Tried & TRUE

A gardener puts years of hard-won planting lessons to the test in his California backyard.

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Kyle Hagerty is undeterred by failure. When he started gardening 20-some years ago, his first edible crops—two tomato plants—ended in disaster: “The deer got to them before I could,” he remembers. These days, his 6,500-square-foot home garden in Sacramento shows off all he’s learned since then—like never planting fruit trees along a fence (“a total squirrel highway,” he calls it) and practicing crop rotation to manage nutrient uptake and prevent pests.

Kyle Hagerty is something of a tomato obsessive: He grows around 20 types in his garden, using DIY metal trellises, opposite, for support. Through trial and error, he's settled on some favorites: 'Sungreen', a cherry tomato that's green when ripe, and 'Striped German', whose fruits can weigh up to 2½ pounds each. He's also a fan of chiles, particularly 'Flaming Flare', a mediumspicy Fresno variety, and 'Carmen', a highperforming sweet type.