I'm also in the Bay Area, a bit farther north I think because our summer highs are similar but our winter lows are a bit lower. My favorite plum is the Elephant Heart, bred by Luther Burbank in this area so it does well here. I just had my first off of my new tree and it was delicious and definitely an eating over the sink variety. I also have a Santa Rosa plum, which is smaller and not quite as juicy but very flavorful and reliably productive. If you want to try multiple trees in one hole I suggest doing it with plums and pluots, because there are so many good varieties and a lot of them yield better with cross pollination. I love my Pink Pearl apple tree, I just harvested the first batch to make into pies and my friends and family are eagerly anticipating them. They are a bit too tart for my taste for fresh eating, but the best pie apples I've ever used. I second the recommendation for a Meyer Lemon, I wouldn't be without one. Very useful fruit, fragrant flowers, and they're evergreen. Beware bramble fruits! Contain the roots or they will take over your yard. I'm not certain how to ensure the longest harvest, the easiest way would probably be to get a variety of summer bearing and fall bearing cultivars. Also, you should have some strawberries because they are relatively easy to grow and they start bearing sooner than most fruiting plants. Depending on how cold your area gets you will probably have to protect the avocados and tropicals, and there might be issues with lack of summer heat for ripening. You might want to contact the California Rare Fruit Growers for advice, or just look around to see if others have had success with those plants in your area. I know it can be done, there's a guy locally who grows pineapples, but it's a lot of work for a small harvest. Good luck on your project, I hope you have bounteous harvests in the years to come!

Sisyrinchium is a nice little grassy plant whose foliage looks like a miniature iris. It is a native. (Blue Eyed Grass) Part shade. One of my favs for edging or filling in is Iberis (Candytuft). Nicer than alyssum, evergreen. Will grow in sun or part shade. Cardamon ginger is a nice small ginger for shade. I think it might be hardy in your area, it hardly died back at all for me. Doesn't bloom outside the tropics, but the foliage smells good. Nell

Lavender is also a great blooming medicinal, though I have trouble keeping them looking like a neat mound. The Spanish lavender in particular has nice flowers. California poppy will reseed here and come back year after year. Fennel, anise, and dill are annuals but liked by butterflies. Lovage is a perennial or biennial. If you have room for vines you can plant the runner bean, which has red flowers that attract hummingbirds, and beans that can be eaten as snaps when young or as shellies when mature. Some perennial medicinal vines include Schizandra chinese, Polygonum multiflorum (Fo Ti or Ho Shu Wu), and Hops, Humulus. Tough perennials- Lady's Mantle, Alchemilla, will reseed freely, very freely, and can be used as a tea, as can Achillea millefolium (yarrow). The PNW has lots of "weed" medicinals too, like Self-heal, Prunella, which has been developed into named varieties; Cleavers; Ribwort Plantain; Stinging Nettle; Red Clover; even the lowly dandelion. Of course they grow and multiply like weeds.:-) Here is a link I googled, in Seattle. Here is a link that might be useful: Butterfly herb garden

Wow, thanks very much everyone for your very substantive comments and your advice. So, although I hadn't said so, was planning to grow at least a couple of tried-and-true varieties along with the "weird" ones I've chosen from Baker Creek. But considering the cautionary comments about putting all my tomatoes in a single basket, maybe I'll grow a couple more of the reliables and save a couple of the experimentals for next year. I'm really not too concerned about the labor requred, because I'll only be growing 8-10 plants in total. AND I fully intend to "pamper" all of them. I add a several-inch layer of compost in my garden every spring before planting, and add a little more at points later in the growing season. I use no addtional fertilizers except for a sprinking of GardenTone around each plant. All of my tomatoes are caged or staked, depending upon their habit (one of the reasons I was asking about the relative vigor of the varieties' growth). I've been pretty successful with these methods in the past. I also don't expect the productivity I've seen with the regionally popular varieities. But, as I commented earlier, there are a number of farmers' markets here that offer the fruit of locally-grown varieties at very reasonable. cost, amd I'm not too bothered by the prospect of having to support my local farmers if my yield comes up short. And I'm looking forward to more exiting colors and forms that might compensate for the lower yield. But an 80% reduction in yield, if it were to be that high, would be disappointing. So maybe I'll start some heldover seeds of varieties I grew successfully last year, and save a few of the Baker Creek varieties for next. Schule, I'm glad to hear your opinions about Baker Creek, as I felt I was taking a bit of a risk with this company. (I'd always ordered from Johnny's in the past for varieties I've grown from seed.) The Baker Creek catalog is so stunning, and their photos and descriptions so enticing, that it has occurred to me even before I place an order that I might be succumbing to hyperbolic representations. But I did read dozens of company reviews and most were quite positive, so I decided to give them a try. I also read hundreds of their customers' reviews about particular varieties they offer before I made my selections. The Green Vernissage was one of the "free seed" varieties they sent with my order, and it is one that I'll try to grow. One thing I've noticed here on the Growing Tomatoes forum is that quite often there's a lot of disagreement concerning the flavor of a given variety. I realize that climate, soil and other environmental factors have an effect on flavor, as does one's own taste receptors. Riesentraube is one example of contested flavor merit (even here within this thread). I believe the variety was locally developed here in Pennsylvania, and grown and liked by Pennsylvania Germans (Pennsylvania Dutch), so I'm going to gamble that it's suitable for my own Pennsylvania garden conditions and has at least a fair chance of yielding a flavorful fruit. It's interesting that you mention the kumquat series, Tarolli. I was unaware of its poor reputation before I ordered seeds for Indigo Kumquat last year, but when I did learn of it, I decided to give the kumquat a try anyway. Well, it turned out to be the outstanding star performer of last year's garden, superior in every way to any cherry-size tomato I'd ever grown before -- rich and fruity flavor, hyperproductive, the very last to succumb to end-of-season diseases by a full month, and gorgeous! It's the only one on my list above that I've grown before, and I'll definitely be planting it again this year. It's also very vigorous, by the way -- tall and sprawling. So, dunno. I guess one needs to consider assessments concerning flavor (as well as, to a lesser extent, productivity and disease resistance) as subject to variability. Or be able to trial hundreds of varieties as you and Schule and others here have done! I didn't know that Celebrity was determinate, though. That does explain why production fell off a lot after midseason. Thanks again, everyone. Best of luck with the upcoming season. I'm looking forward to reports from you about how your plants are doing, and how those tomatoes taste! ;)