The Fink Farm Dirt

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...

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. ...

Four years ago, we grew the Godzilla of tomato vines. We couldn’t stake it up high enough or fast enough to keep up with its growth. It was a productive plant and produced fabulous tomatoes. But its branches were so thick we could barely reach in to grab the ripe ones without destroying the green ones. And we won’t even discuss the ones that were out reach inside the dark maw of this behemoth. I swore after trying to tame that plant, I would learn to prune. And now, nearly two months after planting our pony packs of cherry and Roma tomatoes, we’ve done it! We’ve pruned! Probably not enough and probably too late, but at long last I think I understand what needs to be removed: the suckers, the sprouting leaves that grow in the crotches (axils, if you want to be technical) between the leaves and the main stem. I started pinching and clipping unsure if I was getting a sucker, a branch or a flower bud. But the more hands on time I spent with the plant, the clearer the suckers were to me. ...

In every garden, there are two types of plants: the ones you planted and the ones that just jump out of the dirt and yell, “Surprise!” The latter leave you wondering, “What IS that?” It might be a weed, a tree seedling, or something that fell into the dirt from last season’s plantings and germinated. It might have been dropped in via wild bird poop, carried on the fur of a rabbit, a possum, a cat or a mouse — or blown in on the wind.

Last summer’s tumbling tower of tomatoes has made me rethink the standard tomato cage.  They are great for determinate tomatoes that grow like shrubs. They are useless for indeterminant tomatoes that spread out like a thoroughbred on the home stretch. A search for alternatives led me to discover these ideas: Los Angeles landscape architect Rhett Beavers takes standard tomato cages and stacks them wide-end to wide-end with a central bamboo support. He then plants the seedlings deep in a layer of compost so they develop deep roots along the stem to support the plant.   Ivette Soler, author of The Edible Front Yard and blogger at thegerminatrix.com , makes her own tomato cages out of rebar and concrete reinforcing mesh. For those not so willing to do creative construction, she recommends tomato ladders from Gardener’s Supply. These are three upright stakes connected at seven points with a rounded, v-shaped horizontal form that protects the plant’s main stem. Each ladde...

Nothing spells summer to me like f-l-o-w-e-r-s. Next to sprouting carrot tops and growing sweet potatoes in a jar of water, few garden plants are as rewarding as zinnias, marigolds and cosmos. They don't have many requirements to thrive and they produce such glorious blossoms.

We worried about when to harvest the butternut squash. There's no greening, yellowing, reddening, deepening or other particular sign of ripeness once it reaches a certain size.  Google Extension Service suggested harvesting before the first frost.  In California, that would be the day before Never. In Nature's wisdom, the plants told us. The huge green vines that had sprung up on their own, just turned brown and shrank back on their own, leaving six heavy butternut squashes dangling from their red and yellow net bags. (We'd strung them up to keep them away from the wetness of the earth and the mouths of the snails.) We cut them down and divided the harvest. My first butternut squash, I simply seeded, roasted and scraped the flesh from the shell. Butternut is bland, a lovely gold color, but -- yawn -- not much flavor.  But it was fresh and home grown. That imparts something wonderful to it, if you have the stillness and focus to be aware. I have a recipe for r...

Our great tomato plant -- great in productivity, great in flavor, great in height -- has succumbed to gravity. Fortunately, it appears to have been a gentle collapse of the bamboo supports rather than a stem-snapping disaster. We're still harvesting tomatoes from it. During the week, we harvested enough to make another batch of L.A.  DWP-dried tomatoes. But we also got a great tip from Dorothy Reinhold, the shockingly talented creator of Shockingly Delicious about roasting and preserving tomatoes using a recipe from heartbeetkitchen.com.   Trying that recipe is definitely in our future -- if we can squeeze enough tomatoes out before our prize plant curls up its roots and dies. This weekend harvesting required reaching deep into the dark unknown between the stems. Tomato vines have prickles! And who knows what might be lurking down in there . . . I'm becoming more and more convinced that fences are the best way to go with tomatoes, but obviously they'll have to be w...

With our tomato harvest coming in fast, we were faced with the need to: Cultivate an untiring passion for tomato-centric meals; Distribute the harvest to friends; or Find a preservation method. This usually means canning (or cooking and canning, if you want tomato sauce or stewed tomatoes), which doesn't have a lot of appeal on hot days. Several years ago we did try canning. Tomato canning is a good starting place for a beginner because the acid in the tomatoes helps prevent botulism, so you don't have to worry quite so much about wiping out a dinner party with home-canned tomatoes. As I recall, a neighbor had a bumper crop of San Marzanos. They did their own canning and distributed the overflow to friends.  I loved the name. "San Marzano" just rolls off your tongue -- like, well like Italian with a really good accent.  It's just such a pasta-ready name. Until then, the tomatoes I knew were anonymous as soon as the Magic Marker washed off the ...

