gardening

The first year — one 2×4 raised bed with an arch trellis, plus a tomato planter and a blueberry planter, all on the deck. Chinese cucumber climbed the trellis on both sides. Two shishito pepper plants took over the rest of the bed. The cucumber turned into a steady supply of fruit much better than store-bought, and the shishitos produced all season. The tomato gave me just a handful. The blueberry started maybe four fruits that disappeared before any were edible. I relocated the bed once mid-season.

Even with that tiny footprint, the harvests from the plants I’d cared most about were what hooked me — that’s what made me decide to expand.

Sources — Suyo Long cucumber seed from an Amazon seller. MOMOTARO tomato and shishito pepper as seedlings from Suzuki Farm bought from Mitsuwa Marketplace. Blueberry from local Rose Hill Nurseries.

Second year, I added a second 2×4 planter (no trellis) next to the first, and a 2×8 planter directly on the ground — in too shady a spot, in hindsight. I’d tried overwintering the shishito plants indoors over the previous winter; they didn’t make it, probably from inconsistent watering. Same Chinese cucumbers, two new shishito plants split between the two 2×4 beds so they wouldn’t crowd. Garlic chives went in around one of the shishitos. An eggplant, a bell pepper, and a Manganji sweet chili pepper joined the other 2×4 with its shishito. I tried summer squash and lettuce in the 2×8 ground bed — both grew, but no squash fruit, and the lettuce just stretched skyward looking for sun. Lesson learned about siting beds for light.

The cucumbers faltered mid-season — looked like a disease got to them. Shishitos were bountiful as always. The cherry tomato (likely Supersweet 100) was generous. The bell pepper and eggplant both produced, but in limited quantity. The blueberry didn’t fruit at all.

Building for 2026

Before the end of the season I decided to really up my game. Six 32-inch-tall raised beds went into the lawn. They needed a lot of soil, so I split some big old logs from a tree we’d taken down in the yard and used them to fill roughly the bottom 10% (a half-step toward hügelkultur). The rest came from a landscaper as a 50/50 compost + soil mix. I laid wire mesh + cardboard on the bottom to deter burrowing critters — not sure they’re strictly necessary, but I wanted as complete a setup as possible. The landscaper also ran irrigation lines to every bed.

Irrigation runs off a single zone, so to get per-bed control I added individual digital timers — most are paired with Garden Watering Grid. Working well so far. I wish I’d picked WiFi-enabled timers — would have made it much easier to automate from one app. Lesson banked for next time.

Sources — Manganji sweet chili pepper from Suzuki Farm bought from Mitsuwa Marketplace. Bell pepper, eggplant, and the cherry tomato most likely from Rose Hill Nurseries (same place as the blueberry); I didn’t track varieties that year.

A friend gave me a copy of Mel Bartholomew’s Square Foot Gardening, and I realized I’d been sort of doing it already — so I formalized the approach for this year’s plan. I also switched to ordering most of my seeds from a real seed company (Johnny’s) and started seedlings + transplanted on their suggested schedule.

The blueberry that gave me zero in 2024 and 2025 is suddenly loaded — a ton of green fruit forming. Snap peas are just starting to come in. Some things are looking good; some are looking questionable. The bottleneck this year was indoor growing space — I moved seedlings out a little earlier than ideal in a few cases to make room for the next round under the grow lights. Frost covers on a couple of the beds for those in-between days are probably the next add.