The Fink Farm Dirt

I annually write the date for Tomatomania! in my calendar. Something always comes up that keeps me from going. But this year was different. Karen and I drove over to Tapia Brothers and checked out the riches. According to the website, Tomatomania! is what the New York Times calls "the tomato freaks' Woodstock." It started in the early 90s at Hortus, a trend-setting nursery in Pasadena, CA, which regretfully closed in 2001, with classes, sales, "tomato tasting and impromptu social gatherings at nurseries and garden destinations across the state." So instead of buying our usual pony pack of tomato plants from a standard chain nursery, we wandered the aisles looking at the wild and wonderful heirlooms -- Mortgage Lifters, Black Krims, Cherokee Purples, yellow ones, striped ones, deep purple nearly black ones.   We selected three indeterminate tomatoes and a couple of determinate ones. By the end of the weekend, we had the tomato trellis hung and the tomatoes plant...

Swiss chard are the only vegetables that have the same color P-O-W as flowers. I just love the brilliance of red chard. Our chard was a slow starter. While the cauliflowers and Brussels sprouts jumped up from the ground, the chard barely grew for the longest time.  Now we're nearing harvest and the question is what can we do with it? I get stymied about how to fix it. I just found a wonderful sounding "New York Times Cooking" recipe for Swiss Chard Slab Pie. Essentially, it's two layers of dough with a chard, onion, white wine and sour cream layer between.  The edges are crimped, the top slitted and washed with egg whites, then baked for 50 to 55 minutes.

We're city girls.  We'll admit it. We've progressed beyond bagging our Brussels sprouts from the bin at the local chain grocery store. We've been to the local farmers market. We know Brussels sprouts grow on a long stalk. And that's what we expected when we planted them last November.

We've had a couple of glorious weeks of sunshine that caused the cauliflowers to race right into the bolting stage. They've all been harvested and eaten.  We're just waiting for some spare time to take out the leaves and stems to make room for something new in the garden. Karen and I have slightly different perspectives on what to plant: she likes novelty -- rainbow or watermelon radishes or purple or gold cauliflower; I'm more of a traditionalist; the novelty varieties never seem to turn out as well as the originals.

Actually, the adventure took root a year ago in a 10-foot by 12-foot plot in Karen's backyard. Karen and I (Jeannette) have spent a couple of years nurturing a pair of recalcitrant DIY compost bins, always believing that one day we'd move the compost over to the plot and start a garden. Karen had been intensively cultivating yarrow in the plot. She spent a spring digging and amending the plot. We'd both planted a few things that hadn't survived snails, summer heat and erratic watering. But last year, the whole thing came together. Karen's gardener rototilled it.  Kate, Karen and I dug up wandering yucca plant and magnolia tree roots. We added steer manure and a variety of soil amendments as they tickled our fancies. Soon we had a tomato jungle, climbing beans, Turkish eggplants, mutant carrots and three radishes. Until we put in nasturtiums and zinnias, all efforts at flowers failed.  (Perhaps decades old seeds aren't viable . . . ).  Our most productive pla...