One day we were congratulating ourselves on our tomato harvest, and it seemed like the next minute the plants were turning brown and dying. To the best of our ability to discern (with the help of the Google Extension Service) , we have aphids. We noticed some dark colored insects flying around initially.   From Natural Living , I learned that of the more than 4,000 species of aphids, about 250 are a danger to crops. Sometimes called plant lice, these pests pierce the stems of plants to suck out nutrient-rich sap. In the process, they spread viruses and secrete a fluid that attracts sooty molds that can cover a plant's leaves and block the sun. The viruses they carry can kill potatoes, citrus fruits and grains. There was some good news in this article -- and some bad news. There are a number of things you can do to deter or get rid of them -- but some don't work in a water-starved area and others we've tried and we still have an infestation. Here were the suggestions:...

This summer, the mottled umbrella-like leaves of an butternut squash plant have popped up on the west end of Fink Farms. It's interesting since we never planted butternut squash. In fact, we have never had butternut squash in the farm. But we have composted butternut squash remains, and we have had other volunteer plants from using compost. (The ever-helpful Google Extension Service offered up an anecdote about a man who scattered his rich homemade compost over his front yard -- and ended up with butternut squashes shading his St. Augustine grass. True? You tell me . . . ) It's hard to keep a compost pile running hot when you're feeding it out of one and a quarter kitchens. (Karen is the one because she just has to take a short walk from her kitchen to the compost pile; I'm the quarter, because composting for me requires collecting decaying veggies, putting it in my car and driving it over to Karen's. For awhile, it got to be such a problem that I was freez...

When you're saving water, the first step is to get the water where it's needed in the most direct way possible. No sprinkler heads rising like swans in a ballet to spew water 18-inches above the ground, splashing sidewalks and gutters. No sprinklers nodding back and forth sending sprays of water as tall as a child. Nope, it's irrigation dripping directly at the base of a stem or water bubbling at dirt-level. You can't get much more direct than an olla (pronounced oy-ya ). In the irrigation world, an olla is a clay pot, usually with a round bottom and a longish thin neck that is planted in the dirt next to plants that need water.  The dirt is mounded around the pot so that only the end of the neck shows. Water is poured into the opening to fill the buried pot. The clay absorbs water that in turn is absorbed by the dry earth surrounding it.  The plant gets a slow steady supply of water. Because the pot is buried, there's little exposure to the air and evaporatio...

By August, our tomato plants are raging tyrants, tumbling out of their cages, colonizing every square foot they can reach, scrabbling for more land, more sun, more water, so dense you can barely reach in to check a cluster for ripeness. They are definitely producing; but we lose so many in the thicket of branches. We can't reach the ripe ones without knocking half a dozen off their stems. This year, we had three tomato plants: one hasn't thrived, although the bugs on it did; one bushy plant that still has colonial aspirations; and one that is well over six-feet tall and making a mockery of its bamboo tripod. Yes, I've heard of pruning -- I just don't know how it's done. With tomato plants it always seemed oxymoronic:  first, you nurture the tiny little things; then, you want all the tomatoes you can possibly get as they flower and bud; and finally, you never want to see another tomato in your life and definitely don't want to be fiddling in the brambles....

We've always struggled to grow simple things like carrots and radishes.  Children are given these seeds as an introduction to gardening because it's so easy to succeed with them. But we never succeed. For one thing, we have so many tree roots in our garden plot that long-rooted vegetables like carrots grow into shapes like tuning forks or bad plumbing. For another, we're eager and start pulling them up to see if they are done yet. They never thrive after that. This week, coming back to the garden after a long, long hiatus, we started clearing out the overgrowth and discovered some forgotten veggies that we planted long, long ago. In case you're wondering, that beet-like root and its companions in the photo are different kinds of radishes.  Not a beet among them. I suspect they are exotic rainbow and watermelon radishes. We couldn't harvest without tasting. Woody -- I expected woody from such a big, old radish, but it wasn't particularly. The flav...

The thought of an orderly, scented kitchen garden like I've seen at The Huntington Gardens or in books is so appealing.  Ranks of herbs -- thyme, oregano, basil and parsley -- lining neat pathways in easy reach for cutting. A garden right outside the kitchen when you need a pinch of marjoram for a sauce . . . At Fink Farms, it never works out like that.  Unruly bunches of herbs grow into each other, or bolt or shrivel in the sun without water.  When we first started the farm, we were growing herbs in the main garden with the tomatoes, and beans and lettuce greens. I decided to set up a separate herb area along the cinder block wall, first because of squabbles about what should go where between the then-three partners and, secondly, because I'd read that herbs like adverse conditions.  Since we were composting up the main garden, I thought perhaps the herbs would do better in less rich ground. There were problems with that thinking: There probably isn't enoug...

Maybe it's the water restrictions.  Maybe it's the shaky economy. Dotted through our neighborhood are houses where lawns have been replaced by vegetable gardens. According to Time magazine , the trend was sowed in the summer of 2005 by Los Angeles architect Fritz Haeg. He saw the manicured front lawn as an American icon that cut across politics, social classes and economics.  But he also saw it as out of date.