Don't Make Me Cry...

Planting reminders!

There's still time to start some of your early plants indoors but you need to get on it if you want them to get the best head start before your transplant date, which is usually the last frost date for your hardiness zone.  For our area, which is zone 6b, that's around April 15th.  Onions and chives are the plants that need to get the earliest start for the season, so if you didn't sow them into your desired garden spot last fall, start them indoors now!  Another plant that needs an early start in this cold climate is Lavender.  Sow it at the same time as your onions and make sure hey get plenty of light as they need it to germinate.


Spotlight Plant: Onion!



Since it's the first plant to be mentioned on the blog, I've chosen to take a closer look at the onion!  Be it ever so humble, theirs nothing like it.  What would our kitchens be like with out the flavor of this root vegetable?  In fact, it's so important in French and Cajun cuisine, that it's part of what's known as the Holy Trinity of Flavor: the Mirepoix.  This combination of onion, carrot and celery is the bases of many soups, sauces, stews and stocks.  If you've spent any amount of time in the kitchen, you've probably made a mirepoix yourself at some point, even if you didn't know it at the time!

Yellow Dutch Onion

Like many of the fruits and veggies we'll explore here, there are far more varieties than just the three or four usual culprits you'll find at the grocery store, but almost all onions will fall into one of two categories: Long day and Short day varieties.  This tells you what kind of onion variety to choose for your area.  Short day varieties are better for Southern locations where there's not much variance in the day length.  They will form their bulb and be ready for harvest in a shorter time than the Long-day types.  Long day varieties are for Northern locations.  They'll need the longer daylight hours to grow but will produce nice, large bulbs.

You can sow your onions into the garden space you want them to grow in  the fall previous but if not, they can be started indoors about 12 weeks before your last frost date.   They like their temps on the cool side so harden the growing plants off and transplant them while you've still got a couple of weeks before the last frost date.  Onions need soil that is high in organic matter and well drained—no standing water after a rain!  Onions prefer fertile, loose loam with a pH of 6 to 6.5. When you transplant, space seedlings 4 to 6 inches apart.  Give them at least one inch of water every week.  You can pull up onions early for green onion shoots but the main harvest will occur near the end of August.  At full maturity, the plants will start to go dormant; the inner leaves stop producing blades, and the hollow-centered necks will weaken, causing the tops to bend over.  It is important to let the plants go dormant before harvesting, or they won’t store well.

Though we grow onions as annuals- that is, we harvest them at the end of every year- they are actually biennial.  That means that the first year they will develop a nice big root system (the bulb) so that they can focus on producing flowers and seeds in the second.  If you want to save seeds from these plants you'll want to pick the only the biggest and best looking onions to keep for next year.  Once you've chosen your candidates, spread them out in a dry location, protected from sun and rain and not touching each other.  You'll cure them this way for about 10 to 12 days and then they can be braided and stored for over wintering.  Store them some place dark, dry and cool but protected from frost.  Garages and sheds are good options.  In the spring, remove the dried tops  and plant them at the same time as the new seeds.  Once the large white puff of flowers turns almost solid black the, seeds are dry and ready to harvest.  Bend them over and snip them into paper bags then store in a dry place out of direct sun light.  Once the seeds have completely dried this way, they should be easy to harvest from the dried flower by shaking the bag!  As always, be sure to clearly date a label seed storage containers and keep them in a dark, dry, cool area.  When stored properly, onion seeds can keep for up to two years.  You can also try storing them in a freezer to lengthen shelf life.

Varieties to try: This year we're going with an old heirloom variety known as the yellow flat dutch onion.  It;s supposed to have a mild flavor and the bulbs should be large and good for storing.  Onions varieties do cross pollinate so it's recommended that if you want to save the seeds of your onions that you do so with only one variety at a time.

Well, that's it for today, hope to see you next time!