Posted on 12/13/2013 12:25:11 PM PST by greeneyes
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Okay, I'll set up the grow light tomorrow and plant onion seed. I just printed off the list of every seed I have and how long it takes for them to get to eating stage - made this list a few weeks ago but didn't print it then.
I have three types of onions. I also have plenty of plastic marker sticks and a good really permanent marker pen for this so I will mark each type.
Hmmm, don't laugh. I have one type seed on each line and on the first page it goes to the bottom of the page - that many seeds. The second page is one fourth full of those I have and don't want to plant.
I think one or more of you people snuck in my house and put packages of seeds in the big plastic bag where I keep them. If you didn't do that, how come I have soooo many envelopes of seeds?
Black Agnes, I may have to rent part of your land to plant a lot of these seeds as I have a fairly small back area. I guess I'm still experimenting. My final selections after this year will be the ones that grow best here and that give me the nutrients I would need if I had no other food. I'm hoping to have food for very early spring, spring, summer, and fall. So, I will be planting all next year to have these various “crops” come in. That sounds so presumptions of me - I hope I get SOMETHING to eat.
The smoker with no heat should be fine for drying the tobacco. I use the house because I control the humidity and keep everything from getting too dry, and of course, because of the volume I dry and cure.
/johnny
Onions grow best in the deep south if planted in the fall and then harvested the next late spring/early summer. To have sweet vidalia type onions you need only plant the vidalia type seed (yellow granex type) and make sure the soil they’re in doesn’t have a lot of sulfur. I grew the absolute sweetest as nearly sugar onions a couple years ago quite by accident. I just wanted some to throw in with stir fry. What a revelation it was to grow my own ‘vidalias’.
Onions/garlic/leeks are hardy down to the teens and in the case of garlic, hardy to zero or below. We can get away with tricks down here that those up north can’t.
http://msucares.com/crops/comhort/other_onions.html
I'm a low volume producer and just experimenting. A few pipefulls for special occasions and testing and knowledge of how to do it for future barter possibilities, if the SHTF, is all I had in mind. ;)
South of about 35N latitude we grow ‘short day’ onions the best. That means we don’t have the longer days in the summer they do in the north. Long day onions never do get the day l ength signal to make a bulb down here and will stay green onions.
I get the granex stuff in bulk here:
https://www.hpsseed.com/dp.asp?pID=02789&c=275&p=Yellow+Granex+Hybrid+Onion
Johnnys seed also has short day onions as well and tells you the optimum latitude for each variety in the description:
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7390-pumba-f1.aspx (yellow vidalia type)
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7393-desert-sunrise-f1.aspx (reddish/pink type)
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-8857-white-castle-f1.aspx (white onion type)
Baker creek has 2 varieties that I know of that will work in the south:
http://www.rareseeds.com/violet-de-galmi-onion/
http://www.rareseeds.com/red-creole-onion/
Onions will start out as a thin little green stalk that will multiply into several stalks and the ‘leaves’ will get thicker as it gets older. At some point the daylight hours will get long enough and it will stop producing leaves and start to make a bulb. The difference in long day, intermediate day and short day onions is the length of day that triggers this. If you plant long day onions in the south they’ll make beautiful green onions but little to no bulb because the days never get long enough to trigger bulb growth. If you grow short day onions in the north, the days will be long enough before the onion plant itself has sufficient size to produce a big bulb and you’ll get teeny bulbs instead. The size of the green plant part at the point that bulb growth is triggered is one of the things that determines the size of the onion you ultimately harvest.
I’d love to grow the ‘ailsa craig’ onions down here. Ain’t happening. They’re huge and very long keepers. Would be great onions to have. Unfortunately they’re not really happy south of about 45N lat as they’re a scottish variety. Ask me how I know this :P
YMMV, of course. I learned the onion lessons the hard way.
/johnny
I smoked my own tobacco about 3 months this year, and 2014 is the year I go 100%.
