Sure! The planting early was… Partially successful, but held some plants back. Also, we have an overpopulation of isopods this year, they ate a bunch of seedlings / young plants and I had to replant those.

Worse was the heat wave, it reached 38°C here, and some plants just burnt, even with enough water. I’m especially sad about the grapes, it looked like we were, for the first time, getting a good amount of fruit, but in the heat the flowers burnt up.

Watering also needed some work (broken pump part, some calcified-closed drippers).

Overall, coming along OK, but sad to have lost a bunch of plantlings, and due to the heat, plants and harvest outlook look worse than the last years.

Oh, very cool, then good luck and have tons of fun in your first season! :D

For peppers, I recommend buying plants. They take ages to grow from seeds, and aren’t that expensive at the nursery/garden center. They really produce a lot of peppers, too.

Feel you on the barefoot pains. But don’t worry, the peppers (and plenty of other plants as well) will love it.

Yeah, we also just spotted a small wasabi plant at the garden center and immediately bought it without prior knowledge. They need to always be in really wet soil, and in full shade (we have them between the tomato containers, once the tomatoes get big they won’t get any direct sunlight). Luckily, they are also very forgiving. Had them look almost dead a couple of times from lack of water, put some water in, two hours later, good as new.

Anyways. Hope you have a great season!

Definitely hasn’t paid for itself. Not sure if it ever will. The initial investment was quite high - pots, soil, the structures, the watering system,… all add up really quickly.

For this year, the haul from the garden center, plus some seeds and plants ordered online, total roughly 200-250€. Everything in the supermarkets has become more expensive the last couple of years, so I don’t think it’s unlikely that the harvest surpasses what we’d pay there; but it’s hard to say, because obviously we can only harvest what’s in season, and the in-season things are always at their cheapest in the supermarket as well.

But as you said: that’s not really what it’s about. Being able to just go outside and pick fresh herbs basically all year alone is so worth it to me. Same for salads for half the year. And then add being spoilt for choice on fresh veggies on top.

Also: this garden just gives me joy.

Good question. My drippers are all pressure-compensating, I have no experience with the variable ones (instead just bought 3 different kinds). The past 3 years, I’d say they were pretty consistent, but I have noticed this year that they seem to differ by quite a bit in how much they drip. My explanation was that since we have really hard water here, they might be starting to calcify or something.

Sorry to hear about the variable ones though. That sounds really frustrating :(

Maybe we should both invest in a water counter thingy? 😄

Haha, thanks, I’d say they’re more of an necessity though 😅

Most prolific is usually the sweet peppers. There’s 24 plants (3 kinds in total), and they seem to really love getting baked in the sun here. I think they might be the only plants we have that actively like how intensely the stones heat up.

Favorite plant: we buy a jew Wasabi plant every year, always with the intention of “then we can finally harvest the oldest one!”, but they look so nice and we feel bad for them and never do 😭

How about yourself?

Puh… Müsste ich mal den Vermieter fragen. Bauchgefühl ist “nein” 😅😅

Oh nooo, am I that easy to clock as German 😄 Gardena really nice for the price though.

Do you even manage to eat everything yourself of what you harvest?

Mostly yes. We’re not throwing anything out, but giving some stuff to neighbours/family if we have too much of something. But esp. for things like peas or paprika, we also freeze a bunch for use throughout the year, pickle some cucumbers, and so on.

Do you have a rain sensor for the disabling automation?

No, actually - that was our initial idea as well, but they are not inexpensive, and not necessarily super accurate, from what I’ve read. Instead we’re just using the OpenWeather API. If you’re curious, here’s the HA stuff we wrote for it:

Automation:

alias: Deaktiviere Pumpe nach Regen
description: ""
triggers:
  - at: "06:30:00"
    trigger: time
  - at: "14:30:00"
    trigger: time
  - at: "22:30:00"
    trigger: time
conditions: []
actions:
  - if:
      - condition: or
        conditions:
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.cumulative_rain_8h
            above: 4
          - condition: numeric_state
            entity_id: sensor.cumulative_rain_24h
            above: 10
    then:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.steckdose_wasserpumpe_switch
        state: "on"
      - metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          device_id: <redacted>
        action: switch.turn_off
    else:
      - condition: state
        entity_id: switch.steckdose_wasserpumpe_switch
        state: "off"
      - metadata: {}
        data: {}
        target:
          device_id: <redacted>
        action: switch.turn_on
mode: single

Custom sensors:

sensor:
  - platform: statistics
    name: "Cumulative Rain 24h"
    entity_id: sensor.openweathermap_rain
    state_characteristic: sum
    max_age:
      hours: 24
  - platform: statistics
    name: "Cumulative Rain 8h"
    entity_id: sensor.openweathermap_rain
    state_characteristic: sum
    max_age:
      hours: 8

(These just sum up all values over the last x hours. “We have integration at home!” Unit is watercolumn in millimeters (I think))

Ja aber wohin damit 😥 Hätte schon gern eins, aber darf den Pflanzen keine Sonne wegnehmen. Hab schon überlegt da wie eine Art Markise zwei angewinkelt über’s Fenster zu hängen…