Onions and Shallots

Two weeks ago I put my onions on their storage rack to dry. A couple days ago we had a huge storm with driving rain, hail, and wind. It drove the water right in to the side. Some of the onions got wet which isn't good. Luckily now it is pretty dry. The humidity broke. The onions seem mostly dry. I sorted through them. It is really humid here and I don't have a good dry place to cure them. Some of the onions molded. So I tossed those. I also found that the red shallots had some that had split and some that didn't. The ones that split had trouble drying between the bulbs. So I broke them open to let them dry better. I'll use them up first.

Every year I braid them to hang them in my basement to store. I like the braids as they are pretty. I'm not sure if they are the best way to store them though. We have a lot of mold and diseases here and one onion touching another is probably a bad thing. Usually even long storing onions won't store past January here.

This is the harvest from the first onions that were ready to be cured. The next set have just started falling in that last storm. My subjective thought on the harvest was that it wasn't all that good. But it is hard to say until all the onions are harvested and weighed. Last year I used a 6" spacing and this year mostly a 5" spacing. I also had a small spot where I had 4", 5", and 6" spacings of the same onion to test to see how big they would get. The 5" and 6" were about the same, but the 4" spacing had really tiny onions. So 5" looks like a good choice for me from now on. But am I wrong? Are the onions smaller because of the spacing? Will I get a better total weight even though I have small onions? Once the last set are pulled I'll know.

Then again it could be the starts I used. I tried Dixondale for the first time. I found that their starts were in general smaller than mine (some much smaller)and they took a while to break dormancy, while mine were growing right away. The smaller bulbs could be because of that. Or the weather. I really should control my experiments better. But regardless I think next year I'll grow my own starts and I'll use a 5" spacing. For me that seems to work best.

Busy Busy Day

This morning I figured I'd get the onions planted. This involves two beds. The first was the storage onion bed. Really it was a bed and a third as the garlic doesn't take a whole bed, so I put the rest of that one in onions. I prepped the bed and planted out the shallots that I had. I made the rows 6" apart but I figured that I would test the in row spacing. Four of the rows got a 6" spacing and three of the rows got a 4" spacing. The rest of the onions hadn't shown up yet. I ordered them from Dixondale* and they said they were shipped earlier in the week.

I put up a row cover over the bed and a half. If you remember I made a special row cover for these so they could be higher. The short row cover that was just a foot high, wasn't even close to being high enough for the onions. I wanted a two foot high cover. I had some old irrigation pipe. It isn't strong enough to be a support for a thick row cover that breaks the wind, but I thought it would be fine for the netting row cover I had. Last winter when I cleaned out the basement I cut them into 8' lengths. Today I pushed them into the soil as far as I could and the row cover was just perfect. (Photos to come later in the post.)

I had to go in to take a phone call. When I was inside I saw the delivery man drop off a big box. It wasn't my onions. It was my perennials for the new front garden. They were from Bluestone*.

I liked their modular system for packaging plants. All the plants were in biodegradable pots which is a huge selling point for me. As you can guess I immediately unpacked them all. And even though the pots were biodegradable (it looks like coir) I ripped most of them off as I don't like such things to wick away moisture. But at least I can compost them instead of having to recycle plastic.

I got out my plan that I made last year. And my measuring tape. I put them in their appropriate spots. Though my plan wasn't perfect. My neighbors behind me (the really nice ones that let me cut down the maple sapling that was growing on their side of the fence, but near the property line that was right on the southern most part of the garden) gave me a gift certificate to Mahoneys (a really nice close gardening center). I went there earlier in the week to buy a support for my sage plant in the circle garden. It only cost 10 bucks. I was going to buy some seeds for next year. But I should never ever walk into a store that sells plants.

I bought a hen and chicks plant and a short sedum. The edge near the driveway and the brick path has the worst soil (lower right). I figure these ought to grow reasonably well there. The plan said some Gallardia would go there, but I think I'll use it as a little river of color though there instead of a large patch.

I only bought three plants for my green path with stepping stones. It might take a little while to get it to spread through the whole thing, but I really think it will be more of a problem to keep a spreading plant out of the rest of the garden than to make sure it fills in.

This perennial garden is only partly planted up. I have other plants growing under lights. Some perennial (two kinds of rudbeckia) and some annual (calendula and zinnia). I also need two more perennials that I don't have. One is a Siberian iris (Cape Cod Boys) which I never got around to ordering. And Moonbeam coreopsis which I totally forgot to get seed for, so I'm just going to walk down to our local garden center and see if they sell it. If not it will be off to Mahoneys again. Though I might end up transplanting some coreopsis from the backyard. It doesn't seen really happy there. It might be more happy in the front.

After a quick lunch which made a good rest break, another package showed up on my doorstep - the onion plants. The red onions were a really nice size. The Copras weren't too bad. But the Walla Wallas were really small. I hope they grow well enough. It looks like they don't count plants. They just give you the same sized bunch. It can have small or larger plants in them. And all of the bundles had way more than they said would be in them.

I filled up that bed that I prepped in the morning. As always Copra - my main storage onion - got the best spot which means farther away from the fence. The other two spit sides of the bed. I had quite a handful of seedling left over. So I put them in the asparagus bed. Most of the asparagus died last year. I'm going to take half of the bed and plant four Brussels sprouts. But they don't need the edge space yet. So I put two rows down the middle and a row on each side of the bed. I put them about 1-2" apart. I'll eat them as green onions in June and maybe into July.

It was a really tiring day. If you have noticed I usually split my work up if possible so I don't do a lot in one day. Especially when I have a full week of gorgeous weather like this week. I want to be out everyday so no need to kill myself on one day. But when plants show up on my doorstep I try hard to get them in right away. I'll wait on the second onion bed that I had planned to do this morning. That is the lettuce, chard, and bunching onion bed. But the bunching onions can wait. Now I just have one more thing to finish today. I have to go out and sweep the front walk as I made a mess of it when I was planting.

*And I haven't received anything from these companies. I'm just a gardener who buys stuff. All opinions are my own. Yadda yadda yadda. If I ever do get anything useful from somewhere I'd let you know. But companies tend to like to offer me things I don't want or can't use so I always turn them down.

The Gardening Season Has Started

Yes I know I have three feet of snow on the ground right now and more is predicted over the next week. But I started my seeds today. Surely that marks the start of the gardening season.

I make up a schedule every year for what I'm planting indoors (the left side) and what I'm seeding outside. They have dates when I should be doing this and places to mark when the plants actually got seeded or planted. I rarely actually plant on the date written, but I'm pretty good at getting it somewhere around that date. My schedule says that I'm late getting the alliums started. This year I'm just seeding two types - bunching onions and shallots. All of the other onions are being bought as seedlings this year. I've never done that before and I'll see how it goes.

Most of the time I make soil blocks, but I was feeling very lazy today. So I just filled an old takeout container with some mix and did it that way. The alliums don't mind root disturbance all that much, so this way works fine with them. It will be a pain later trying to untangle the roots to plant, but for now at least it is easier. I'm sure I'll curse that choice later in the spring.

They are now sitting under the lights to germinate. I put the lids on to hold in the moisture, but not too tightly so they will get a bit of airflow.

I can't wait to see my first green this year. Sadly alliums take a a while to germinate, but I expect to see sprouting in about a week.