Hi - I am in 6b and grow nearly year 'round now (whatever I can get away with!). You should start (now) planting things in trays to be placed in the beds when the tomatoes etc. are done. Suggestions would be chard, cress, broccoli, and lettuces of all varieties. You can be succession-planting your lettuces in small patches all Summer and into the Fall. Smoosh it in anywhere you have a small spot. Carrots can be planted BENEATH the tomatoes right now. Add more carrot seeds every 2 weeks in a different spot. Make it easy on yourself and do just 12 carrots under each tomato plant. Then when the tomato is dead snip it off at the soil line, do not yank up the root and disturb your carrots. Ditto beets, turnips and mustard. The mustard can be started in trays now if you wish, and do another batch in a month - it likes to mature in the cool weather. Turnips must get planted directly - again, find a small spot somewhere. All of the root veggies will keep nicely in the ground for gradual harvesting even after several frosts - cold improves the flavor. And don't forget radishes which only take 30 days to a harvest. Arugula is another great crop that loves very cool temperatures and you will be eating it 3 weeks after you plant - it comes up practically overnight. Start some "corn salad" also known as "mache" at the end of August and transplant when you have a spot ready. This produces smallish rosettes of elegant salad greens and it will re-sprout in the Spring. Don't forget spinach - start some in trays end of August and you should get a nice harvest by frost - also if you do not yank the root out the Bloomsdale variety will re-sprout in Spring too - so you get double duty. There's a lot more but this is just off my head at the moment. You will basically need to commit to starting seeds in July/August if you want to be ready with small transplants once those spaces are available.

I put potatoes in after garlic adding a bit of fertilizer beforehand. I do this every year and the garlic seems to purify the soil so the usual diseases which inflict potatoes don't seem to be a problem. It might be a bit late for peas, however, as they don't do well in hot weather and are much more likely to be bothered by powdery mildew and other diseases late in the year.

I plant just about any of my fall crops in the beds my garlic and onions grew in. Some of my favorites to follow garlc are cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, collards, lettuce and spinach. I've occasionally planted fall root crops like carrots, winter storage radishes and turnips but those usually go in my spring lettuce beds after it's all been harvested. It doesn't hurt to grow a short term cover crop like buckwheat in the bed before transplanting your fall crops. It keeps the soil weed free, makes a natural mulch to transplant into and adds organic matter back to the soil. Just make sure to cut the buckwheat down about the time it's in full bloom if you haven't already cut it and transplanted into it.

Hi Quirkpod, I have just pruned off my scapes per the instructions that came with my bulbs. This is a portion of an article I found online. Hope this helps! HARVESTING Many people make a big mistake at this point. They wait too long to harvest. Keeping garlic in the ground beyond a certain point does not result in bigger bulbs, but rather dried out, split and nearly useless ones. When to harvest? When the lower third to half of the leaves have turned brown, but there are still mostly green leaves higher on the plant, it's time to harvest. Others suggest harvesting when the hardneck scapes are standing straight up but before the pods containing the bulbils open up. You can always test dig one or two plants. You should be able to see the shape of the cloves beginning to bulge through the wrapper. On the High Plains, depending on the weather, harvest can begin as early as the first week of July. There is also a two to three week difference in the harvest dates of the several varieties. So watch you plants carefully. To get the bulb out of the ground, don't just try to pull them. The stalk will break. You must dig, using a pitchfork or the like in order to loosen the soil. Then you can lift the entire plant out of the ground. Don't let the bulb stay in the sun very long as it will sun scald, which reduces its quality. For our larger fields here at Yucca Ridge our very clever neighbor Bob has modified an ancient potato picker which actually does an excellent job at extracting the plants. (It really helps to move in next to a guy who likes to weld things and is so clever he makes you feel quite inferior, which of course you can't admit to him....... why am I getting into this?) Incidentally, many people wonder if the scapes should be cut in order to increase bulb size? For elephants the answer is definitely yes. For hardnecks, yes appears to be the correct answer also, although some varieties seem less affected by leaving the scape attached. Cut them generally just before the scape has fully extended (or the coils in the Rocamboles have started uncurling). When still young, the scapes are considered good eating by some.