IN THE GARDEN NEED A FRIEND? FIND SOMEONE WHO GARDENS.

Byline: JOSHUA SISKIN

If there is one pastime whose participants include only good, generous people, it would have to be gardening. A mean or nasty person would never be caught gardening. By contrast, if you should happen upon someone who is gardening and start a conversation, I guarantee that you will not be allowed to continue on your way before being pressed to accept a gift of garden-grown flowers, vegetables, herbs, bulbs or propagation slips.

No one illustrates the ``I garden, therefore I give'' principle better than Joe Siracusa. For years, the 83-year-old veteran of the entertainment industry has brought his own home-grown roses to supermarket checkers, post office clerks and service station cashiers. Whoever invented that slogan exhorting us to ``practice random acts of kindness'' must have taken their cue from Joe.

He called me to his house in the Melody Acres section of Tarzana to point out a cherry tomato plant that had grown 7 feet tall and wide. I was going to say ``show off'' the plant but that would have misrepresented Joe's humility. I am sure he showed me this rare specimen because he thought I would enjoy seeing and writing about it.

It is truly remarkable how plants will sometimes grow in an area as though they owned the spot, even though their arrival there may have happened almost by chance. The bed where the tomato is growing used to be home to a privet hedge, but Siracusa got tired of its predictability and removed it, scattering some old packaged seeds in its place. One of the cherry tomato seeds germinated, clambered up the adjacent east-facing facade and is now covered with flowers and fruit.

Accompanying the explosive and inspiring growth of the tomato is that of a golden acorn squash. The gigantic leaves of the squash serve as a living mulch for the tomato roots. By the way: If you have problems with tomato fruit cracking, it is on account of irregular soil moisture and fluctuating root temperature, variables that are best controlled by mulching the ground around your plants.

As opposed to zucchini, crookneck and pattypan summer squash, which are harvested when their skin is soft, acorn squash is harvested after it develops a tough skin that allows it to keep for many months. For this reason, acorn squash is also called winter squash, as are butternut and spaghetti squashes. Although their growing season is the summer, and they are harvested in fall, winter squashes are so-named because they can be stored and eaten throughout the winter season. Keep them dry, in a cool place, such as a garage or outdoor shed.

Siracusa showed me a dense planting of bronze-leafed, orange-flowered cannas growing in a side yard and asked me if I wanted one. Cannas comprise a group of plants that have suffered from undeserved neglect in the horticultural trade. They share this fate with irises, whose voluptuous flowers resemble canna blooms. Perhaps the fact that they grow from rhizomes and, in containers, bloom for a relatively short time, restricts their suitability for nursery or garden center display. There are dozens of canna, and hundreds of iris, varieties readily available through Internet and mail-order sources. For starters, go to bloomingbulb.com.

In the Valley, there is no better plant selection for a side yard planting than Canna. Its foliage burns up in too much sun, but the kind of sheltered exposure provided by a side yard - bright light without direct sun - removes the stress of hotter locations. Canna, which blooms in white, pink, yellow, salmon, orange and red, will flower from spring to fall.