Tag Archive for onion

The Sixth and Seventh Days Of Christmas (more lemon recipes)

On the Sixth Day of Christmas, with still over 7 pounds of Meyer lemons left from my citrus order orgy, I made Réunion Island Lemon and Onion Salad.

Lemon and Onion Salad from Reunion Island

Lemon and Onion Salad (Reunion Island Style)

In winter, I often hunger for bright spicy flavors to liven up the stews and braised dishes that are characteristics of this time of the year. Which is often when I return to my roots of Reunion Island, when I particularly reach into the spice cabinet for pungent curcuma, floral vanilla beans, fresh ginger and other flavors reminiscent of Reunion Island. Truth be told, I use those flavors all year long, but I crave them in winter. Read more

Hardening Off

It’s time to start hardening off the babies. At least, for those of us in the Northern Piedmont (and in the mid-Atlantic area). Yep, time to start hardening off the hardy annual vegetables that were lovingly started indoors. That include you people who took one of my “Starting The Veggy Garden from Seeds” workshops a few weeks ago.

Everything but parsley – maybe lavender and pepper (they all can take several looong weeks to germinate) – should be up now.

lettuce-flat-to-be-transplanted

Continue to give basil, tomatoes, pepper, marigolds and any other warm lovers like eggplants plenty of light and warmth. Take them outside on sunny days only when the temperature is above 50F/10C (mmm… maybe even 60F/16C for eggplants). Place them in a sheltered spot, just an hour or two the first time, then more and more progressively over the course of a few days until they can be left out the entire day when it’s mild. It’s not time to plant them out yet – by a long shot – but fresh air and sunshine will do them good. Read more

Planting Onions

Transplants: 350! (more or less); about 200 planted on Monday and 150 planted ten days ago. I have never been successful with the sets (mini-bulbs) planted in the spring: they hardly grew bigger than they start at! So, this year, I bought (more expensive) transplants: 2 bunches from our local farm store (1 red, 1 white – unnamed) and 3 more expensive kinds via mail order at Johnny’s Seeds: Walla-Walla, Mars, and Copra. It’ll be interesting to compare how they perform. The CFC transplants were available earlier, so I could plant them earlier (always a good thing in my book), but the ones from Johnny’s had better roots, and the bundles were bigger. We’ll see (I hope!)

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They are all outside, in a bed that had been “sweetened” in the winter with ashes from the wood stove, planted fairly closely as I want to use young onions for salad in late spring and throughout the summer. Whatever remains (if anything) will be used as storage onions. That’s the idea. In practice, we eat a lot of onions, so I am not even sure 350 will do!

I also have seedlings in the greenhouse planted in cell packs: a pack of bunching White Spears impulsively bought at a rack display (yes, my impulse purchases tend to be seeds!) & mini-white Bianca di Maggio. They were started later than they should have (in early March instead of Janauary) and will need to be up-potted soon. Most of the three-weeks old seedlings still have their seeds up in the air, at the tip of their first leaf. Makes them look like little people whispering oniony gossips…

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At the rate they are growing, I am guessing that I’ll set them out in late April.

Meanwhile, I’ve got lettuce, leaf broccoli & cutting celery to transplant out. Best to do it before the rain which we are suppose to get this afternoon & tomorrow.