The Fink Farm Dirt

When you have three people working the same garden, you're bound to have a clash of styles. I like having a plan.  I have a yet-to-be-realized fantasy that I will one day have a visually pleasing garden with plants arranged to allow variations in scale and color. A delight with every step and change of perspective. Kate was more of a "I want to plant this, here now" type of gardener. A bunch of green onions at Ralphs could send her to Sego's for a flat of onion bulbs to plant. Turn your back on the garden for a weekend, and you'd come back to a salsa garden Kate planted in an organic patch of garden that I had imagined having a different destiny. One year I dusted off my copy of Square Foot Gardening . Kate was enthusiastic about the concept, but suggested that we could "just eyeball it" instead of laying out lines for each foot mark. And eyeball it, she did. None of the rest of us saw it quite the way she did -- and perhaps she didn't see it ...

Two years have gone by and we've scarcely stuck a trowel into dirt. I blame these fallow periods on California's lack of seasons. It's even worse with a four-year-old drought on. Planting time seems to begin earlier and earlier and there's always something else to grab our attention. The oregano, thyme and mint that we moved away from the main vegetable plot are still going. There are brown paper bags hanging from my balcony with drying herbs. They should be ready to put into jars tomorrow. The biggest challenge is harvesting before they go to flower. The mint died off and has now come back.  It's indestructible, it seems. It makes wonderful tea when added fresh to black tea.  We need to work harder on summer recipes that use mint with yogurt, quinoa or cucumbers.  Perhaps with the Fourth of July holiday coming up we can spotlight some dishes featuring mint. All that's left in the main vegetable patch is a tenacious yellow chard. We cleared away the k...

Last year was a fallow one for us, but new things are sprouting in the garden in 2013. We rearranged the garden, for starters. While we hardly have an over-cultivated plantation, we like to plant our regular favorites in different places each year. Our plot gets intense sun from mid-morning until nearly 7 p.m. We've shifted our bean trellis so that it cuts across the garden diagonally.  We've added a new and colorful knitted trellis for growing beans on.  We're hoping that will provide a little bit more shade or filtered sun across the hours of the day. Our most ambitious addition is an herb garden. Seeds have been started and purchased plants have even been transplanted to larger pots.  The gardener is clearing lawn from a strip along the western cinder block wall. Karen has started exploring border devices to see the plot off and provide a little bit more raised bedding. I've been clipping the oregano we had more often.  I've also trimmed the thyme I purchas...

Several of us are remembering a neighbor who recently passed away, Stephan Megerdichian Sahaki, with a donation to the Los Angeles Master Gardener program. Mr. Megerdichian loved to garden.  In Iran, where he lived until the 1990s, he had rose bushes. In Sherman Oaks, his last home, he had geraniums happily tumbling through the railings of his balcony to brighten the streetscape. It is a tradition in his culture to send huge bouquets of flowers for display at the funeral and the grave. Forgive us, but we have chosen to make a gift in his name to a program that will keep blooming forever. Master Gardeners in Service to the Community The Master Gardener program is part of the University of California Cooperative Extension program for Los Angeles County. Offered every spring, the Master Gardener Volunteer Training Program provides intense gardening training to enable volunteers to help low-income residents grow their own food.  They learn about organic gardening, growing vegeta...

Sweet peas bloom in my birth month (April) -- and I love them. I love the soft colors, the complex flowers, the scent and the seasonality. This year, when someone asked me for a birthday present idea, I said, "How about some sweet peas?" I was standing in a farmer's market staring at buckets of bundled blossoms. A bouquet of sweet peas was what I had in mind. The delivered gift was a half dozen sweet pea plants tightly rolled in newspaper pots. I just got them planted in the garden at the edges of the knitted trellis. They'll be fighting onions for ground space.  We don't have the soaker hoses set up yet so they will be at the mercy of whoever mans the watering can. Will they bloom this late? Do they make edible legumes?

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.

i've always been crazy about arugula.  The peppery tingle it gives your tongue is as far from iceberg lettuce as it gets.  Discovering it in chi-chi restaurants, I always envisioned it as a hot house plant. On a recent trip to Italy, it was everywhere. Rocket, roquette, rugula and rucola -- it's all arugula. Scientifically, it's called Eruca Sativa .  Not surprisingly, it's a member of the mustard family. It natively ranges the boundaries of the Mediterranean from Portugal and Morrocco to Lebanon and Turkey. The nutritional data for arugula is astounding: 2.5 calories for a half-cup serving!! with high doses of vitamins A and C, folate, phosphorus, magnesium, calcium and potassium to boot. The Romans grew arugula both for its leaves and its seeds.  They used the seed to flavor oil and empower aphrodisiacs.  It was a convention of Roman meals to offer a salad of greens such as arugula, romaine, chicory, mallow or lavender seasoned with a cheese sauce. ...