I've loved growing plants for years and have done so in various settings. I remember my first experiment of growing tomatoes in pots on the balcony was not really successful. Though things literally grew from there. Two years later every free space of my balcony was used up with grow bags, pots or beds I had built myself. But it is never enough! A few years later I got the chance to take over a garden outside of Berlin and that radically increased my available space. Since then I have mostly switched from "urban" balcony gardening to a more traditional garden. The available space has definitely made more things possible, but it was also really nice having your garden literally in front of your kitchen. Sometimes constraints like lack of available space force you to be creative and I really like the challenge of that constraint. And there is something delightfully absurd to be able to grab a bunch of potatoes or a squash from your balcony. I don't regret the "upgrade", but the increased space has made time the congested resource, which is a more frustrating constraint. Though learning to not just do something, but do it consistently and in a time-efficient manner is a good challenge.

Harvest

In 2021 I started keeping very detailed records of what I grew and how much I harvested. However, there have been some problems with the data, such as inconsistency and incompleteness. The way I've recorded the data has varied a lot, from scribbling notes on scraps of paper to using digital notes to entering structured data in a form. Another, more mundane problem that is also much harder to fix is that it's hard to resist snacking on fresh fruits or vegetables while walking around the garden. This leads to under reporting of anything that can be eaten with a bite or two.

Plant 2021 2022 2023 2024
Apple 0g 2,790g 5,868g 133g
Asian lettuce 200g 0g 369g 931g
Basil 0g 0g 87g 281g
Bush bean 200g 1,446g 690g 2,065g
Yellow beet 0g 850g 0g 0g
Red beet 305g 1,420g 1,899g 1,894g
Broccoli 1,630g 130g 4,449g 4,571g
Blueberries 0g 0g 41g 0g
Pole bean 0g 0g 0g 2,262g
Blackberry 0g 0g 0g 26g
Bell pepper 420g 6,823g 6,579g 10,613g
Chinese cabbage 400g 5,955g 5,233g 0g
Strawberries 0g 0g 2,940g 0g
Corn salad 200g 0g 20g 0g
Kale 0g 130g 858g 120g
Currant 0g 2,967g 6,047g 1,369g
Garlic 0g 43g 241g 576g
Kohlrabi 0g 0g 2,900g 2,332g
Celeriac 0g 0g 334g 0g
Potato 0g 10,320g 7,493g 14,371g
Pumpkin 1,270g 6,822g 14,248g 41,527g
Leek 0g 200g 0g 0g
Swiss chard 585g 1,000g 4,803g 9,686g
Carrot 0g 0g 2,484g 1,982g
Mint 0g 120g 0g 0g
Obagine 310g 2,390g 2,325g 834g
Okra 0g 0g 0g 319g
Oregano 0g 60g 0g 0g
Parsnips 0g 0g 3,091g 0g
Bok choy 0g 0g 145g 0g
Physalis 0g 693g 0g 17g
Radish 120g 922g 132g 536g
Radicchio 0g 0g 823g 823g
Rhubarb 0g 0g 0g 758g
Rosemary 0g 14g 0g 0g
Arugula 0g 0g 0g 1,357g
Lettuce 200g 0g 0g 1,556g
Salad cucumber 0g 2,634g 612g 2,767g
Chives 0g 24g 0g 78g
Spinach 900g 30g 200g 1,566g
Tomato 16,395g 16,853g 9,492g 8,778g
Jerusalem artichoke 0g 0g 1,200g 7,730g
Tomatillo 0g 0g 272g 1,559g
Weintraube 0g 0g 0g 116g
Winter onion 0g 120g 490g 995g
Zucchini 750g 13,640g 9,304g 12,954g
Sugar peas 270g 542g 490g 0g
Sweet corn 0g 0g 1,094g 2,724g
Flour corn 0g 0g 0g 346g
Onion 0g 0g 4,195g 3,504g

Self-Sufficiency?

Tracking harvest data is not only fun for me, it helps me to answer various questions that pop into my head. Recently, I was wondering how close I am to only living off food I grow myself. While this is not something I aim for, it provides a good sense of the scale of hobby food production. Following Vaclav Smil's approach of reasoning about these questions in terms of energetic quantities, I decided to use the number of ingested vs produced calories as a proxy. Since I already track the weight of my harvests I can easily calculate the calories of my harvest. Of course there are significant seasonality effects, but assuming perfect storage of my harvest this should provide a good approximation. According to my tracking I consume on average at least 500 kcal more per day than the average sedentary male, so for me the minimum number of calories I need to ingest each day is 3000. Converting the harvests into calories is straightforward in theory, but estimates of caloric content for various vegetables can vary a lot depending on the source of the data. I also expect that the weather conditions greatly influence the caloric content in certain vegetables, and specially fruits, since the sugar content highly depends on high enough temperatures to develop through ripening.

