We cut back on the 2026 garden for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons is the yield is declining every year.
Mid-morning picture taken before the sun has come over the house, facing west.
That yellow tree was planted shortly after we moved in. The garden is in the back of the house facing west, and the sun sets through that gap between the trees, mostly on to the left, which is south. Very conservatively I think it’s reduced the amount of direct sunlight on the garden by at least 30%.
For our 2025 garden we’re growing basil, Oregon Spring tomatoes, and cucumbers. We just harvested the first ripe tomatoes. The basil has been doing fine. We’ve also gotten a decent numbers of cucumbers from two plants, though the cucumbers are now mostly done for the year. To be fair, we started a little late this year, so that could be contributing to the somewhat late harvest.
Going forward, I think we’ll continue with a more limited garden, at least so long as we eat the output. If I get excited or have extra time available maybe we’ll try growing something in the front of the house on a limited scale — there’s not much space without tearing up the yard. Alternately we’ll go all-in, pull out a few shrubs, and tuck a long skinny greenhouse up against the front of the house.
On the other hand — we have a big yard for suburbia, so as I age I may also decide the yard is plenty of work as is. One of our older neighbors moved out a few years ago and he said at the time that the yard and house was too much for him to maintain. We’ll see how it goes.
2024 was our worst year ever by total yield or by EarthBox by quite a bit. This year we grew four boxes of tomatoes (8 plants), one box of cucumbers (4 plants), one split box of zucchini and tomatillos (one of each), and one box of basil (4 plants).
Typically we get around 20 pounds per tomato plant — around 40 pounds per EarthBox. Not this year:
One box (four plants) Cucumbers: 27.9 pounds. Not a terrible year for cucumbers. They maintained good shape and taste deep into the harvest season.
One box (two plants) Black Krim Tomatoes: 14.6 pounds
One box (two plants) Oregon Spring Tomatoes: 12.6 pounds
Two boxes (four plants) Roma Tomatoes: 22.2 pounds
1/2 box (1 plant) Zucchini: 6.7 pounds
1/2 box (1 plant) Tomatillo: 3.3 pounds
87.3 pounds total.
We also grew one box of basil, and as usual the box produced way more than we could consume. At the end of every season it gets distributed around the neighborhood before the cold damages it too much.
We’re in the Seattle area. Almost everyone I talked to said they were having a bad year for tomatoes, so I don’t think it was just us. We did have one Roma die outright, which is the first tomato plant we’ve had die in over ten years of gardening. On average the yield this year was about 1/3rd of what we’ve seen historically.
The other “problem” was that we bought the last zucchini plant labeled as Tromboncino from the nursery. It turned out it was a “regular” zucchini plant, so it flopped all over the Tomatillo, rather than vining and staying out of the way like it was supposed to. There were no winners in that competition for space and light.
The flip side is 80 pounds of produce is a lot of stuff. We processed the tomatoes into sauce and froze dinner-sized portions. Both the downstairs chest freezer and the upstairs freezer are packed solid with vegetables.
Going forward, it may be we need to cycle out potting soil and replace it with fresh. It may also be that 2024 is closer to the new normal as the large trees around our lot continue to encroach on good sun for the garden.
I think overall it was a combination of relative lack of attention, bad weather, and bad luck (mislabeled pant and the dead tomato plant).
In a typical year we have twelve active EarthBoxes. The yield is usually around 250 pounds of produce. We have plenty of frozen vegetables in the freezer, so this year we have seven boxes:
The picture is facing east — the sun is just clearing the house and striking the cages and the tops of the tomato plants.
Front row (L-R): box of two Romas, box of two Romas, box of two Oregon Spring. There’s going to be one more box to the right containing basil — I didn’t like what I saw when I went shopping for basil this morning.
2nd row (L-R): Box of Black Krim tomatoes. Under the right-hand trellis are Marketmore cucumbers.
Back left: A box with one tomatillo (Verde) and one zucchini. We purchased the zucchini as a Tromboncino (we got the last one!) but it now has all the appearances of a “regular” zucchini plant.
North of Seattle it’s been very mild bordering on “too cold for basil”. Hopefully over the next few weeks we see some real growth.
Our patio container garden had a “solid” year all-around: 173.1 pounds of produce from 9 EarthBoxes. Which comes to about 6 pounds per square foot of container space. The trees in and around the garden continue to expand, at some point soon we may need to go to fewer boxes and smaller (determinate) plants.
