On Tue, 27 Apr 2004 19:54:15 GMT, Dawn
wrote:

I'm trying my luck with onions this year. I bought a bag of "red" onion
bulbs. The planting instructions give me three choices: red onions ,
green table onions, and dry onions. I think I understand the first two
choices, but I don't know what the third choice gets me. The directions
say to 'harvest when fully matured and air dry.' I'm having trouble
imagining an air dried onion.


Dawn


The red onion bulbs.. I'm hoping were sets, about the diameter of a
dime? That's the recommended size, those being too much bigger may
just try to bolt and go to seed.

Technically they *are* dry onions. They're just small dry onions
planted the previous year late enough in the year that they would not
grow very large, and so would just go dormant, and grow the next year.
So they've been packaged sold, and you plant them in your garden,
poking into the ground up to the neck and soil firmed so just the tops
of the sets are visible.

Once they're up, you may have some too closely planted. You can thin
them out and use the thinnings as green onions aka scallions. Chop
them up and put them in your salad or wherever you want some green
onions. As the remaining onions grow, keep them well weeded, moist
but not soggy and they'll grow happily. If you notice them starting to
bolt.. grow a flower spike in the center that starts to shoot up,
twist that out.. and figure on using that plant for green onions.

AS the onions grow they get larger and larger and seem to be growing
above ground with just the roots in the soil and maybe a 1/3 of the
bulb. Ones I grew one year were nearly just sitting on top of the
soil by the time they were done.

Unfortunately there is an onion maggot that gets into them here, and I
think it's a fly that lays the eggs, but I'm not 100% sure, just like
the turnip maggot. I don't want to do diazanon drenches weekly in
order to grown them, so I figure I'd just as soon buy them as pour
that stuff on MY soil. They've already don that on THEIR soil. The
other option is to use floating row covers, but I'd have to open it up
to weed I figured, and that would give the flies access. However I
think I'd try it again now if I were able, by laying down several
layers of newspapers an cutting holes to put the onion set through,
and cover the whole thing with remay. The newspaper should keep the
soil damp to start with, and discourage the pigweed and grass
seedlings which are the majority of the weeds in my yard, and that
would decrease on the time I'd have to uncover the onions to weed.

There are potato or multiplier onions that are perennial that fill out
the season before onions are mature, and there are egyptian onions
whose tops are very sweet in the early spring. They get kind of hot
and woody as they prepare to shoot up and grow the little bulblettes
that grow on the tops. You can use the little bulblettes. They're
also called Walking onions as the bulblettes get heavy eventually and
the leave they're atop falls over.. planting their young the distance
of the length of the leaf that fell over. I've had "happy" plants get
3 to 4 feet tall, but that was back when I was hauling home literally
TONS of spoiled hay, horse manure and associated bedding, and steer
manure, anything I could get hold of free. One year I got enough
spoiled alfalfa to lay down over the whole yard a "leaf" or "flake" of
hay deep.. about 3 to 4 inches thick. The front yard was 30 x 35
feet, one section of the back was 70' x 25 and the other around 25 x
30 feet. That was a lot of hay. It was stacked in the driveway and
was about 5' tall and 9' wide and 15 or so feet long.. and wouldn't
you know it, there were a bunch of out of town insurance execs in town
and they chose *JUST* that time to drive by my house. Needless to say,
they canceled my insurance LOL. There was a dip in the roof they
didn't like too, and didn't like that I had some boarded up windows
(dark room ) and that hay. The dip was a cracked rafter. I got it
jacked up and fixed .. but found out that my old hovel has rough cut
2x4 rafters that aren't as close together as 2x6 ones should be.
*sigh* Oh well, been that way since 1944, guess they'll last as long
as I do. ;-)

Janice