Earlier this spring, I stopped by a little greenhouse not far from home and picked up a few bunches of onion sets. I’m pretty sure you could grow them from seed if you had A) any time, B) any space, or C) the equipment..benches, grow lights, etc. Since I don’t have any of those things, I buy sets.
These sets are tiny little onions waiting to be unleashed. By the time you buy them at the nursery, they can be anywhere up to the diameter of a pencil. Once the soil is warm enough, plant your mini-pencil-onions about 6 inches apart from one another and cover with dirt. We’ve learned that the spacing really is important, and for a very simple reason: if your onions are planted too close together they won’t grow to be very large. Which is fine – that way you can use an entire onion all at once rather than have half of a giganto onion floating around in the fridge.
Anyway, our old neighbor (the one I wrote about a while back) always said that your onions should never see the August sun – otherwise they start to get hot. Which means – in light of all the work we’ve been doing on the house – July 31st was harvest day!
We had white, red, yellow, Texas sweets, and a variety called candy. Because I am a master gardener, I completely neglected to label the different varieties. Red and white I’ve got; otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, there are three different sizes of yellow onions. J
Because we planted so many, we had so many to give away. My grandparents got a batch; my bosses took several; the couple helping with my house got a bag full.. And we’ve still got onions. Lots, actually. Which is awesome because they’ll keep in the basement through the winter. Leave them dirty in a cool, dark place and they’ll keep as long as we need them to – usually they’re gone before any have the chance to spoil.
Happy Tuesday!
