My seeds have come, now let's talk about onions. the

I was so happy to open the mailbox yesterday and find seeds there for me.  They were not for the greenhouses as have been all the shipments for the past two months.  These are mine.  I am so happy to think that the gardening season gets to begin.

First come the onions.  These are the earliest seeds I put in.  I like seed onions.  They are the first year of growth for an onion.  Onions are biennials which means that it takes two years to complete the life cycle.  The first year you get a plant with a completely formed bulb.  If you would leave that in the ground during a mild winter and mulch it over, it would sprout again from the bulb the next spring.  This is what you are growing when you buy onion sets.  This is the second year growth.  The second year and onion grows, it will put up growth again and it will form a bulb.  The difference in the second year is that the plant wants to send up a flower head and complete the life cycle for which it was meant...reproduction of its species.  By growing onion seeds, my plants spend their time just growing with no energy or size lost to pursuit of reproduction.

Buying onion seeds is also a bit of science.  Where in the world are you growing them and in what season?  Here in the upper Midwest we grow onions during the long summer months.  We grow LONG DAY onions here.  I like Ailsa Craig, Walla Walla, Sweet Spanish, and Copra.  I usually only grow one or two types of onions.  I also like to grow keepers which will dry their skins and hold for much of the winter with no additional preparation.  They just need it cool, dry, and dark.  Now if I lived in the South and grew a crop of onions during the winter months (onions are good cool season crops) or maybe in the Mediterranean countries also during winter months, I would choose SHORT DAY onions.  These are breed to grow and bulb up during short day periods when the light is not at its best.  I do not know if they grow short day onions in a greenhouse setting in the north during the winter.  Why in the world would we when you can grow them in the summer and keep them in the winter?  I am still using the onions I harvested last fall.  If they start sprouting, I use those onions first.  I also break off the green tops to slow the process when I can't use them fast enough.

I also grow bunching onions which most people would call green onions when they go to shop in the produce section.  They don't really bulb out and you pull and use them...green!   Both types can be put in when the ground is cold but workable.  I typically shoot for mid-April in our neck of the woods.  I am able to put the plants in the ground as well as put in the bunching onion seeds.  Both will put up with the weather that our Wisconsin springs tend to dish out with wild variety and extremes.  It seems to be an awful thing to put out seedling, but you are rewarded with early onions with good bulb set.

If you haven't ordered your onion seeds yet, you may find some on a rack at one of your better garden centers if you are not up to waiting for shipment.  Seeds started in January and February will reward you with a wonderful crop of onions long into winter.

Onion transplants

It has been a busy weekend but I promised photos of onion transplants and since that might be on your list too, I have to share these first.  I pop the whole pot of onion seedlings out of the pot and gently pull the root ball apart so I can pull the individual onions apart.

There are two ways of setting your seedlings, one way is to dig a trench about 2 inches deep the length of your planting area. Pull the soil to one side so you can push it back over the roots as you put each onion in.

The second method is to use a digging tool to pull the soil forward, set in your seedling, and let the soil fall back in the hole over the roots of the onion.  With either method you need to gently firm the soil around the roots.

If you are doing longer rows, a straight edge of some sort will help maintain the line as you go.  I like to lay out my seedlings for each row ahead of myself so I can just move down the row planting seedlings.  I just keep repeating the process until I have all the onions in that I want.  Last year I did the onions 3"x3" apart and pulled every other one as green onions to make them 6"x6" for full growth onions.  This year I spaced them 3" apart in rows that are 6" apart.  I will still take every other onion in each row out for green onions, but the row space is set ahead of time.  I ended up using more space this way, but I wanted to try a different method to see how it affects my harvest.

I ended up with 6 rows of 25 in the 8' beds.  This will be my bed for my late lettuce crop in summer.  The anticipated afternoon rains never came, so I still had to water them in.  I was pleasantly surprised this morning by perky little onions as we did get about 1" of rain overnight.

Seeding the outdoor garden 4-12-12

After a fairly easy bike ride home, I had the energy to go out and look things over.  We also had our spruce stump ground today and my husband had me out raking away the chips.  With the work energy started, I knew I could get in the seeds before our anticipated rain tomorrow.  Since I had done all the bed prep this weekend, it would go pretty quickly.  
The funny thing about growing older is that you don't get everything done in the same amount of time as you did even a few years before.  I had managed to sift two large wheelbarrows of compost, weed and work the bed, and spread the compost.  

After all was said and done, I only got my garden peas and flowering sweet peas in the ground.  If they hadn't been soaking overnight and HAD to go in the ground that day, it probably wouldn't have happened.  The garden peas and beans fall victim to the chipmunks in my yard so after planting, I place some expanded metal over the top to keep them safe.  Once the plants are up a couple inches, I can easily lift the 1" mesh over and off the beds.  

I used some single ply twine to grid the bed.  I tied a knot in the end, stapled it to the edge, knotted the opposite and and stapled it down.  It really is good for distinguishing beds in the square foot gardening method.  You really get the most use out of the soil space.  
Kale had overwintered in one corner of the bed.  I have started a second variety of kale in the house which I will pop in next to these.  I also put in Swiss chard, parsnips, green bunching onions, radishes, lettuce, and beets.  I still have to transplant my onions, but I digress.  

I have some tools that I really like for seeding.  Plastic tags and a grease pencil are a must.  I do not rely on my memory and sometimes I put in more than one variety. The grease pencil scrubs off and the tags can be reused until they break.  I have a dibble (blue thingy), a seed dispenser (green thingy), and a seed shaker (red thingy).  The seed shaker was a pretty good purchase as I can use it for lots of different size seeds and the clicker vibrates the tray to move the seed out pretty evenly.  The hand cultivator is very useful for making furrows for larger seed or raking in smaller, shallow seeds.

For plants that "bulb" out like beets and radishes, I make furrows at least twice the depth that is recommended.  I add in the recommended amount over the seed and reserve the extra soil to the sides of the furrow.  As the plants grow, I push the soil up around the plants to encourage the plant to round out rather than get long and leggy.  This is not something I read, but something I learned through trial and error.  It may be our heavy, clay soil that makes the plants push up more than down, but I know it works for me and recommend it to others who don't get nice round radishes.
Radishes were not always on my "must plant" list.  I have acquired a taste for them over time.  French breakfast are my favorites, but Jung sent Purple Plum radish seeds as a freebie so I divided my space for trying both.  Early planting is a must.  They don't like heat and get woody fast when the summer temps go up.  The spring radishes are cool and crisp and don't seem to have the bite of late season radishes.  Give them a whirl if you haven't planted them.  They also come fast and are ready to eat in about a month (almost instant gratification in garden terms).

So after all was said and done, I had 10 different things planted in the vegetable beds. The garlic has been composted and the herb garden is giving me some fresh additions to my cooking (what says Spring better than chives?).  I still have to get the storing onions planted.  They have spent four nights outside in their pots and it has been in the low 30's so they are ready for whatever the weather has to throw at them.  I hope to post some pictures of the new seedlings soon.