This year has been a doozy for Northern Californian gardeners. Winter was long. Spring was uncharacteristically wet. And summer seemed to lag by at least a month.

The result?

I didn’t have ripe tomatoes until after August 1st this year. Typically, ripe tomatoes are a July 4th treat and by the time August rolls around, I’m knee deep in tomatoes that need to be canned, dried, and gifted.

But not this year. The first real harvest of the year was the typical size, but it didn’t come until the second week of August:

And, the next week’s looked like a typical haul from the second week in July, not the third week in August:

Even the garlic bulbs were smaller than normal this year:

But, despite the late bloomers, we’ve finally started enjoying some of my favorite summer meals. Big salads of mixed veggies like this one (broiled eggplant, baked corn (a gift), baked squash, fresh red onions, fresh tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar and chevre).

Now that’s a summer garden treat.

Due to living part-time in the Seattle area and part-time at home for 3 months, I haven’t had the time to garden as much as I would have liked. Law? Lots of time for that. Tech? So much I don’t quite know how to process it. But Garden? Well, the Garden took a bit of a back-seat for the months prior to last frost.

Of our 8 garden beds, only 5 are planted (and some not fully). At this time of year, that’s a waste of resources.

But, I have experience on my side. While I know I am wasting space that collects amazing sunlight and could be used to grow beautiful California plants, I also know that each one of those plants sucks the resource of time.

And, if I am honest with myself, I didn’t have enough time to properly prep all of the beds even before the plants need attention. Too many travels. Too much work. So, this season, I am focused on proper execution in the garden. Maximum quantity of quality within the constraints that I have.

Again, my garden is a perfect metaphor for one of the cycles in start-up life (when you could do more, but it would suck time and/or nutrients from other things that don’t have enough to support them unless you scale back for a season).

The tomato seedlings post-planting:

The eggplants (the big one will be asian purples, the small one below it is a breed of white/pink mini-eggplants):

And, of course, the peppers:

Habanero, Hungarian Carrot, Jalapeño, Caribbean Red Hot, & Anaheim.

Already, the investment is starting to show returns. The tomato plants are dark green and easily triple the size shown in the photos above, eggplant fruits are showing, and the peppers are already flowering. Also, several cucumber plants and squash plants are spreading their hungry vines in search of sun. Even with perfect weather, it will not be the biggest harvest I’ve ever prepared, but it is clearly focused on the most high value benefits (e.g. those that produce the most to eat where the taste differential between the garden and the store is the highest).

Thank goodness for learning from the past — this summer/fall harvest is destined to be quite good despite requiring about 1/2 the effort of prior years.

Just like start-ups have to make major changes with each new stage of their development, so do gardens…

While the summer garden is my absolute favorite stage, it had become very clear that the garden was an overgrown disaster that needed to be modified.

So, I made pickles of the last remaining fruit (mainly just green tomatoes and cucumbers).

And did a solid day of clearing.

The next weekend, I finished clearing, turned the beds, amended 4 beds for winter plants and prepped the garlic (per the Garlicmeister’s instructions).

And finally, winter seedlings are in the ground (along with the garlic bulbs), in time to soak up the rains from the latest rainstorm.

.

Only 2 months until it’s time to start the pepper seeds…

Finally, we’re getting into the time of year when the tomato plants are so productive that we can’t eat everything they give us. The rest of the garden is no slouch either.

Tonight’s gorgeous harvest was limited to slicing tomatoes and paste tomatoes (no cherry tomatoes, no squash, no cucumbers), and even so, I’ve got my work cut out for me over the next couple of days.

Last weekend, the harvest was reasonably bountiful:

So, I spent much of the weekend doing the very meditative acts of canning, pickling, and slow roasting.

I yielded 5 pints of Tomato Sauce from chopped up tomatoes:

Plus, a tupperware full of slow-roasted tomatoes, 2 quarts of pickled green tomatoes (so delicious!), a quart of pickled squash, and two colorful quarts of tomatoes in their own juice.

At the end of the canning, the kitchen was a disaster. Imagine an entire kitchen covered with splashes of juice and seeds. Even my shoes were caught in the crossfire.

I’ve learned, though. This weekend, I’ve recruited help.

After closing some end-of-fiscal-quarter transactions for clients, I was very excited to get some quality time in the garden.

First, I harvested all of the leeks and onions that were ready:

Then, I moved in on the row of shallots:

And finally, I took out the garlic,

which I set into a *very* messy braid a few days later (this one is about twice as neat as mine).

I tied up, pruned, and ogled my tomatoes (that just won’t seem to ripen due to the coolest summer I can recall since we moved here…):

And I checked in on the development of the 5-or-6-bloom megabloom sweet horizon tomato, which did not disappoint:

At the end of the holiday weekend, the garden looked much more civilized than it had in days prior:

And, since I accidentally knocked down some green tomatoes in the course of my work, I put them to use in that great southern tradition of fried green tomatoes (but California fusion-style, cooked in a wok, and encrusted with panko):