45/365 How My Garden Grows

I never know what to expect from my garden. I have a typical urban yard, postage stamp sized, really not much bigger in the back than the footprint of the house itself. 30 feet wide (I know from my water bill) but I don't know the length.

But this has happily limited me in the past. I can only do so much gardening in a space like this, plus there's the 80 year old magnolia tree, and the silver-red hybrid maple, and the baby scarlet oak, and there used to be a mulberry. Lots of squirrels, not a lot of sun. So I grew Russian tomatoes that had a short season (due to their winter), and they grew over a long season of shade for me. Beautiful tomatoes the years I got them. Think of a store bought tomato. Now think of a homegrown one, and the difference between them. Take that same amount of difference, and Russian black tomatoes are that much further along the scale from homegrown.

As you can see from the first slide here, there are some plants that are quite easy to grow and produce a large yield--garlic and basil being the very best in my yard. There are others that require lots of care and do not give much in return, like potatoes and most squash plants. Also, in a city garden, "ease of growing" includes how much space--some plants are easy to grow (pumpkins) but require the whole danged yard.
Usually cucumbers are in quadrant III as well--low yield, hard to grow. Always something puzzling about that family of plants. This year, however, they've had an astounding yield for me. Embarrassing amounts of cucumbers--I switched to a hybrid and frankly, I'll never switch back. I'll keep the heirloom tomatoes but those older cucumbers do not stand up to the weird bugs in my yard. And I don't spray, so if there are bad bugs, we succumb.

But yield is only half the picture in a city garden. Yes, it is very satisfying to have basil coming out of our ears, but if basil wasn't also absolutely awesomely tasty in all ways, it wouldn't be as worth it. So this second slide demonstrates ease of growing vs. tastiness. Note the red y = -x line. Anything on top of that line, I will continue to try. Anything below has proven itself unworthy.