Posts Tagged onions
Home Grown Onions
Out of all of the crops that I have grown, onions have probably been the easiest. They can be grown from seeds or transplanted as sprouts. Onions are pretty tolerant of soil conditions, pest and diseases. That makes them a perfect choice for a home garden.
One of the more popular onions are the 10-15Y. The 10-15 stands for the date that the onion seed should be planted – October 15th. The “Y” stands for Yellow – as in Yellow Onion.
Local feed and fertilizer stores should get 10-15Y onion sprouts in around December or so. If you do not want to plant from seed, just buy some sprouts and put them in your garden.
Use some organic potting soil, or manure for slow release nitrogen. After the first month, throw some 21-0-0 around the onions and water very good. The nitrogen will promote the growth of green shoots, which will be used by the onion to make the ball.
Somewhere around the middle of summer the tops of the onions will start to die. That is when its time to dig up the onion ball and store in a cool dry place. Or, you can dice the onions up and dehydrate them, or dice them up and store in the freezer.
Patio Gardening Project 3rd Update
Patio Gardening Project Episode 4 – The first set of radishes that were planted 3 weeks ago are coming along nicely. The second set of radish leaves have sprouted, and the bigger leaves are about 2 inches across.
The Spinach has not done too much of anything.
The onions have come along nicely with about 6 – 8 inches of growth in 2 weeks.
If you have any comments, please post them in the patio gardening thread of the forums.
Home grown onions
Onions
Home grown onions are an easy item to grow. Even for those gardeners that have a black thumb and kill everything they touch, onions should still be able to live through the touch of death.
The way onions grow, they have several shoots that come off the main root. These shoots develop sugars, which then go into the bulb and help the bulb grow. When the shoots start to die, that is a sign that the sugars are going into the root ball.
When stored properly, most onion root balls can be stored through the winter. In early spring some types of onions will start developing shoots, which is a sign that they should be planted.
How to feed a family
These days people are not only worried about this house note, or their electric bill, they are also worried about something much more basic – and that is food. There is hardly anything that grieves a mothers heart more, then to open a kitchen cabinet, and it be empty.
An economic report from February 2009 said that around 700,000 – 800,000 people lost their jobs in that one month. Less people have jobs, so less bills get paid. But the one thing that must be bought is food. But what if someone told you that you do not have to buy food? That you can grow your own.
Its true. Regardless of what people have been told for the past 30, 40 or 50 years, food does not come from a grocery store – it comes from the ground. At first I did not believe it. I honestly thought that the grocery stores used some kind of magic to make the food appear out of thin air.
We have been enslaved to the grocery store for decades. People have paid others to do their work for them. Its time to break those chains.
Planting a fall garden
A fall garden should be a serious consideration for any survivalist. Spring and summer crops are one thing, but late season crops deserve special consideration.
Examples of cool weather and cold weather crops are – Cabbage, turnips, rutabagas, mustard greens and onions. Garlic should be a consideration as well.
Rutabagas: After world war 2, the rutabaga helped stop most of Germany from starving to death. Rutabagas seem to grow pretty good in cold weather. My ex-father in law grew a field of rutabagas in the middle of winter. I remember walking out into this field during the wet and cold middle of winter, and there was this green patch of Rutabaga tops. My first thought was – “wow, how can these things grow in the winter?”
When adding potting soil to your garden, avoid the cheap potting soil sold at places like wal-mart. This stuff has been know to have pieces of plastic and other trash in it. Sometimes you get what you pay for, and when you buy cheap potting soil, you get just that – cheap dirt.