The Secret Garden

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Garlic grows best in cool weather. Ditto onions, another allium. Alliums do not like clay soil, by the way; they prefer loose, fluffy loam. When the tops are dry, mid-August to early September, uproot and sun-cure onions. Fall is a good time to plan next year's crop; it's hard to find robust onion seeds, but consider starting seeds indoors in January, because there are more varieties of onion seeds available than onion sets. Try a wide range, and you'll find out which ones like your garden and which ones keep all winter. It's an adventure, a gamble that can pay off, and you won't get hurt unless you plant twenty acres.

Don't bother looking for garlic seeds, however; they've been grown from bulbs for so many years that the seeds aren't viable.

In some parts of the country, the best time to harvest onions is August, and the best time to plant garlic is in the fall. Harvest onions, then plant garlic—sounds backwards, doesn't it? Beginners can start with softneck artichoke garlic, experiment with elephant garlic, and work their way up to hardneck rocamboles, the largecloved gourmet garlic also known as Italian Silverskin.

There are a few things to keep in mind about latter-season crops. You'll need to fertilize them, because the soil has been depleted of nutrients by the previous vegetables you're just now harvesting. Side-dress them with a balanced fertilizer after they're established. Kelp meal works fine, even on young plants, because it won't burn them. It's a good idea to rotate leafy and root crops; in other words, plant a root vegetable after a leafy one, and the other way around. This foils bugs and diseases, evidently, and each type of veggie gets nutrients the other kind didn't need.

It's depressing, but try not to forget that winter will come someday. When it does, especially in those places where it comes hard, you want your late- summer and fall crops to be the hardiest, sturdiest, fastest maturing cultivars you can find. And make it a point to find out which hardiness zone you grow in, because the climate of North America has been getting warmer or colder, depending on who you talk to. At one time, Florida was all zone 9, but someone noticed the hard freezes smacking the citrus orchards down there, and last I heard, the northern part is now zone 8, same as the Willamette Valley of Oregon. And temperatures can vary within a zone; moun tains and south-facing valleys may be in the same growing area, but they don't have the same growing conditions at all. So get a hardiness-zone map and see how your garden fits in. It's one thing to be conservative or daring when you plant, but another to be misinformed. When in doubt, use a soil thermometer.

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