We’ve put a couple of crops in the ground (or in a potting flat) so far this spring. The first lettuce, spinach, cabbage, bok choi, broccoli, kale, chard, and mustard greens are sprouting in the cold frame and in the greenhouse. The first planting of peas is in the garden, but no sprouts yet. We also planted some grape vines under the trellis we built last fall. The grapes are Catawbas (a nice red grape) and Niagaras (a tangy white grape). We’ll be on the lookout for those grapes in 2-3 years.
Today didn’t go as planned. The plan was for Lindsey to help me put together the rest of the portable hen house that I’ve been working on for a while. Unfortunately, the drill bits did not feel like cooperating today. I had 3 bits of the correct size. Two of them broke on the same hole and the third was not sharp enough to work correctly. So rather than going back into town and getting more drill bits, we decided that we should do something else. More drill bits will be procured later, and the portable hen house will debut on the blog soon. Hopefully.
The second plan was to finish putting in fence posts in the first section of fence in the front field. But the recent rains filled the post holes we dug with water and they aren’t done draining yet, so setting posts would have to be delayed too. Posts tend to wobble when you set them in mud.
So then we went to Plan C. Plan C was planting onions. We had gotten red, white, and yellow onion sets from the Amish general store close by. Onion sets are basically little baby onions. Onions are biennial. The sets have been grown from seed in one year, pulled from the ground as tiny little bulbs, and then these tiny bulbs are planted the following spring so they can complete their development into large onions.
To plant the sets, put the little onions root side down with the top of the set even with or just below the soil surface. We staggered the sets in 2 lines so that all the onions end up about 4 inches apart. Then we covered them slightly and watered them in.
We planted 3 rows of the sweet yellow onions, 2 rows of the sweet/peppery white onions, and 2 rows of the spicy red onions on the sides of the raised beds in the new garden. We also put 2 mini-rows of the white onions in the old garden. Finally, we planted a short mixed row of white and yellow onions really close together (only about an inch apart) to grow for green onions. For green onions you plant them really close together like that, then harvest the green tops before the bulbs get large enough to crowd each other.
That’s a lot of potential onions for $6.
Happy Saturday!
Good Life Ranch 