Some catching up to do

So the internet at the beach house was not all that it was cracked up to be. Every so often we could nab a signal from a neighboring home, but nothing steady enough to blog on. We got back last night and will probably spend the next few days getting things in order outside, inside, and on the blog. For those of you who have left comments these past few weeks, we apologize for the delayed replies. Look for a wave of responses soon.

There was some new and exciting news from the garden today. Our onions were ready for harvesting. In the past we have had terrible luck with onions, so this year we decided to start them from seed as opposed to sets and damn are we glad we did. Our harvest total was 34 onions at an impressive 15 pounds. The biggest one hefted in at about 1.25 pounds.


We have a second round of seeds germinated and hopefully we will have another harvest later on in the fall. Now that we have the confidence in starting from seed we will certainly double the crop size next year.

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."

There's Hope

We love onions. A gardening book of ours suggests that the number of onions to be planted should be around 40 per person. We're guessing that no less than 100 per person will do.

A total of 200 is being very optimistic. We have yet to have any harvest worth weighing. Past plantings were done with sets. The greens looked promising, but the bulbs at harvest time were either rotten or only slightly larger than the set that was planted. This year we are planting from seed as opposed to sets. I've gotta say that this little onion sprout has me about as excited as the first time one of our tomato seeds sprouted. Our goal this year is to make a few big batches of vegetable stock with every ingredient coming from the garden. We've had every part going except for the damn onions; but this little fella's giving me hope.

105 Days Until Onions

Tonight we dusted off the trusty grow tables, cleared the spider webs out of our trays, and started some seeds. We used up some bags of crummy old seed starting mix that have been hanging around here for a while; on our next round of seeds we'll go fetch some compost from outside. So far, we've got onions, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and some sage and dill.