This year's stunt: An urban farm

Readers keep calling and e-mailing to ask what my tomato "stunt" will be this summer.

Since 2003, I've tried weird mail-order varieties, raised rare heirlooms, harvested five-pound behemoths, tested red plastic mulch and — this one goes in the stunt hall of fame — grown tomatoes upside-down in five-gallon buckets.

I'm not weary of tomatoes. But people, this is so much better: For 2009, I'm tending a newly built, small-scale urban farm, right where part of the driveway used to be. It had a bit of a rocky start, but more about that in a minute.

Some background: My husband and I downsized last fall when we bought a cute bungalow and moved precisely three blocks within our Naglee Park neighborhood in San Jose. Everything about the place was perfect, including the fact that the dated, shady garden would be a new and fun project to take on.

Yeah, I said the S-word — shade — a form of profanity for gardeners like me who want to take advantage of our hospitable climate to nurture homegrown food year-round.

At once, I eyed the expanse of ugly, stained concrete in front of the garage — which gets full sun all day. I pictured tall raised beds from which I could harvest a bounty of food in a relatively small space by training plants to grow vertically. I thought the project might also provide inspiration for other gardeners who are trying to join the burgeoning grow-your-own movement but don't have a lot of space.


Over the winter, plans took shape for a wholesale remaking of the backyard that would include my little farm. In April, a team of beefy guys used a concrete cutter and a jackhammer to create four openings into which the raised beds would be built.

The beds were set far enough apart so a wheelbarrow could be maneuvered between them. A central "courtyard" would provide a cozy place to sit and watch my garden grow. Bonus: The 22-inch high beds are wheelchair-friendly should that become an issue.

Over a couple of weekends — and with a big rented circular saw and much Aleve — my husband and I built the beds from 2-by-12 redwood lumber, anchored at the corners with 4-by-4 redwood posts sunk securely into gravel. My husband suggested we start with the bed that would be farthest from view, thinking that we could make all of our rookie mistakes on that one before moving on.

My husband is a genius. Because of course we blundered aplenty on that first bed: The posts were a little off-plumb, the corners didn't quite meet up. But our confidence grew as we moved along, and pretty soon the farm was taking shape.

The landscaping crew had already tunneled under the remaining concrete to install irrigation pipes for a drip system. Then I used a staple gun to line each box with heavy-duty landscape fabric to keep soil from seeping out where the redwood boards met horizontally and where they rested on the concrete.

A phone call was all it took to get a big delivery of planter mix — we needed nine yards — and the next thing I knew, there was a ginormous pile out in the street in front of the house. Thanks to the crew and more wheelbarrow loads than I could count, the boxes were full and prepped for planting. I was already tasting the first tomato of the season.

That's when the "rocky start" I mentioned earlier began to unfold.

Visions of the farm had been dancing in my head for so long that I was ultra-eager to get my tall tomato seedlings tucked into their new homes. They'd been potted in up to one-gallon containers since April and were seriously ready to be in the ground.

But remember in mid-May when temperatures soared into the high 90s? Yup, that was the sweltering weekend when I planted them. They sizzled in the heat, despite being well watered. By Sunday night, most of my fledgling garden of eatin' was toast. My formerly green thumb had turned — temporarily, I hoped — jet black.

Fortunately, I have gardener friends who took pity and helped me find replacements for the two tomatoes I won't be without: Ed's Millennium, a Brandywine-like beefsteak introduced by Ed Lo of San Jose and sold each year by the Santa Clara County Master Gardeners; and Sun Sugar, a super-sweet but hard-to-find orange cherry tomato I crave. A pal also gave me a seedling of Winsall, another heirloom variety I'd been eager to try.

A sense of optimism returned when I found other old friends in the tomato area at the nursery: Pineapple, Celebrity, Big Zebra. I picked up bean seeds — Spanish Musica and French Duet — and seedlings of Kentucky Blue. Three kinds of basil also went into my cart.

Back home, seedlings of Golden Bush summer squash, Ronde de Nice (a cute, round French zucchini) and Swiss chard Bright Lights were on deck, along with Ambrosia, a luscious cantaloupe variety. Bell peppers in hues of yellow, orange and red were ready for their vertical supports.

With cooler temperatures prevailing, all went into the new raised beds in late May. The farm, version 2.0, is thriving.

And I'm hoping that my false start constitutes the full extent of my gardening bad luck for the year.

From http://www.mercurynews.com/