The Secret Garden

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Mulch Natural (such as rotted straw) is always preferable to plastic though some people even use old carpet!

Twelve months of fresh vegetable harvest is possible most years in most maritime locations—if you know how. —U.S. Grant, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, Sasquatch Books, 1989.

This year, I'm trying an experiment with my most favored vegetable. I cut some tomato shoots in late July, placed them in a bucket of warm water all day, and transplanted them; not as many as I wanted, because joy saw me. But for you tomato addicts whose tomatoes all ripen at once, it might be something to try. I'll report the results later. ("Never mind the tomatoes," Joy advises.)

While researching gardening topics and working in our own garden as a novice, I have noticed one gardening fact that stands out above all the rest: Mulch is Good. Lots of mulch, generally, is better than a little, and miles above bare soil. Mulch protects the shallow roots of blueberries, improves the structure of the soil, keeps squash, melons, and pumpkins from contact with dirt, prevents wind and rain erosion in dry country, keeps the garden paths from becoming mud bogs in wet climates, controls soil temperature all year long, makes tomatoes bigger and insulates late plantings from freezing. Overall, natural mulch (such as rotted straw) is preferable to plastic (which is good, however, for some things, such as heating the soil in spring). The new porous textile fabrics are permeable to moisture and air, and easier on the back to apply. Some people, I'm told, even use old carpet. I would imagine that it must be frequently shampooed.

If you have a big, big garden, you can plant green manure crops like wooly pod vetch, alfalfa, fava beans, and a number of others, in fallow beds. These plants add organic matter, spread nitrogen, pull up nutrients from the subsoil, and, in some cases, suck up excess water (fava beans) and choke out weeds (vetch). Leguminous cover crops are particularly good at fixing nitrogen, Joy ,says. I didn't even know it was broken.

How To Grow Garlic

Break a head of garlic into several cloves. Plant them 4" apart, 1 inch deep, in rows 18" apart; point up, root down. A pound of garlic cloves should yield ten pounds of garlic bulbs, if everything goes perfectly. Garlic is shallow rooted, so weed and cultivate with care. You can interplant with cabbages and lettuce, but not legumes, according to the garlic experts; it won't hurt the garlic, but legumes won't thrive, even in soil where garlic was grown. Garlic repels insect pests, lovers, and vampires, but not the onion maggot (gray fly larva); burn all infested plants.

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