Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Onions and onions and more onions

Sunday it was so nice and we finally felt like we could get some things done. One of the things we really wanted to get done was planting some onions for this year. We use onions almost daily, so it would be wonderful if I didn't have to buy onions for awhile. Not to mention red onions around here have been really crummy for the last year or so.

We stopped by the nursery and bought some onion plants. I was a tad suprised how many were sold in a "clump." Apparently, I forgot to get a picture of them but it is fine.

Before we got to work, I told Daddy it would be nice if I could get a little grid made to plant them since I hate having to measure and my squarefoot gardening book told us that we could get 16 onions in a square foot.  Give Daddy a few minutes, some bamboo poles and some zipties and this is what he made. It was perfect and its simple to use.
Insta-grid
Next was some time for Pooka and I to get our hands dirty. We would poke a hole in the center of the grid with my finger (hers was too short).
Add one hole
The Pooka would drop in an onion plant. We tried to make sure we used the really big plants first, but we ended up using some smaller ones as well. Then we would both take turns making sure the dirt was packed back in around the plant.

Onion planted
 This method was continued across the hole grid. Turns out the bed is bigger then 1 foot wide, so for awhile I was just adding one at the bottom. Later it would be 2 per the bottom.
Now we remove the grid, and go to the next section
Once the entire section was planted, we lifted the grid off the onions and set it next to the first one and continued on with the red onion, and then moved to yellow sweet spanish onions.
A little bit of time and we got a nice patch of onions
We ended up planting something like 60+ red onions which are marked with red sticks, and then we went to the yellow onions which are marked with yellow sticks at the end. I think final number of yellow onions is in the 60 range as well. I forgot to count them at the end and lost track somewhere along the way. In theory, I will have a basement full of onions, or I will have tons of green onions, we will just wait and see.

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