/johnny
I am flying to Boston to be with mom for Christmas.
i will probably end up shoveling snow.
Until the ravenous rabbits or starving squirrels see you in it..
Unless you can outrun them, things can go south pretty quickly.
Have never tried Quachita. I have Rosborough blackberries in my yard. Have mine on trellis's to keep them from sprawling. It is a non-bush type. They have done quite well and quality is great. This past year we had a late freeze and drought, production was low. The plants are however doing well.
QUICK! Make a CD of your brain gardening information and mail it using one day mail to my address - I love you. :o)
I will copy all you put in that post and study it. The lowly onion appears to be complicated. Here is the onion seed I have:
Evergreen Bunching
Onion Parade (Bunching Type)
Borettana Cipollini
Yellow Sweet Spanish Utah
Since I haven’t read all your info. yet, do you know just off the top of your head, that the Sweet Spanish won’t grow right for me in Conroe, Texas, 40 miles north of Houston?
I like greens. ;)
/johnny
I’m not sure the sweet spanish utah will make decent sized bulbs for you. If it doesn’t, you’ll still have green onions. It’s not a waste or anything.
The granex type onions here are open pollinated. (scroll to the very last entry on the page)
https://www.kitchengardenseeds.com/cgi-bin/catview.cgi?_fn=Product&_category=167
If you want to save onion seed, read up on that. It’s not for the faint hearted.
Also, onion seed only lasts for about a year. Unlike tomato/pepper/squash seeds which last for 3-5 years. I haven’t tried putting the seed in with a dessicant and freezing it from year to year as I haven’t had any seed left over yet. If you don’t have room, you might try that. The very least that happens is a teeny bit of wasted freezer space.
As I mentioned, my onion knowledge is the school of hard knocks. I posted ‘why won’t my onions make a bulb’ on a gardening board and got an education :) So, now I know :)
It should be a ok. I dump paper in my composter all the time. Gotta have some brown and and green ya know?
No, we did have 5, but as keeping chickens are ILLEGAL in my neighborhood, we had to harvest them once they really started sounding off. No one around here (near by countryside) wants roosters, so that was the only option.
Our hens are the last of the little chicks. Will be getting a couple more next year. I really enjoy them, but I live in fear that the animal control guy will catch us. He is pretty hard core.
I use some cardboard for the garden, and recycle some. This year we are fortunate to have some old carpet, that hubby plans to put down between is raised rows in the garden to avoid the mud mess in spring.
When I kept my Fluffy in the garage last winter for about 2 months, she began to lay really well. But out in the coop/enclosure the two Sussex lay infrequently except in mid-summer. The white Leghorn, she is a great layer. The problem is they began to peck her eggs - now I have to get there just as she gets up from laying or I don’t get the egg. I’m working on a simple brooder box that may defeat their snack attacks.
Glad to hear from you. I was wondering about you, and how it was going out there.
That danged gorebull warming! Maybe that means we all need to take a few more trips! LOL We can’t just depend on the Hollywood, Politicians, and 1 percenters to fly around sucking up fossil fuels and helping to warm us up.LOL
I might stick my nose out if we ever get a 50 degree day, but that’s not happening any time soon. We are still getting snain at this moment, and we’ve made the news according to the teaser just on for the news at 10.
Stay safe, and stay warm.
Hubby made a run to town with the grand daughter to get some stuff she wanted for weekend projects. He brought back a big can of chocolate covered cookies. They are sooooo good, but I will have to limit myself on the consumption or else suffer negative consequences.LOL
I'll be drinking tea - not beer, and watching Friday Night Lights, or some classic movies. I hear that I 44 had a really deadly accident from wrong way driver. Traffic is backed up for miles.
I am so glad that I don't have to commute to St. Louis daily any more. Also glad that my daughter is safely home from her daily commute as well.
Stay home, relax, and enjoy the weekend! It sounds great to me.
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