Growing Onions

Advice is so difficult to follow. Newly inspired by re-visiting my favorite gardening blogs that had become rather inactive this summer, I checked out Backyard Homestead again and got busy with my plans for next year. Ah but I can't get 20 pages without getting into cold frames and floating row covers and north-south orientations. I have pages and pages of this stuff from my homestead reading; these were guidelines when my garden was a dream, helpful pointers that could shape my work into something that would promise returns. But I'm realizing, as I make the switch from design to reality, that they make the switch from guidelines to tools. Tools you have to keep track of, and maintain. They come at a cost to implement. And without having a real clear nut to PUT the wrench on, i.e. context, the wrench is useless. LISTENING to advice makes it a guideline, FOLLOWING advice makes it a tool. Since tools have a cost and you need context to know where to put them, they can be difficult to use. I think this is what makes advice, say, the Golden Rule, receive much enthusiastic head-bobbing, but be put so rarely into practice. I wish I had a picture of a Nasturtium from my garden here to break this up. Let's move on.

Dreams have a way of dying. And it's not by critic, who if they have any effect at all are there to prune the dead leaves and false starts. And it's not by money, though this is everyone's excuse, because people CONSTANTLY don't let a little poverty get in the way of their short-term dream of a drink or a smoke or a new car. Maybe it's laziness, and by that I mean people just don't want it enough. But for those dreams we really do want, and just never get, I think it's time, an invisible but very real deadline for our dreams.

No, not death. Much sooner. I think happiness is a tool our brain uses to get us off the couch, in a sense to realize our dreams, and when our brain figures out that new DIY off-grid cabin isn't cutting it, that we are still sitting here in front of HGTV with no new sustainable forest-themed housing options in our immediate future, it switches to something else. Without the promise of that happiness reward, PSSHT out the window the dream goes. Let's move on.

Look, it took me a long time to figure out exactly how onions grow. Big secret! It's not clear in my books or online or by asking at the feed store. They start from seed, and grow an onion. If the onion stays till spring, like nature intended, it sprouts and has flowers and little onion seeds in time to die that fall. This is the same model as carrots. Onion sets and onion seeds, then, are from the same growing season. Sets just have a headstart of a month or two, which is a big deal as it turns out. Not such a big headstart for carrots, which is why you don't hear about carrot sets. Always grow from sets. My sets doubled in size, and are almost half the size of a real onion! Next year I might even try compost, weeding, and regular watering!

2 cherry tomatoes

Tasted funny, but I get excited about anything in the garden that isn't green.

Tomatoes are very heavy feeders - they are coming along nicely now that they are established, I don't know whether to credit the fertilizer last month or deep roots, but they're finally in full swing. That said, poor soil upon transplanting set them back a month.

Squash are very thirsty. Pumpkin transplanted poorly, finally flowering months later, but all three squash plants wilt on a day to day basis. Must have shallow roots.

Onions haven't gotten very big, in fact nothing produced very heavily. A couple contirbutions from each, and I think overall, without any soil amendments, the garden just gets by.

August 15th

Middle of August is like tax day for vegetables. The hammer drops, I know what made it, what will make it, and what won't. The peppers won't. Look, I just don't think they grow in Oregon. Other home gardens are hurting on the pepper front too - stores are growing decent ones but I doubt they're from around here.

Broccoli! Yesssss. Very easy plant, just takes a lot of patience. Strawberries did fine, but mice get them before I do. Just need protection for next year, that's all. No tomatoes yet, about a dozen for the year, but they are sad. They really need more nutrients than basic Oregon valley soil is prepared to offer. And warmth. Maybe mini-greenhouses next year.

Spinach bolts, and quick. Lettuce hangs around awhile, chard hangs around forever but we can't stand the taste or toughness raw. Cucumber plants are started late, so I will get maybe one green bat each. Pumpkin never took off - I only had one so more test subjects needed before I give up on them. Crookneck is my successful squash, another easy but patient plant. Onions look very small, most toppled over by now - may also be heavy feeders or just not enough sun. Again, sets are the only option here. My birdhouse gourds are weird, havent done anything. Nasturtiums are quick, hardy, beautiful. Peas came in with a light harvest and died - the pole variety produced more and live much longer. Beans are still coming around - easy and patient. Who knows what the carrots are doing - easy but didn't get enough sun in the shadiest part of my garden.

Sure would like a drip system next year. Havent weeded in months - not a real issue because, I suspect, seeds are waiting for the wet season to launch the counterattack. 6-year landscape fabric is half destroyed and crumbles between my fingers already - perhaps from UV since it wasn't covered?

Okie dokie thanks for reading - I'm curious to discover what, if any, of this information will be useful come spring.