Transplanting onions
I think I started far too many onions.
Two flats seeded thickly looks like it would have been enough seedlings
to fill fifteen beds, not seven.
Of course, it's good to
have extras because my onions are still a bit experimental. I transplanted them
into the garden at this time last year with success, but they seem so
tiny that I'm glad to have spares waiting in the wings (or rather, in
the quick hoops where I hardened them off last week).
Plus there's the issue of
variety. Here at 36 degrees latitude, we're smack dab on the
dividing line between short day and long day onions. In the past,
I've planted Copra, which is a long day variety, but this year I opted
to try out Pontiac (another long day onion) and Pumba (a short day
onion). I'll let you know which variety does better come harvest
time in June.
If all's well in the
onion beds next week, I'll give some of the seedlings away (Mom,
Joey?). And I think I'll also sneak a few into the new
beds I made in the forest garden for tomatoes. Although the tomatoes
go in a month before the onions come out, I suspect the two can coexist
for a few weeks, and the 280 onions I currently have in the ground
don't feel like so many when I consider that they have to last a solid
year.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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