We’ve written before about our pretty unsuccessful attempts to grow onions from seed. Although we did have a small crop of onions to pick every year, they’d always been much smaller than they were supposed to be. Every year we made sure we did everything by the book. We used fresh seeds, planted them on time, in the best location and at the right distance. Still, the results had never been the ones we expected.
Therefore, this year we decided to try it again. For the last time before we give up growing onions completely. After all, they’re cheap to buy at the shops, so there isn’t any financial justification for the hassle. Apart from eating your own, fresh produce from your own garden, of course.
So we chose to plant a nice, reliable, good-size cultivar called Stoccarde bought from the Ryton Organic Gardens, home to Garden Organic and a local attraction in our area. Again, we followed the instructions accurately, from sowing to planting out. The only change from previous years was the location we chose for the seedlings. Instead of transplanting the young plants to the side garden, we found them a place in one of the vegetable beds in the front garden. The same bed that the huge beetroot we wrote about the other week came from.
The new location – in full-sun position - must have been all they needed and has made a huge difference. For the first time, our onions grew happy and reached the size promised on the packet. We couldn’t be more pleased with this year’s success, and are now thinking that we’ll grow onions again next year. As long as they do well, they’re likely to be permanent residents of our summer garden.
As the plants reached maturity and their leaves started to turn yellow, we lifted them from their earthy bed and left them out in the sun to dry for a few days. We ‘tested’ a few of them in various dishes and then decided to put the others into storage, for the days to come. We platted them to the best of our skills – as I’d seen my grandparents do when I was a child – and hung them in the shed.
This might not look like the neatest platting in the world, but I still think there’s something strangely beautiful about our bunch of onions hanging like Christmas baubles on the peeling wall of our shed.