Here’s how everything did:
Cucumbers: 1 box, 4 plants, 34.6 pounds. We grew “Marketmore” cucumber plants. The cucumbers started early and stayed productive until late. This was a relatively good year for “attractive and straight” fruit too.
Carmen Peppers: 2 boxes, 12 plants, 16.0 pounds. We located the peppers in a relatively sunny/premium location. The plants grew taller than usual and we had fewer problems with bugs and most everything ripened. The basil is not getting its spot back.
Tromboncino Zucchini: 1 box, 2 plants, 18.6 pounds. It was a solid year for the zucchini as well. Mid-season we got this:
I think the hand pollinating helped (again). An old toothbrush is now a permanent part of the gardening tool kit.
Black Krim / Carbon Tomatoes: 1.5 boxes, 3 plants, 28.5 pounds. The three plants mostly intermingled and it wasn’t worth figuring out which was which. We grew two Black Krim but one of them didn’t do well at all and was dead by mid-September. I have no idea what caused it so hopefully it was just rough handling. Ten pounds per plant is fine, and the Black Krims tasted amazing, as usual.
Tigeralla Tomato: .5 box, 1 plant, 12.2 pounds. The Tigerally did “fine”. They ripened fairly late. It’s fun to have colorful tomatoes though this year they were pretty “meh”.
Oregon Spring Tomato: 1 box, 2 plants, 20.7 pounds. The Oregon Springs were a top performer again. They started early and the taste and yield were both very good. Highly recommended.
Roma Tomato: 2 boxes, 4 plants, 42.5 pounds. Romas always yield well for us, and even the unripe fruits all ripened after harvest.
We also grew four basil plants in one box in the middle of the garden. They produced way more than we could consume so the neighbors got a lot of our excess basil. The EarthBox directions call for six plants per box, but I think the yield winds up being about the same with a little more space per plant.
Finally, we had one box of 20 Fortex (pole) beans, yielding fistfuls of pods all summer.
Considering we didn’t pay a ton of attention to the garden it went pretty well.
The annual Seattle rains started yesterday afternoon. I wanted to stay relatively dry while harvesting, so I harvested all the Really Ripe Things last weekend and The Rest Of It yesterday morning.
A front view prior to last weekend’s harvest:
From the house side “back” of the garden:
The remaining peppers:
The “Ripe” harvest. It’s 9 pounds of peppers and 37 pounds of tomatoes, mostly Romas (20 pounds) and Black Krim (12 pounds):
Yesterday’s “Rest Of It Harvest”:
As for the under-ripe tomatoes — we’ve had good success the last few years by spreading them out on cooling racks near a heater vent in the kitchen and letting them ripen for 2-3 weeks. I think it’s the combination of air-flow and warmth that does the trick.
Finally, one straggler that I found doing the final clean-up:
It’s a nice discovered reward at the end of the process.
We’ve had a long series of days mostly in the 70’s punctuated by a fairly warm weekend in the 80’s. The cucumbers and zucchini are basically “done”. The tomatoes plants got a big thinning and haircut — the indeterminants got topped, and the centers (side-branches) of all of the tomato plants were aggressively pruned. Any blooms or non-mature tomato fruits were trimmed off, there’s not enough time left in the growing season for those.
We gave the peppers the prime spot in the garden this year. It feels like the plants grew bigger than in most years, the yield will be greater and more peppers ripened, and we lost almost none to bugs and critters. Usually it’s much more “congested” than this, which may related to the bug attacks. We harvested around a third of the peppers after this picture:
The harvest:
The basil was kicked from the prime spot and moved to the center of the garden, where it’s done great. One of the six plants flopped over and was gifted around the neighborhood a few weeks ago. The other plants just filled in the space:
A “before” picture from inside the garden looking at the Krims and Tigerella:
Another “before” picture. (front L-R) – Roma, Roma, Oregon Spring tomato, 2 boxes of Carmen peppers:
After the haircut:
Starting this week is when we’ll see the tomato harvest really ramp up. We can use the upcoming long weekend partly for making tomato sauce for the freezer.
The weather has gone from sunny and 80 degrees to now a hard rain and 65 degrees. I’m guessing when the rain passes we’ll have some tomatoes to pick up off the ground, but still, it’s good we got the bulk of the pruning out of the way.
It’s mostly fill-in for what’s been used up over the last few years. Looking at the weights, it’s a lot smaller quantities per variety than we’ve historically purchased. In retrospect it might have been better to buy some larger amounts.
