One Onion Two

There are a number of crops that we like to put in as early in May as we are able to.  With our farm's heavy soil, we often can't do much until we get past May 15.  But, you do what you can when you can and make the best of it.

Either way, we prefer to get peas, carrots, onions and potatoes in the ground early.  I am not really counting early season crops like radish, lettuce, spinach and the like.  We want to get them in as well, but most of those have multiple plantings during a season.  These others tend to get one shot at the Genuine Faux Farm and we want to get that iteration right!

Digression - Garlic
The great thing about garlic is that there is not much you have to do with it this time of year.  You just enjoy watching it push up through the mulch you put in last Fall/Winter and anticipate the yumminess that is to come (assuming you like garlic). 

Our garlic got a slow start this year with the extended cold weather but it is looking pretty good coming out of the gate.  Frankly, I have this belief that garlic will be better quality with a slightly shorter grow period with fewer dips into cooler temperatures during the process.  In other words, if we have enough warmth in March/April and the garlic starts, it is likely that we will have dips below freezing while the plants are up and over the mulch. While garlic can certainly handle it, I wonder if there is a point in the growing stages that a cold snap is detrimental.  If that theory is correct, this may end up being a nearly optimal growing season for our garlic.  We shall see. 

Summer squash, zucchini and shorter season winter squash will go into this field as well since garlic tends to repel some of the pests that cause problems for those crops.  Thus far, the garlic beds seem to be pretty clean, but it isn't until May that we start seeing some weeds getting through the straw.  After all, we wouldn't want to grow a crop that didn't need at least a little weeding would we?

Blades of Grass
We start our onions from seed in trays each year.  That means we have to transplant the tiny little onion plants into the ground each year.  If everything goes well with the plant starting, you could have a plant with a base that will be about 1/8 inch thick and a stem that might be six inches tall.  If your onions are in a high tunnel and the temps drop and the sun goes behind the clouds, your plants are likely to be much smaller.

As a result, it often feels like you are transplanting individual grass plants into bare soil, hoping they will rapidly fill in and make a lawn.  This year we were the beneficiaries of Grinnell Heritage Farm's success with their onions.  They had extra and they offered some to us.  After looking at our poor little plants, we happily took some of their extras home and put them in the ground. 

Our plants are fine and healthy - if a bit small at this point.  We intend to plant all of them as well, but the process for planting them is much more tedious and time consuming.  The bed pictured at the right has four rows of White Wing onions we raised from seed on our farm.  Can you see them.  You can click on the picture to make it bigger.  Honest... they are there.

The great thing about onions is that, if you keep them weeded and watered well enough, they typically will do very well.  They can look like they shouldn't make it at this stage and you'll come away with a fantastic crop in the end.  The biggest trick is to get them enough time prior to the Summer Solstice, at which point they stop putting on green growth and begin to bulb.  If you don't give them enough time prior to that point, you don't get much for onion bulbs that year.  Your only recourse at that point is to pull them out or... leave them in for the next Spring (see picture at left).

Last Year's Leftovers

Last year, we had soil conditions that prevented us from getting half of our onions in the ground in a timely fashion.  Once we did get them in, the plants grew and looked healthy, but a high percentage were unable to bulb out.  Since we already had enough onions, we just left them in the ground in hopes that they would regrow this spring.  And, in fact, some of them have.  We will now harvest these as some tasty Spring onions for our CSA shares this month.  That doesn't seem like an all bad situation to me.  But, ideally we would have harvested many more of those and only had a subset left to over-winter.

If you are having a difficult time seeing what is in the picture at the left, the white 'sticky' stuff are the stems of last year's broccoli.  They will be removed from the field and composted.  The four rows down the middle that show green stems every so often are the onions that were left in the field from last year's crop.  Some spots are empty, where we actually harvested an onion.  Other spots have evidence of an onion left behind, but the plant did not survive the Winter.  The bed to the right shows other crop residue that will be worked into the field prior to planting this year's crops.

Now - can't you just taste some fresh white onions in a stir fry?  Or maybe an Ailsa Craig sweet yellow onion on your grilled burger?  We'll see if we can't make that happen.