These disclaimers aside, in 2021 I grew 24 kg of produce, the majority of that tomatoes, pumpkin, squash and broccoli. However this only resulted in 5,456 kcal which is equivalent to sustaining myself for 1.81 days. In mid 2022 I was able to acquire some additional growing space, which increased the production to 72 kg of produce. The biggest contributors to that were 7 kg of potatoes since they are both high yielding and relatively high in caloric density. Even though I tripled my production that still amounts to only sustaining myself for 8.81 days. In 2023 I expanded the growing space with a new bed but focused a lot more on growing low-maintenance staple crops like pumpkins, carrots and parsnip. Generally it was a really bad year for tomatoes with a really low yield of 9 kg (-7 kg) and that with way more plants than the previous year. In the end it was about 101 kg of produce, which ends up at 38,669 kcal, or 12.88 days. In 2024 I expanded the growing space even more, building a trellis for my tomatoes. Since these beds were ornamental before, I did not directly plant the tomatoes in the new beds but still grew them in grow bags and covered the ground with cardboard. This worked pretty well and most tomatoes eventually rooted through the grow bag into the soil beneath. In the end my tomato harvest was once again really small, but it was an especially bad year with fungal diseases and I'm not growing resist varieties. The pumpkin harvest was really exceptional with over 41kg of pumpkins alone. Especially the variety "Muskat" had a great year and I baked a pumpkin pie many weeks in a row. For 2024 that makes a total yield of 144kg at 51,210 kcal, or 17.01 days.

Plant kcal per 100g 2021 2022 2023 2024
Apple 52 0 kcal 1,451 kcal 3,051 kcal 69 kcal
Asian lettuce 13 26 kcal 0 kcal 48 kcal 121 kcal
Basil 23 0 kcal 0 kcal 20 kcal 65 kcal
Bush bean 31 62 kcal 448 kcal 214 kcal 640 kcal
Yellow beet 43 0 kcal 366 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal
Red beet 43 131 kcal 611 kcal 817 kcal 814 kcal
Broccoli 55 897 kcal 72 kcal 2,447 kcal 2,514 kcal
Blueberries 57 0 kcal 0 kcal 23 kcal 0 kcal
Pole bean 31 0 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 701 kcal
Blackberry 43 0 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 11 kcal
Bell pepper 31 130 kcal 2,115 kcal 2,039 kcal 3,290 kcal
Chinese cabbage 13 52 kcal 774 kcal 680 kcal 0 kcal
Strawberries 32 0 kcal 0 kcal 941 kcal 0 kcal
Corn salad 17 34 kcal 0 kcal 3 kcal 0 kcal
Kale 49 0 kcal 64 kcal 420 kcal 59 kcal
Currant 63 0 kcal 1,869 kcal 3,810 kcal 862 kcal
Garlic 149 0 kcal 64 kcal 359 kcal 858 kcal
Kohlrabi 27 0 kcal 0 kcal 783 kcal 630 kcal
Celeriac 42 0 kcal 0 kcal 140 kcal 0 kcal
Potato 77 0 kcal 7,946 kcal 5,770 kcal 11,066 kcal
Pumpkin 26 330 kcal 1,774 kcal 3,704 kcal 10,797 kcal
Leek 61 0 kcal 122 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal
Swiss chard 19 111 kcal 190 kcal 913 kcal 1,840 kcal
Carrot 41 0 kcal 0 kcal 1,018 kcal 813 kcal
Mint 49 0 kcal 59 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal
Obagine 82 254 kcal 1,960 kcal 1,907 kcal 684 kcal
Oregano 265 0 kcal 159 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal
Parsnips 75 0 kcal 0 kcal 2,318 kcal 0 kcal
Bok choy 13 0 kcal 0 kcal 19 kcal 0 kcal
Physalis 43 0 kcal 298 kcal 0 kcal 7 kcal
Radish 16 19 kcal 148 kcal 21 kcal 86 kcal
Radicchio 23 0 kcal 0 kcal 189 kcal 189 kcal
Rhubarb 21 0 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 159 kcal
Rosemary 131 0 kcal 18 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal
Arugula 25 0 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 339 kcal
Lettuce 5 10 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 78 kcal
Salad cucumber 12 0 kcal 316 kcal 73 kcal 332 kcal
Chives 30 0 kcal 7 kcal 0 kcal 23 kcal
Spinach 23 207 kcal 7 kcal 46 kcal 360 kcal
Tomato 18 2,951 kcal 3,034 kcal 1,709 kcal 1,580 kcal
Jerusalem artichoke 73 0 kcal 0 kcal 876 kcal 5,643 kcal
Tomatillo 32 0 kcal 0 kcal 87 kcal 499 kcal
Winter onion 31 0 kcal 37 kcal 152 kcal 308 kcal
Zucchini 17 128 kcal 2,319 kcal 1,582 kcal 2,202 kcal
Sugar peas 42 113 kcal 228 kcal 206 kcal 0 kcal
Sweet corn 86 0 kcal 0 kcal 941 kcal 2,343 kcal
Onion 32 0 kcal 0 kcal 1,342 kcal 1,121 kcal
Okra 33 0 kcal 0 kcal 0 kcal 105 kcal
5,456 kcal 26,454 kcal 38,669 kcal 51,210 kcal

