Another job done

We bought onions our yearly onions. I was so excited to get them and have them in the ground as soon as possible. We bought a yellow vidalia type onion.  It should grow fairly large and should store well (not that the onions last very long around here). We also bought a red onion called Red Candy apple onion that should be a nice red one.

Onions 

 I took some time off a few weeks ago to deal with personal matters, and while I was home and trying to wrap my head around life, I planted the onions in the same bed they were planted in last year. Pooka was at school, and she was tad upset that she didn't get to help, but it was good to keep my hands busy for at least a bit and it did help to be able to cross one more thing off the list. Now if only it was that simple to fix so many of the world's problems.

Time to grow. 

THEY CAME UP

The multiplier onions have appeared. I always worry when I overwinter something that it will die. We are glad to see these guys made it through the winter. Now to wait and see if their onions get any bigger than the little plants we buy from the nursery.

The first onions poking up

These onions I planted in the fall. They overwinter like garlic and then supposedly make more onions much like a potato. I have no idea how well these work, but the fact that they are even alive is a good start. I would love to get some larger onions. Pooka was rather happy to see more green poking up out of the yard.

Planting ONions big and small

I swear I posted this before, but I can't seem to find where I did. Weeks ago now, Pooka and I spent about 2 evenings after school getting our onions in the ground. We planted some yellow onions the first day. But they were out of red onions so we had to wait. I was just happy to get them going. I did space them out a bit more then last year in hopes to get a bit bigger onion. Our ones last year were a bit small.

Yellow onions in the ground

2 days later, they finally had red onions in. Daddy loves red onion so we couldn't forget them. This is how I like to buy my onions. I have never had much luck with sets, and these will grow a fairly nice actual onion and in a pinch I can use the greens as well.

Red onions from the nursery

While Pooka and I were out playing in the dirt, Daddy called me in. Apparenly one of our store onions had started to sprout. He wanted to know if we wanted to plant the onion. I said I didn't know if it would get bigger or not and he said "That is okay. We can do this one for science."

Sprouting Onion

I asked Pooka if she wanted to see what happened. I told her it could be its own experiment. Well of course Pooka said yes. I asked her where in the onion bed she wanted to plant it. She said it could go in the exact middle so we remembered which one it was.

New home for the onion

By the time we were done that night, this is what we had. An entire bed of nothing but onions. Hopefully that means we will get lots of nice onions this year. I for one would love to not have to buy onions for awhile.

Onion bed ready to grow.

Yellow onion harvest

Last Thursday, we pulled the last of the onions. As you can see, they had all pretty much fallen over and were drying out. A couple had flowers, but even they weren't still standing.

Daddy pulled the first few and they are a bit bigger then the red onions. I really think they got so long because we had them too close together. For our first year, I don't think we did all that bad.

Test pull of onions

The onions are sitting in the garage drying. I don't have a firm harvest total on them yet. I am waiting for them to dry and to be able to pull off the greens before I weigh them. Now to find a way to store all of these.

Onions drying

Red and Blue and Purple

A while back, we harvested the red tomatoes. They had begun to dry out and fall over. Sounded like a good time to harvest them to me.  They were not the biggest of things, but we would use them. We laid them out to dry on Daddy's table saw, and about a week ago, I finally got around to pulling the dried greens off.

Dried and ready to go.

The harvest did look a lot smaller when all was said and done. But they are onions and we will use them. I will say it has been nice not having to buy onions in like 2 weeks. All told, the final harvest of red onion was 44.5 oz or 2.78 lbs. Not too bad. We made our money back on them which is all we asked for. Next year we are going to space them out a bit more, as well as amend the bed better. At least this proves we can grow them.

Most of the final Red Onion harvest (we did eat some before hand)

Speaking of harvests, do you remember the blue potato harvest? Brother was happy we had blue potatoes, but I will say I was rather disappointed. They were small and not what I was expecting. However, Brother was happy and that is all we could ask.

Blue potato harvest.

What did we do with such small potatoes, we cut them up into small chunks. This is where you can really see the coloring of the potatoes. Although I do admit they look more purple in the picture.

Sliced and diced

The chopped potatoes were roasted with just some butter, garlic and onion. Made a great side dish one night to go with a fresh picked salad. Brother ate his potatoes with complaining and actually asked for seconds. A rare feat indeed since he hates any potatoes that are not French fries. We are  going to try them again next year, but if for no other reason than to have Brother eat one dinner of blue (PURPLE as pooka still contends) potatoes without a fight. Maybe then we will get enough to make him blue French fries.

Garlic Blue potatoes

At the end of a long day

Today was a long day. Very productive in and out of the garden, but long none the less. So it was very satisfying to be able to walk outside and pick our dinner. In fact, Pooka began to run around asking what else we could eat.

Dinner tonight

Now granted, most of it just went into a salad. But when the salad is completely home grown with romaine and bib lettuce, baby spinach, sugar snap peas, basil, parsley, red onion and cherry and regular tomatoes, I would call it a very good salad. Even if Pooka has decided to have "Yummy mold that Daddy likes on it." At least I can say I didn't grow the bleu cheese (aka mold).

Potatoes, Peas and onions oh my

I just thought I would give an update of some of the things going on around here.

The blue potatoes are doing really well. I am actually thinking about hilling the first bag already and am waiting just a bit on the second bag because it still has one smaller plant. Brother is so excited that his potatoes are doing well. Daddy even admitted that if this works, we may build a bigger bag/tower to put potatoes in next year.

The smaller of the potatoes

The peas are growing great. They are still rather small, and some are just now sprouting, but with all this rain, I am expecting a bit of an explosion on peas. I did get a stick in the ground yesterday between storms for them to start climing. Then I will tie it to the trellis on the deck so they can grow up it. We also got the ground around them mulched yesterday, so we are getting somewhere finally.

Peas before I gave them a stick

The onions were mulched as well. It looks like something tried to eat one or 2 of them and decided they didn't taste very good. The bit they bit off was laying next to the onion. It also looked a bit like they had been walked on, but the new mulch should help that as well.

Onions freshly mulched

I do have a set of tomatoes that I am trying to harden off correctly. That plus the 3 pans of seedlings I have been carting in and out of the house daily onto the front porch which is a bit more sheltered. So far they seem to be handling it quite well. I sadly still have tomatoes that are in dire need of transplanting. At least the garage is clean now so Pooka and I have a place to do it. Brother's homework assignment exploded out there for a few weeks.

Hardening off tomatoes

At school on Tuesday, Pooka made a raingauge at the local Kids Discovery Museum. She put pebbles at the bottom so it wouldn't fly away into the neighbors yard. Pooka really likes having her own rain gauge. She says "it's really fun, all you have to do is take a bottle, cut the top off, and then put measurments on it and put pebbles in it and scotch or duct tape the top on upside down. And it doesn't matter what kind of tape you use, just really strong tape. It is kinda hard to get the water out without getting the pebbles out." We got our own rain gauge the day before and hers is fairly accurate.

Rain Gauge by Pooka

 Now to hope for good weather so we can get some work done.

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.