Sf Kelly's urban retreat garden

It’s the nicest time of year here in San Francisco. Warm days, not much fog. The tomatoes and herbs are going great guns, and the apples are almost ready to deluge us with fruit.

I was away for several weeks, and nearly lost a few things, but it’s been a good year in the garden. We ate a lot of swiss chard, and I am giving away tomatoes.

This plant has a few flowers, but no fruit. I think it’s too cold for peppers in SF.

No sign of buds yet. There are two stalks this year, one larger and taller than the other.

This was the first tomato to fruit this year, and I relished those first tiny ones! They have a good flavor. But now that the others are fruiting, I must confess that these are less fun, because they’re harder to harvest. Excellent in salads, though.

I haven’t been good about updating, but these tomatoes are doing well. In SF, we don’t get our hot weather until fall, but I’m getting a lot of these tomatoes now. Not as tasty as the Caspian Pinks, but they taste better cooked, and make a lovely tomato soup. I had to add extra staking and another cage on top.

I’ve been lax about posting progress, I know. But this plant really took off, and managed to produce some amazing beefsteak tomatoes in foggy San Francisco. I had to add a second cage and more supports to prop up its monstrous sprawl and super-heavy fruits, but it was worth it.

They have a great tomatoey taste, even better than the Early Girls for eating sliced on a bagel. I will definitely grow them again. One fruit was over 1.6 lbs!

This chard was so delicious! I had a few issues with leafminer and earwigs, but we got amazing amounts of food from only a few plants. I learned a few things: that chard needs more sun than you think, and that you shouldn’t harvest it near dusk, because the earwigs hide inside and like to come out and scare you while you’re rinsing off the leaves. Yuck!

But I love how chard tastes like all those vitamins are going straight into your body to do good deeds.