Not bad, eh?

We (prematurely) yanked this from the onion patch tonight. All of the onions look promising and we were pretty curious as to what was going on under the dirt and grass mulch, so we picked a big-looking one for dinner. This guy was about 2.5 inches in diameter, and delicious.

Companion Planting and a Flashy New Trellis

The tomatoes are in. The bed in the photo is 4' by 18'. There are eight tomato plants (a little less than half our stock) in the bed, which I know isn't very many, but they will be sharing the space with four varieties of poling beans, red onions, leeks, and a shit load of basil. Well, maybe not a shit load, but a fare amount none the less.

We're really happy with how well our new trellis turned out. The design is mostly from something Meg found on the internet and in the latest issue of Organic Gardening. However, the modifications are all Future House. It did take us a few hours to build, but it's nothing more than bamboo from our property and salvaged string (the whole thing didn't cost a cent). I'm certain that by the end of this year I'll be able to tie knots like a sailor (which is fitting, because I tend to curse like one).

Fingers Crossed

The same onions that looked huge in their little 4-cell trays now seem tiny compared to the garlic behind them. Already, though, they're bigger than any sets we've grown have ever gotten.

Top O' the Onion to You!

Heh. Should have thought of that yesterday, for St. Patrick's. Oh well.

We continue to diligently trim up our onion tops, as per the advice of our brilliant commenters on this post.

Every time we do this, we end up with a yummy little pile of onion greens, which we throw in whatever it is we're having for dinner.

umm, onions?

Considering that our previous attempts at onions resulted in bulbs roughly the size of superballs, we don't consider ourselves experts on this particular aspect of the garden.

So when, in the comments of some recent posts (here and here), Frances and Mia both asked whether we cut the tops of our onions off and El said, "Don't forget to cut them," we became totally confused.

Cut what? The flowers? The green parts? Not while they're still growing, though, right? Cut the green parts off before we store the onions? Cut the flowers off, cut them into bits, and feed them to the chickens? It's clear that we should be cutting something, but we're not sure what.

Onion growers, help!

Edited to add: We got answers! El wrote, "You need to get the roots to grow, so, when they get to be about 3-4" tall, you cut an inch off. Otherwise you'll have the things devote all their energy to producing its leaves. You'll be doing this a couple of times before you plant them." And Mike added, "At the other end, when you're harvesting to store 'em for a while, you should cut them quite high up, 2-3", in that part where it naturally dies out and flops down. Then when they cure, the neck can dry out and seal, so bacteria doesn't get into the onion and spoil it. So your storage onions have a dry neck sticking out. I leave 'em like that, but maybe you can trim more later on."