Planting Bunching Onions

I couldn't believe how beautiful it was this morning. So of course I was out planting again. Up this time was the bunching onions.

I tend to grow these not in blocks but just in flat takeout containers. They don't need a huge depth of soil. And they are just fine with their roots being disturbed. So they don't really need to be treated all that well. I do try to tease out their roots without breaking, but I'm not always successful. I planted them in a row with a space of about 1-2 inches. I planted them about two inches deeper than the grew in the container. This will give them a long white root part, but still they will have lots of green.

You would think that one little row is not all that slow to do, but I put the rest of the bed together too. This bed is getting a patchwork of plants. Beans will take the end foot. So I built a trellis for them. Chard will have one half of the bed so I put together the row cover for that. I made an extra wide one so it could be tall, but it turns out the normal width would have been fine - just barely. I cut off the excess and only left 4" of the part I sewed on. I'll have to remember that for next year. As you can see the onions get a strip down the other side from the chard. And the rows on either side will get lettuce. I'll be rotating this lettuce bed throughout the year. I'll start new plants every three weeks, so the plants will have nine weeks to grow before they have to get taken out for the next set. Or at least that is the plan. I have a tendency to miss my sowing dates. This year I'm putting them on my calendar to try not to miss them.

With that bed planted up there are only two beds left that haven't been touched at all. You can see the bed with the silver tarp in it, just past the white row cover on the ground. Well that had my bamboo in it over the winter. I finally got that opened up and taken off today. That bed won't be sown until mid May. It will have the earliest of the corn plantings.

And just when I had my last hardened off plants in the ground, the next set came out to get some sun. The chard is on the right and I have some perennials on the left. I probably won't keep the chard out here long. The weather is changing and getting cooler and wetter. So I'll let them harden off one more day then probably plant them right before a good patch of rain. Soil blocks don't need to be hardened off as much as other methods. Their roots aren't disturbed at all. And I use a fan in the growing room, so the wind shouldn't bother them. It is just the sun they have to get used to. And we won't get much sun on Monday and Tuesday. So I'm thinking they should be fine.

I will wait on the perennials though. We are going to be getting mulch on Thursday. I don't want the tiny seedlings buried by the mulch. I think it will be safer to plant after the fact.