Having Little Space for your Garden

This last week I ended up doing a little gardening in San Francisco and over the weekend, a little gardening at the Little Ranch in St. Helena.  Both gardens are very different.  Different in what I plan on them looking like, different in lay out, different in area size and different in climate.

In San Francisco I have a small raised planting box roughly 3' by 20'.  I planted a single fruit tree (a Mandarin-Kumquat hybrid) and three Heirloom tomato plants. I haven't yet decided what else to plant. I purchased all of the planting at Costco in San Francisco.  It's been roughly 5 days since the planting and the tomato plants don't look like they're going to do much.  I'm not sure if it's because I watered them too much after planting them or they just don't do well in the cold (though sunny) weather here.

Over the weekend we were at the Little Ranch and I was able to create a total of eight beds.  That sounds better than saying I overturned the dirt with a shovel.  I will be planting (it's my plan right now) one Heirloom tomato plant, one large tomato plant, one small tomato plant (the small/large describe the size of the fruit);  that take up three circular beds.  I am going to plant four rows of corn (I like corn in my garden.  It brings me luck.).  That will take up two additional beds, each 3' by 20'.  I have three other beds.  Those three beds are 2' by 10'.  In these three beds Ana wants me to plant herbs, the names of which she hasn't given me yet.

In addition to the beds that I've already created, I have a small patch of earth I plan on turning over with my trusty shovel next weekend.  The area is roughly 12' by 12' and I plan to plant at least three different melons.  Last year at the Little Ranch I turned over about half of the area I'm planting this year.  Everything I planted did well, corn, chillies, radishes (two types), tomatoes (two types), cucumbers (two types), water melons.  At the end of last season I planted an artichoke plant.  I didn't get any artichokes off the plant last year but you should see it now.  It has six artichoke on the single plant.  The photo at top shows my artichoke plant.

I'm going to look for something else to plant in my San Francisco garden pictured below.  For those of you who are familiar with the City, my garden is in the St. Mary's Park subdivision.  If you have any advise on what to plant, let me know.

Hope everything is growing well in your garden.  Adios.

PS:  Here is a book that might interest you, "Fresh Food from Small Spaces" by R.J. Ruppenthal.