3 weeks now, and despite the squirrels hovering around the back yard a lot, the boxes and seeds are unharmed. I am currently trying to grow celery, lettuce, beets, carrots and radishes. By far, the radishes are the most promising. I think the carrots will also make it, but I’m not sure about the others.

I’m expecting a better 2010 than 2009. I know more, am better equipped, have made many mistakes (and learned some lessons from them), and have a better plan with dates in place. I even have a new tumbler compost bin which is very easy to work with, and doesn’t allow ground rocks and unwanted thick twigs and branches to mix into my compost pile.

In the Spring, I plan to grow chameh (Korean Melon) from saved seeds, and watermelon; not in the boxes, but along the north side fence in the back yard. And this year I swear I’m gonna start the summer crops earlier than I always do (typically closer to July).

We also planted a few new trees and other existing ones yielded some fruit. The new ones: avocado (nothing yet), clementines (about 20 yielded this year), and apple (nothing yet). The existing one: the pomegranate tree yielded about 2 dozen fruit, some were perfect, others a bit sour, and our lemon tree is still currently yielding nice meyer lemons (about a handful of nice ones that I can see so far). The persimmon, mandarin and apricot trees (they’re really just overgrown twigs) are still bare.

I’m excited about this year’s gardening potential, hoping to produce great fruits and vegetables to augment what I get at local farmer’s markets, along with the recently discovered wonderful Full Circle Farm (in Sunnyvale, less than 4 miles from home).

I have been really bad about posting about my garden this year, and I’ve been much more hands off as well. In a sense, that’s kind of a shame, because I really enjoy getting out there and doing the necessary tasks for the crops to grow, but I just didn’t have my act together this year. Moreover, the automated watering system did its job extremely well, and my involvement just wasn’t as necessary.

Fairly easy to grow, small space requirements, flexibility in growing temp, and our love for beets make these a wonderful crop.

I had plenty of large beets about a month ago, and a few more were ready for the picking this weekend. Enormous cucumbers also emerged from the single seed I planted. Most of them were not bitter, which was a great improvement over last year’s completely bitter bunch.

A little bit of pruning

I love my tomatoes!

Otherwise, about 35 nice, red, heirloom tomatoes have ripened and I’ve had a chance to really enjoy many of those. It’s the success of my tomatoes that I always use as a gauge to determine if I’m pleased with the season. I expect about 25 – 40 more to ripen over the next couple of weeks.

Looking forward to trying this year’s larger eggplants.

Really glad I’ve had a chance to eat non bitter cucumbers this year, they worked really well with the tomatoes in my daily salads.

On top of that, this year’s large “Black Beauty” eggplants are coming along nicely. Within a week or so I’ll harvest a handful of those and enjoy ‘em too.

As always, I’ve learned lessons for improvement for next year- watering times/durations, crop pairings, and locations of where to put certain things. Also, I’d like to start my summer crops earlier next year.

Next up for the fall season, I plan to grow some cooler weather crops: radishes, probably more beets, lettuces, chards, and likely broccoli and cauliflower again.

As I look back on last year’s garden pictures, I get the sense that things are either on pace with, or a bit slower than ‘08. The boxes this year get significantly more sun than last year, but I suspect, a bit less water. The automated system sprays the crops twice a day (morning and evening) for a total of 10 minutes. I think it doesn’t water deeply enough, though.

So I’ve started watering by hand after work in the evenings, generally around 6:30pm. I think it’s helped the beets a lot, and the cucumber has finally emerged as well.

Technically, the tomatoes and eggplants are 4 weeks old now. The beets and cucumber are 2 weeks old. The 2 week old pepper and lettuce have not sprouted yet. I hope those will make it. We did plant those pretty deep in the soil, so I hope it’s depth, not lack of water that have prevented them from popping up.

As for composting- I am without compost bins right now. I’m looking for more of a barrel type compost bin that will prevent rocks and branches from seeping into my soil and degrading it. I expect to get one in the next week or two and resume composting.

Area 1

Heirloom Tomatoes

Area 2

Eggplants in three squares, cucumber in top right corner

Area 3

Bell peppers in three squares, beets in bottom right corner

Area 4

Beets in three squares, lettuce in top right corner