Seed Sowing: Onions

The only seed sowing I've begun so far is my onion seeds. I started these back in February:

• Bronze D'Amposta red onions (ordered from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds)
• Sweet Spanish  (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
• Red Burgundy (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)
• Hybrid Granex Yellow (Ferry Morse, purchased at local garden center)

I planted 5 of each seed. I got a good germination rate from the Baker Creek seeds-- 3 out of 5 germinated. I'm most excited to try these onions. They're described as "sweet...A great variety for fresh eating, as it is not too hot tasting." I think that means I won't repel my husband when I move in for a kiss.

Germination rates:
1 Sweet Spanish onion germinated, 3 out 5 Red Burgundy onions germinated, and only 1 of that wacky hybrid one germinated, but it promptly shriveled and died. Hybrids!

I think red onions are so pretty and I hope that my red onions seedlings pull through.

I mentioned weeding out my onion patch in my last post. I planted this onion patch in Fall 2011, and last summer harvested about 2 pounds of onions. I left the others in the ground (show in picture above) and they survived the winter. It smelled really good when I was weeding last weekend!

 {{Here's what I harvested last summer from the onion patch.}}

Sadly, I cannot remember what variety they are!! That really bugs me because I'd love to grow more of them. They are mild and slightly sweet, and the flavor is very concentrated. A little bit goes a long way when I'm cooking and they're OK when eaten raw.

I also have a small garlic patch, which happened by accident. I call this variety Farmers' Market garlic because I bought a head of garlic at the farmers' market last fall, put in it in the ceramic garlic house when I got home, and forgot all about it. A couple of weeks later I went to use it, and the cloves had sprouted little stems. So I broke them apart and planted them in my raised bed out back.

Are you growing onions or garlic?

June Harvests

It was too hot this weekend to do anything but stay inside and watch the Olympic trials. The streets were more crowded than usual, traffic seemed as heavy as it does during weekday rush hour. I wonder if these were all people who had lost power and were going somewhere cool? So lucky we didn't lose power from the Friday night storm.


We've harvested a fair amount of vegetables so far. The jalapeno and green bell peppers above came from the plants we overwintered. The bell peppers were small and total weight was about 10 ounces. The handful of jalapenos were about 2 ounces (they're small but mighty!)




In other pepper news, our new banana pepper plant has cranked out about 4 ounces worth of peppers. We put some on the grill last week when cooking burgers, and they had a nice mild flavor, not spicy at all.


That tiny zucchini looks like a jalapeno pepper. Sneaky!


We're in a lull right now with the squash plants. We've harvested about 2 1/2 pounds of zucchini and yellow squash so far, but the plants seem to be on break now. I've seen a lot of male flowers, and only two or three females amongst all the plants. We usually help the fruit along with some hand pollination, though I have seen quite a few bees in the garden.




Finally, we have garlic and onions. We stuck the sprouting garlic cloves in the ground last fall just to see if they'd grow into something, having never grown garlic before. The tops were brown and on the ground, and this is what popped up when I pulled them. Nothing big here, but it's nice to have some garden fresh garlic in the pantry, especially when participating in my local meal challenges. Same for the onions--these two onions weight about half a pound and smell so good! There are still a few more in the ground which look ready to harvest, so I'll be pulling them this week.


Thanks to everyone who left encouraging comments on my last post about my potatoes' death. I guess these things just happen sometimes. Hope you're staying cool, wherever you are.

Update: Forgot to mention that I'm linking up with Daphne's Dandelions to show off my harvests. Check out her site to see what other gardeners have harvested.

I'm also linking up with Two Gardens' Garden Bloggers Harvest Day. Visit their site to see their own beautiful photos and what gardeners around the world are harvesting.