Order in the Garden

The first year that Fink Farm was in operation, we devoured Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening. A 10-foot by 12-foot plot isn't much. We pegged off one-foot measures on two adjoining sides, and rolled some pebbled pavers into position to give us places to stand amongst our soon to be thriving garden.

But then things started spinning out of alignment.

For starters, it became clear that running string across the dirt in one-foot increments was going to create one nasty arrangement for digging on any scale at all. All I could envision was a broken ankle from hopping over all that string.

We switched to planting only a few of each type of plant and avoiding plants like zucchini or pumpkins that aggressively take over the landscape.

Mel's method is a brilliant way to get around some of my most hated gardening tasks. For example, it never made sense to me to plant seeds and then have to thin and waste seedlings when they germinated. I also always hated having to narrow my planting choices down to one or two items that filled up the whole garden.

While our "squares" don't have four corners -- in fact, we're heading back into rows for some reason -- we can get a fair amount of different things into the garden: lettuces, basil, beans, butternut squash, onions, cabbages, chives, parsley and chard. We also never had the overproduction problem that many home gardens suffer from.

Our tomatoes were the wildest of what we planted. We had enough to have two rounds of fried/baked green tomatoes and some tomatoes for eating and canning. We had several rounds of pesto making, in which we were profligate in our use of basil and garlic.

I'm hoping this year we can begin to look at some vertical growing. That's another of Mel's recommendations for intensive gardening.

Considering how easy it is to get behind in watering and weeding, not to mention harvesting and eating from the garden, I can't imagine how we could manage a bigger plot.

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Heirloom recipes for garden harvest

Gardeners are always talking about heirloom plants: grown year after year by generation after generation from seeds taken from each year's harvest . I think heirloom recipes are just as important and just as much fun. The first bite of my mother's strawberry shortcake recipe, takes me back years to the lingering light of a summer day in northeastern Oklahoma with the family around the dining room table enjoying strawberries with whipped cream and flaky, barely sweet biscuits. So, in that spirit, I'm offering some heirloom recipes. Some are made from plants we grow at Fink Farms, and some not. Some are old recipes from friends and family. Some are simply good recipes enjoyed summer after summer. Green Tomato Pie by Jo Ann (Floerke) Morrison (1931-1996) This recipe was contributed by my friend Cliff Morrison, whose mother made this pie. 1 cup brown sugar ¼ c white sugar 4 tablespoons flour 3 tablespoons butter 6 to 8 small green tomatoes, thinly sliced 1 lemon, quartered...

Determinate vs indeterminate: why does it matter?

When Karen and I planted our 2020 garden, we made the one mistake you never want to make with tomatoes: we didn't check whether the plants we bought were determinant or indeterminate. Our assumption that the cherry tomato plants would be small (small tomatoes means small plant, right?) and the romas would be big, was 180 degrees wrong. The Great Green Goddess of Gardening was on our side, however. Karen has been able to stake up the indeterminate cherry tomatoes -- and the determinate romas have plenty of string fencing to grow on. I've been asked to write more about the differences between indeterminate and determinant tomato plants. Since I clearly needed to review, I'm glad to do so. In simple terms, determinate plants are like bushes or shrubs; indeterminate plants are like trees. Determinate plants are genetically set to grow to a certain size and stop. Indeterminate plants will keep producing stems, leaves and fruit as long as they get enough water, light and warmth. ...

From the Composting Pit

As Thomas Friedman dourly notes in Hot, Flat and Crowded , the eco/green movement is less a movement than it is a block party. Karen and I (Jeannette) drifted into the party a few years ago when we dipped our toes into composting. We went to a Department of Public Works composting workshop at Griffith Park, which was a hilarious presentation with an interesting audience. Thinking that it was better to give it a try before we sunk a lot of money into an official composter, we purchased two black garbage cans and spare utility knife blades. We cut the bottoms out of the cans and cut triangular holes all around the sides (triangles were the easiest shape to cut). We dug two holes in her yard utility area and put the open ended cans into the dirt. Voila, a duet of composting. Composting is challenging when it's fed from from the kitchens of two single women. Karen can walk her compost out the back door. I collect mine in a lovely can with charcoal filters in its lid on m...

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