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| newly planted onions |
This was the first year that I grew onions in earnest.
There's always a learning curve when trying new ventures,
and I'm just beginning to find out what's entailed with growing this crop.
It doesn't require much, but it's satisfying knowing that should I master this crop,
I'll never need to buy onions again.
These are the Walla-Walla variety,
which were acquired from Sow True seeds.
They are a sweet Spanish variety that can be planted
either in the late summer for a June harvest,
or in the early spring for a late summer harvest.
I enjoy growing year-round, so this variety fit right in
with my plans to overwinter a few crops like garlic and leek.
These seeds were planted in early fall and pretty much
left to their own devices.
I mulched over them with our own leaf mulch
and just checked on them once in a while to see how they were doing.
I didn't know about spooning,
which helps the onions grow better.
I've been watching a vlog called,
That 1870's Homestead,
where Rachel talked about
(Click on the link above to watch her video).
It's a new concept to me, but she swears by it.
Instead of allowing the mulch and soil to envelope the bulb,
the soil around the base of the bulb is moved aside,
so that only the roots are buried.
(It has been said that a spoon was used to do this.)
This is supposed to promote a larger bulb.
Although I'm a little late to the party this year,
(what else is new?),
I went ahead and spooned the onions ,
and will keep this in mind for next season when I start anew.
It will be interesting to see if it makes a difference
compared to this year.
Many of the onions look just fine already,
and I'll harvest the larger ones for processing,
but it will be fun to see if the spooning
will make any difference by the end of the month,
when I will need to harvest them all.
This onion is supposed to be good for storing
for just a few months,
so I may need to research another variety that can be stored long term.
Do you have any experience with onions for long term storage?
Have you heard of spooning?
