When Onions Make You Cry

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. - Albert Einstein

Back in THIS POST, we announced our planting of a new crop for us – Onions, three different types to be exact: Red Creole, Texas White and 1015 Texas sweet.  We have planted green onions before as well as shallots, but have never planted regular onions that bulb.  We love onions and I figured it was high time we grew our own.

I planted according to the directions and followed all the recommended steps, keeping the onion row weeded and applying chicken litter.  Then I marked my calendar for the harvest date.  We planted 42 onions as I recall and was looking forward to the harvest.

I like to talk about when we have successes.  It is kind of fun to reflect on victories.  Our first onion crop was not a victory and it is only transparent that I show our failures as well.  The harvest date coincided with the material that I read that informed me that onions were ready for harvest when the tops fall over.

Ripened Onions

Here is a closer look at a couple of the Texas Sweet onions. 

Sweet Onions

Now so far, you might be saying, “Why is that a failure?  They look fine to me.”  And you would be correct.  However, I haven’t shown you anything that would show you scale.  As an aside, the above picture gives another clue as to why our first onion crop failed.  We’ll talk about that in a minute.

Here is a blurry photo of one of each of the three varieties of onions that I pulled that would give you an indication of scale.  Hint: My hands aren’t huge.  These are small onions.  Not cocktail onions, but not exactly what I was hoping for.

Handful of small onions

There were a few that were bigger than that.  As you can see below, I pulled a couple that were “tennis ball size.”

The biggest of the bunch

I gathered my sad little bucket of onions and headed to the patio.

Bucket of onions

I’ll lay them out on a table and allow them to dry for a week or so and then we’ll take them inside, chop them up and eat them.  We’re not going to cry over the lackluster onion harvest.  Oh, we may cry a little when we chop them, but that’ll be from the chemical irritant they produce when cut, not from our lamentations over the small onions!

Drying on the Table

While I consider this a failure, I’ll rationalized by saying that this was our first time planting them.  The first year we planted peanuts, our yield was pathetic.  However, it has increased every year as we’re learning more about peanuts, how to grow them, care for them and how to avoid the pitfalls.  We’ll do the same with onions.  I’m not giving up.  Next year we’re going to do much better.

So what went wrong?  Well, I read up a lot of information on it and I’ve narrowed it down to soil fertility.  The row that I planted the onions on was from a truck load of dirt (sold as topsoil) that I had delivered last fall and moved to the garden.  The very word “topsoil” makes you think that it is fertile soil taken from the top layer of earth.  While that may be true, I don’t think this soil had good fertility.  It didn’t have much organic matter and packed down pretty hard.  Although I did add chicken manure and kept the onion row weeded to avoid competition from weeds, the onions just didn’t get the nutrients they needed to flourish.

Next year!  Isn’t that what every gardener says?  Next year is going to be the best garden!  I don’t know about that, but I have a whole year to amend the soil and boost its fertility.  Also, next year I’ll plant the onions in another location with improved soil and better fertility.  Meanwhile, I’ll see if these little onions might not be big on taste.