For some other things, we’ve been setting a few aside and drying the pods — Fortex beans, Rattlesnake beans, and Super Sugar Snap peas, and replanting with “seeds” from the previous year. We also let some cross-section of the Guardsman bunch onions (scallions) go to seed so those are self-sustaining as well. We used to have Red Barons but I must have failed to propagate those, so more are on the way.
We’ve tried Bok Choi and Pak Choi in the past and those always got wiped out by bugs. We’ve tried row covers and organic pest solutions and neither really helped. I see other people succeeding so it must be possible. It’s worth a cheap try.
I’m going to hang some of the heat-averse herbs and lettuces in planters under the west-facing edge of the 2nd story deck, both to avoid the worst of the sun, and to keep squirrels from digging everything up. If at the end of the summer I feel smarter than the squirrels then it’ll be a win. I may add shade cloth around or over the hanging planters, though that might be too much shade in total. I’m always trying to increase our yield on lettuces and “under the edge of the deck” is one more thing to try.
Now that I think about it — Maybe under the north-facing side of the deck would work better. No direct hot sun during the day.
The weather this year was generally cooperative. Our total harvest checks in at 175.5 pounds not including the beans or basil which we don’t weigh (too fiddly on a weeknight). 175.5 pounds from 10 boxes comes out to 4.7 pounds per square foot of growing media. Summary below the tomato pic –
A mix of mostly Black Krim with some Cherokee Purple
Carmen Peppers – 1 box, 6 plants, 2.2 pounds
King of the North Peppers – 1 box, 6 plants, 2.9 pounds
Our historical yield for peppers has been around 1.5-2.0 pounds per plant. This year there were lots and lots of leaves and not a lot of fruit. I’m not sure what we can do differently other than hope next year is better.
Black Krim and Cherokee Chocolate Tomatoes – 1.5 boxes, 3 plants, 34.7 pounds
It was two Black Krim and one Cherokee. My feeling is that the Cherokee dragged down the average. We love earthy, rich taste of Black Krims so they’re staying. This isn’t the first year that a Cherokee was “meh”, so we’ll see on those.
In a related “unripe tomato” note – almost everything we harvested green ripened up on cooling racks on the kitchen floor over the last couple of weeks. I think that airflow and a fairly bright and warm environment are the keys to not having stuff rot. No more paper bags for us.
Very uninspiring yield. They tasted ok and they were attractive and something different.. But. The longer we’ve been gardening the more I lean away from cherry tomatoes because I’d rather spend the few minutes to harvest a few large tomatoes instead of tediously picking a zillion small ones.
Roma Tomatoes – 2 boxes, 4 plants, 47.6 pounds
One of the four plants did poorly and dragged down the yield. Either it was a weak plant or it didn’t get enough sun on the north/shady end of the stack. Still, almost 50 pounds of Romas makes a lot of sauce.
Oregon Spring Tomatoes – 1 box, 2 plants, 19.3 pounds
Oregon Spring are the first tomato plant I’d recommend to anyone gardening in the Pacific Northwest (we’re a little north of Seattle). They’re early, they’re prolific, they taste good, and they work pretty well for sauce too. 19.3 pounds isn’t the best year, typical would be 30-50 pounds for two plants.
Late July, before things really start ripening
“Slicing” Cucumber – 1 box, 4 plants, 31.7 pounds
31.7 pounds is on the low end of average. On the other hand they had good shape all summer — the plants waited a long time to start producing “fun house mirror” cucumbers. I’m totally happy with the cucumbers this year.
“Green” Tomatillos – 1 box, 2 plants, 13.7 pounds and
The tomatillos and zucchini shared a trellis with the idea that the pollinators would hit the zucchini as a byproduct of visiting all of the tomatillo flowers. I also helped out a little bit, pollinating with a toothbrush later in the season. It seems to have worked ok — in a bad year we’ll get five pounds of zucchini and in a good year we’ll get 15-25 pounds. We would have gotten more but critters (birds?) did some damage and destroyed a few zucchini when they were smallish. The tomatillos were right around the low end of average at 13.7 pounds, which is plenty of green sauce/salsa. I think we’ll try the same “share the trellis” strategy next year.
Other thoughts:
The trees are continuing to block out more and more sunlight as the years go by. Next year it may be that we reduce it down to one box of indeterminate tomatoes (Black Krim), just ensure that everything gets enough sun to be productive.
