Year in Non-Review

2004 was unusually cool and dry for Northern California. I don't remember the temperature rising above 100^o for more than a day or two, if it ever got there at all. For me, that made it the second barely comfortable summer in a row in this area. I am thankful for the relief, as I really get sick when we have our usual 100^o+ summers in July and August.

The other side of cool and dry is that strange things happen to crops. The corn seemed stunted until mid-June. Around here, you can watch the corn grow once things heat up: several inches, even a foot, a day. That usually happens in late May or early June. This year it happened 2-3 weeks late.

Because of the delayed corn, I thought we would have a terrible tomato crop, but it looks like they harvested as usual - only a little late. Tomatoes go bad if it rains in August, due to fungus infections. Otherwise, I guess the farmers wait around until they're ready. That's a little surprising, because tomatoes are our biggest crop, using plants engineered to be part of a food factory. They are designed to produce fruit in just so many days from planting, which allows farmers to lease machinery and hire help for dates certain. No guessing allowed: California's farmers are not at the mercy of the elements; everything is calculated. (I hope it isn't surprising that local farmers were early adopters of computing. Silicon Valley used to be very pretty Plum Orchards, the Pruneyard.)

The weather had the usual frustrating effects on my farming attempts in our little patio. The red pomegranate started out good enough, but a cool spell caused it to drop its fruit. Then, it bloomed a second time, started some more fruit, and gradually lost all of that except one small fruit. The grapes were totally confused for the second year in a row, and only produced a few bunches. My evergreen peppers decided not to bloom until August. (On the other hand, we are still getting Serrano chiles now that we took the plants indoors.) The cucumbers started to produce, only to get messed up by unusual spells of very high winds. My prize gladiolas only produced 2 blooms all year. The Iglesias did nothing. All around, a disappointing year in my garden.

I was comforted by the Dahlias, which dutifully bloomed from July (a month late) through November (as usual). For unusual reasons, we now have a fish tank full of tropical fish - mostly Tetras - and they are doing fine. too. So are the plants in the fish tank. Maybe this is an omen of better things next year. But, I'm not taking a lot of chances: I just put out a bunch of daffodils and tulips that are sure-fire spring bloomers.

I have been mulling over whether to chop down some of the larger plants in our patio. There's the useless green pomegranate (they grow wild around here), and the rapidly growing avocado. I think they are just too big for our little space. Maybe the potted lemon and red pomegranate would do better dug into the soil. Also, it turns out water drained from the fish tank into the patio strip is a very good, natural source of nitrogen fertilizer. Maybe I have stumbled onto a better ecology.

I can do these things as a hobby. Imagine what some Indian farmer went through thousands of years ago in this area! By and large, California Indians didn't settle the Valley; they stuck to the mountains and the Coast. Oddly enough, those have been the preferred choices of Anglos as well. In the late Victorian era, the Sacramento Valley was made into an agriculture paradise by the Chinese and the railroads (mostly the old SP). The Central Valley was made over by Mexican laborers - Braceros - hired by Anglo owners (the SP and Chevron). Imported labor did all the work; Anglos made all the profit. Come to think of it, in more than a hundred years, things haven't changed that much.