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!)

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…

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.