There were fewer destructive bugs than usual, but also fewer bees and more animals or birds destroying the random tomato.
It was a very marginal year for peppers and an average / low average year for everything else. October has been beautiful and sunny and if it had traded places with May the total yield would have been around average or a little better than average.
To paraphrase Yogi Berra: It’s getting late early around here. Our oak tree that always confirms the season is just starting to turn to fall colors and the garden is basically done.
On the 12th it became clear that the bugs were threatening to impact the pepper harvest, so we pulled what was left of the peppers:
Clockwise from top left: Oregon Spring, Roma, Rattlesnake beans, Black Krim, Purple Bumblebee (cherry tomato), tomatillos and cumbers, Cherokee Chocolate tomatoes, Carmen peppers, King of the North peppers
The next week we harvested another sheet tray of ripe Romas. (not pictured)
As of the morning of the September 24 the garden looked like this:
L-R Front: Rattlesnake beans, Roma, Oregon Spring, Roma. Middle Left is the other tomatoes with cucumbers on the right. Back left is tomatillo and Tromboncino with Fortex beans on the right.
A closeup of the “better looking” Roma box on the 24th:
The Purple Bumblebees on the 24th:
The tomatillo and Tromboncino shared a trellis. I think it worked out well. Our Tromboncino yield is up relative to the last couple of years and it didn’t seem to impact the tomatillos one way or the other. Yay pollenators:
Then after “picture time” we harvested everything except the tomatillo and Tromboncinos. We left those two boxes with the hopes we’d see a little more output. And the yard waste bin was full so that was a good stopping point.
The Rattlesnake and Fortex beans that we’re saving for seed or dried beans for eating. We’ve been harvesting the Fortex all summer in addition to what’s pictured:
And the last somewhat unripe harvest — it’s around 30 pounds of tomatoes:
We’ve had the most success with ripening not-ripe tomatoes on the floor of the kitchen on cooling racks. The kitchen is generally warm, and when the furnace starts up there’s a heater vent that provides good air circulation.
I feel like 2022 was a better year for the garden than 2020 or 2021, though the shade trees continue to grow and are gradually going to force us to reduce the size of the garden or just accept that the yields are not going to be what they were ten years ago. The wildfire smoke was minimal, and July and August were relatively warm and clear.
Next post will be the How Much Did That All Weigh? I’m curious to see if my perception of yield matches reality.
In the Seattle area, mid-to-late August is when the garden starts to ripen in earnest. It’s also when the plants are starting to show that they’re thinking about being “done”.
A sort of close up overview picture:
The front right is Carmen Peppers and King Of North Peppers. The Carmen’s are having a much more productive year. A Carmen close up:
Normally we lose a few to earwigs, but that doesn’t seem to be the case this year. I’ve only counted one lost to the bugs.
Pictured next is the more energetic of the two Roma Tomato boxes. This box got the sunnier location and it shows:
That’s two plants in one box. They’re leaning over to the left and invading the space of the Oregon Springs. The nice thing is that the Oregon Springs are a very early harvest so we should be able to pull those plants out in 2-3 weeks from now.
I think the Tomatillo and Tromboncino “sharing a trellis” is working out pretty well. The center of the space is dominated by the Tomatillos. We need to harvest a big batch of them within the next few days.
The Tromboncino are growing up the sides and along the top. They’re having a better year this year than they have in the last few. We got a 32″ fruit about a week ago. Today we harvested this:
Tromboncino have all of their seeds in the bulb at the end of the fruit. The flesh firmer than a regular zucchini. Their leaves are less susceptible to mold, which helps in our climate. They work especially well for us because we’re gardening on a concrete patio and the vining aspect of the variety keeps the fruit off of the hot summer cement.
Finally, the Rattlesnake Beans:
We’ll let these dry and use them like Pinto Beans. I like growing beans – we plant 20-40 seeds in a box and make sure they get water and that’s about it. It’s basically “free” food.
The cucumbers are also having a better year than in the last couple of years. After the early cool weather it’s turned into a fairly warm summer, but we haven’t had wildfire smoke sucking up the UV.
JOI CHOI × 1
RED BARON × 1
SIMPSON ELITE LETTUCE × 1
ITALIENISCHER LETTUCE × 1
HEAT TOLERANT LETTUCE MIX × 1
SWEET BASIL × 1
DILL, DUKAT × 1
CONFETTI CORIANDER × 1
CRUISER CORIANDER× 1
FlatbreadGarden 