I followed Bay Gardener Frank Gouin's advice about using compost and was rewarded. In the past, I was stingy about feeding my garlic and, come harvest, some of the bulbs weren’t much bigger than marbles. In November (a bit late), I planted German Porcelain, Musik, Spanish Roja and an Italian red variety in well-composted soil. On two or three occasions afterward I top-dressed with compost, digging in just a bit. In mid-June, I snipped off the flowers when the scapes bent over and...

You may have heard whispers about a haunted house somewhere behind Cape St. Claire Elementary School. If yours is one of the 2,500 families living in the Cape, you probably have. If your children heard the stories, they may have even headed up there for an adventure.     Fact is, a whole world existed — still exists — back there, through what used to be pastures, along a path that goes through vine-covered shrubs and small trees and emerges on the other side. If you...

Let no one think that real gardening is a bucolic and meditative occupation. It is an insatiable passion, like everything else to which a man gives his heart. –Karel âapek, 1931 There are gardeners — and then there are gardeners. People whose love, whose devotion to gardening runs so deep they can’t keep it to themselves. It’s more than a hobby. It’s a passion. They have to share it, teach it.     Because what they’re giving is something big:...