Growing garlic
Photo credit: AP/Kathy Willen
In my column today in The Baltimore Sun, I am urging gardeners to consider planting a handful of garlic bulbs when they are planting their daffodil and tulip bulbs. It is the perfect time of year!
Garlic planted between now and about Thanksgiving will grow roots now and put up shoots in the spring and be ready for harvest in July.
There are two kinds of garlic, soft neck and hard neck, and it refers to the stem that comes up through the middle of the clove.
Almost all supermarket garlic is a softneck variety. This is because softneck garlic is easier to grow and plant mechanically and also keeps longer than hardneck garlic. Softnecks have white papery skin and lots of cloves, often forming several layers around the central core. The flexible stalk also allows softneck garlic to be formed into garlic braids.
Hardneck garlics have a "scape" - stalk - which coils from the top. On the top of this scape grow a number of what are often called garlic flowers. Hardneck garlics have fewer, larger cloves than the softnecks. They also have less of an outer bulb wrapper, sometimes none at all. This makes them more sensitive and reduces their shelf life.
And, of course, there is elephant garlic, the source of much confusion. People buy elephant garlic because of its size. They also assume that it must be more strongly flavoured than ordinary garlic. In fact the opposite is true.
In terms of flavor, elephant garlic is to garlic what leeks are to onions. It is much less intense and sweeter.
Equipment, supplies and seeds? $940 
In my garden column in The Baltimore Sun today, 
Michael Tortorello of the New York Times is 
We here at Garden Variety have been hearing from vegetable gardeners that their pepper plants have been less than spectacular producers this season.
It's the middle of August, one of the slowest times of year. The newsroom is quieter, as people go on vacation rotation, and the vegetable garden is yielding little drama as my tomatoes and peppers and herbs quickly and quietly show themselves. With that mood in mind, some gardeners look inward. 
As my summer garden languishes, Susan is nudging me to look forward and ahead to fall. "Supplies for fall planting are coming in at 
Garden Variety readers: 
I'm a foodie first, gardener second. In fact, my love of food is the main reason I started to grow vegetables in the first place -- what better way to ensure tasty food than to grow it yourself?
After a week or so of neglect, I did some tending to my balcony garden yesterday, thinning my lettuces, spacing out my nasturtiums, and thinning out the parsley experiment I started weeks ago.
I went on vacation last week, to the sunny and warm climes of the Caribbean. I arranged for someone to come by and water my plants and my cat, but I still couldn't help but worry from time to time: How are my plants doing?
There was grumbling among the readers of Garden Variety when I posted a list of 
Tomatoes are easily the number one home vegetable garden crop. But it isn't because they are super easy. 
New York Times gardening and landscape writer Anne Raver, who gardens on her family farm in Carroll County, was on WYPR's Maryland in the Morning with Tom Hall Wednesday morning - her regular stop - and she contradicted advice I gave 
It caught my eye because it was such a pretty little plant, with its varigated white and lime green leaves. I stopped and picked it up because of its name: Baltimore Fish Pepper. I was sure that, like all heirlooms, the fish pepper had a story to tell.
Many of the readers who find us here at Garden Variety are looking for answers to the same question:
Like most vegetable gardeners I know, I accumulate seeds. When the catalogs start to arrive in January, I've been starved for months of anything green. The vibrant photos and mouthwatering descriptions of vegetables sucker me in. Before I know it, I've ordered a new variety of summer squash, despite the five perfectly good seed packets I have left over from previous seasons.
