Gardening

Exploring a backyard urban vegetable garden

This may be the tomato harvest that will prove that Clint's efforts were well worth it when he helped me to build by planter box.

Loni Stark

07.10.2011

Tomato plants in the vegetable garden — My tomato plants are reaching for the sky in my urban vegetable garden. Looking forward to when the little yellow flowers turn into plump, juicy sweet tomatoes. Nothing beats the taste of a ripe tomato picked from one's own garden and used in a summer salad.

Last season was not a great year for tomato gardens around the Bay Area. The cool weather yielded a late and smaller than usual crop. This year though, we seem to be having a better year if the tomato plants in my vegetable planter box are any indication. This may be the tomato harvest that will prove that Clint’s efforts were well worth it when he helped me to build by 6’x 2′ planter box (Plans for my planter box and how I got started with an urban vegetable garden can be found here.). My tomato plants seem to be bursting with the start of beautiful tomatoes.

Tomatoes in the urban garden. — Tomatoes in my urban garden.

I plan to build a fence around my planter box this season. The previous couple of seasons, more than half of the tomatoes were eaten by various critters before they ripened enough for picking. I also have been using a mix of egg shells and coffee grinds as fertilizer. Clint has espressos every morning so we have a steady source of coffee grinds. I have everything hooked up to micro-irrigation so that even when I am traveling for 2 weeks, my tomatoes are taken care of.

Here’s a quick tour of the “gardens” at Chez Loni’s.

Urban Vegetable Garden — My urban tomato garden very healthy this season in my vegetable planter box that I built.

urban-vegetable-fruit-garden-5 — The pomogranite bush I planted last season will probably need a couple more seasons before it starts to bear fruit. However, since last year, this bush has doubled in size. I am still a little skeptical as to when it will really start bearing bright red pomogranate.

urban-vegetable-fruit-garden-3 — I have a few strawberry plants growing in pots. I am thinking of growing the strawberries along the side of the fence, but I'm concerned it may attract more animals from the wild life preserve that extends from our backyard.

Fig Tree — This is the second season we have our fig trees. Not a fig in sight yet, but I'm optimistic!

For more resources on how to start your own urban garden, check out my entry on “Venturing into Vegetable Gardening“.