First Tomato Sighting of the Season

Our first green tomato is visible under the leaves inside the tomato cage.

It always amazes me how quickly and dramatically a gardener can go from impatient waiting to an avalanche of harvest.

Tomatoes especially arrive as genteel newcomers and grow into sprawling monsters. When the first crop of tomatoes start greening up, it seems almost scandalous to pick them for fried green tomatoes (or baked, which we discovered we preferred last year.

When they start turning red, there's no end to them. Until you start trying to can them or turn them into sauce. Then it seems as if we should have just plowed up the entire backyard and planted "Fink Tomato Farms."

This year, I've promised myself that I'm going to scout out the perfect tomato sauce recipe.

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Know Your Soil For Best Garden Results

I've always taken soil for granted. It was there. You put seeds into it. You put water on it. Plants grow and produce flowers, fruit or vegetables. Gayle Weinstein, author of Xeriscape Handbook; A How-To Guide to Natural, Resource-Wise Gardening , takes a different view: “Soil . . . acts as a highway between life and death, land and atmosphere, plants and animals.” It stores water, air and nutrients and makes it possible for an exchange of elements and chemical reactions to occur, she adds. She describes soil as being animal, vegetable and mineral combined. Here are six tests Gayle recommends for getting to know your soil. Grab a shovel and a quart jar. Dig up two cups of dry soil two-to-six inches deep from the areas you want to test. Gather a glass of water, dish washing detergent and paper towels. A soil pH kit, a meter or litmus paper will be needed for the final test.

Away With Holey Leaves: Offing the Pests

I can't stand the tell-tale signs of garden pests: the leaves with holes, the failure to thrive. I believe in early assault with organic deterrents. Kate has great faith in plants' commitment to survive. She considers holes in leaves to be a mere cosmetic blemish. Like politics and religion, getting rid of pests in a garden is sure to cause a community donnybrook (or at least rapid words over ice water in the lounge chairs). To do organic warfare against pests means using one or more of these tools:

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.

The Fink Farm Dirt

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