Season Notes

One interesting property of gardening is that it is so intimately bound to the passage of time. You can't rush a carrot, and you can't plant your tomatoes in December just because it is convenient for you (at least in our climate here). Things will happen when they happen. You need to accept that you only have so many seasons to grow in your lifetime, maybe 40 to 50 seasons. It is not that many tries for getting good at something, so we'll have to maximize our improvement in each season. That means each winter, I take some time to reflect on the season. These are some of my notes. I've not been great at actually writing them down, so this is my attempt to capture that for future me or whoever finds it useful.

2020

First year I tried to scale up the garden on the balcony. Really pitiful harvest of most things. However, it sent me down a rabbit hole to figure out how to change that. My general insight was: The size of the pots matters, and I need to do some planning.

2021

This was the first season I started taking records of planting times and some sporadic harvest records. I really extended the balcony garden, and naturally, soon there were lots of plants but not much balcony left. I also invested in building some sizable planters with a decent amount of soil. That really changed the kind of plants I could grow successfully. I learned many things that season:

2022

This was probably one of the most chaotic and hectic years for many reasons. One of them was that I got the chance to take over a garden somewhere in Brandenburg mid-season (and if you haven't caught on by now: I was beyond excited). In addition to taking care of my garden at home, I suddenly had many more plants to take care of. Time became the limited resource, and the garden I took over was built to be labor-intensive: a lot of shrubs, flowers arranged in a pristine way, grass that had to be mowed, and lots of corners to weed. Suddenly, harvesting and planting was only a fraction of the time spent; most of it was upkeep. Watering alone usually took a good amount of time (45 minutes to an hour at least) lugging around the watering cans. I came out of that with a lot of interesting insights:

2023

This was the first full season in the garden and with that came ambition (and failure). The city climate spoiled me a little bit in terms of mild temperatures. This meant that I was a little overly optimistic on when I could bring my little seedlings to the great outdoors. In Berlin I did not see a frost after early May, though in Brandenburg the conventional wisdom of "not before May 15th" was pretty exact. On top of that it stayed pretty cold on average for quite a while. A fact my pepper plants did not appreciate at all. As a result I had some stressed seedlings, either because they grew too large for their pots or too cold. I grew over 20 pepper plants and 10 tomato plants, way more than the previous year in both cases. However my yield on peppers was almost the same as the previous year and my yield on tomatoes was almost half! Part of that was that the varieties I selected for the sheltered warm city climate were just not right for cold and moist weather. Quite a few tomato succumbed to diseases early on. Another reason was that I thought it was a great idea to cram as many tomatoes into the space as possible. Certainly this was an impulse from being space constrained from so long, but without proper airflow the increased humidity caused the fungi infections.

2024

I took all the insights from 2023 and did basically the same mistakes. Not quite, but I did manage to decrease my tomato yield even more. I improved the airflow a lot, but I did not see the early warning signs of blight or rather I did purposefully ignore it. Radical action is necessary but chopping down the infected plants was not something I wanted to do. Alas not all was bad, the peppers did produce a decent yield that year. I was also a lot happier with my continuous harvest of various high-production plants (zucchini, broccoli, green beans) and the increased quality of produce that resulted in. The potato harvest was really good and partially I attribute this to a completely automated irrigation and made sure they had optimal moisture. Unfortunately I did underestimate how vigorous the spuds grew. They pushed through the surface in many places, which resulted in a regretful amount of uneatable green potatoes.