The Fink Farm Dirt

All keyboard and no dirt makes Jill a very dull girl indeed! I've burrowed into my gardening bag and liberated the seeds I harvested last summer on my morning dog walks. Little twists and packets of newsprint enclosing wilted blossoms and loose seeds: "8 ft hollyhock" is the scrawled ballpoint label on one packet; "rasp. small carnations"; and "mixed bachelor buttons." Straw spears, woodland confetti, flattened blossoms -- all enfolding the magic of botany and blossoms. Of the three of us, I think I'm the one who most craves flowers.  Flowers were what we grew in the gardens of my childhood: hollyhocks, my father's favorites; zinnias, marigolds and nasturtiums, the ever reliables; and bachelor buttons, which are bouquets within a single blossom. Most of our first year efforts at flowers were a bust. Ancient gerbera seeds -- a luncheon favor that Karen had saved for years -- retired in the soil. The marigolds we planted to keep bugs off ...

This may be a form of profiling, but I always had the image of composting vegetable gardners as being of the anti-consumerism, recycle and simplify-simplify-simplify persuasion. But in the space of six weeks, our gardening equipment has expanded in size, type and sophistication. We were given a baby tiller; a big, stacking compost bin; and a chipper. We found a deal on a folding, tough nylon wheel barrow. We bought the industrial pooper scouper to clean up after our dogs and the neighborhood cats who think of our garden as a the Kohler of the earth. Kate macerated 75% of the garden plot, pausing long enough to transplant a volunteer tomato plant. She has the BunnyLuv waste straw carefully piled as mulch. She's been fondling saw blades and looking up at the termite infested branches of a tree leaning over Karen's garage. The longer she looks the more termite and rot infested the tree becomes and the more necessary it is going to be for her to climb up on the roof of the...

The first year we tilled Fink Farms, I input into my iCalendar all the planting dates and when the first harvest could be expected according to the seed packets. Nothing grew as expected. Sowed seeds eschewed seeking the sun. Dozens of seeds produced two sprouts. Sprouts moped about unresponsive to their seed package PR. This is Southern California.  Planting "after the last frost" is not a functional instruction. Heat settles in like a yenta for a cup of tea and gossip. [We're still trying to grow cabbages, which those in the know call "cool weather" plants.] Gardening feels like a race against the sun at this time of year. My potting soil has been long gone.  My seedling pans like empty.  And the guilt mounts . . .

Bees are the unthanked field help of a garden. Many people -- including my fellow gardener, Karen -- can't stand them and don't want plants that attract them in a garden. On a recent dog walk, I saw a swarm of bees. It was an awesome sight. One bee is one thing, hundreds are something else. Then this came across the potting bench: "Unlike honey bees, Mason Bees create nests in hollow spaces like reeds and holes in wood and 'pad' them, as their name suggests, with mud from the surrounding garden.  Because mason bees will settle in and colonize in a friendly environment, you can encourage them by providing them a pre-built home like the Blue Orchard Mason Bee Nest available at High Country Gardens ." The nest looks like a piece of clay pipe with straws inside.  It has a natural, functional look that would go well in any garden.

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...

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...