It’s time to bring in the onions. Their tops have fallen over and withered away to brownness. I doubt that I’ll even have to pull them, just pick them off the ground where they were planted.
I can tell that I am not going to have a crop of huge bulbs, not nearly enough oniony goodness to get me through the Winter. Maybe my soil wasn’t quite right for them. Perhaps they didn’t get enough sun. Yesterday I resolved myself to an onion free garden. After reading this nice site on growing onions from seed, I was having second thoughts. Maybe I’d try them again….
Leslie Clapp wrote a very nice article for KitchenGardener magazine in 1999. The pictures are beautiful and the directions are very concise.
Today I will pull out my onions and cure them for a couple of weeks on screens in the driveway, being sure that they stay dry, until the get a couple of layers of thick, dry skin. Then they will be ready to be hung along the stairs to the cellar in bags for winter. It will be interesting to see how many pounds I actually harvest.
The two types of onions that I will be sure to have in next year’s garden are scallions and Egyptian Walking Onions. The first I planted from seed this spring and I have been enjoying fresh scallions in nearly every salad from the garden. The second was gift from a neighbor and I happily pass them on to friends. They produce little shallot-like onions on the top of their long, sturdy stems. They can be harvested earlier than many other onions and taste more like a shallot. The onion bulbs can also be spread on the ground to grow more onions the following Spring. Bulbs can be purchased now from http://www.burpee.com/vegetables/onions/onion-egyptian-walking-onion-prod002386.html?cid=PPC.
For more information about growing onions from seed to storing them for Winter, see http://www.vegetablegardener.com/item/4076/how-to-grow-onions-from-seed.
No comments:
Post a Comment