Putting in the 2021 Onion Crop

Every year we order our onions from a company called Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas.  We love onions and plant a bunch of them - actually 3 bunches.  Each 'bunch' contains between 50-75 onions and they deliver around January 1st.  They come shipped in the mail and as soon as you get them you open them up.

Directions state to open the box and spread them out until ready to plant.  We ordered 1 bunch of Texas 1015 Sweet Onions and 2 bunches of Short Day Samplers.  The short day samplers contain Texas 1015 Sweet onions, white onions, and Creole onions.  The package contains a pamphlet called "Onion & Leek Planting Guide" and is full of good information on caring for your crop.  Additionally, throughout the growing seasons Bruce "The Onion Man" Frasier, sends out emails to assist you in growing a great crop.  I highly recommend Dixondale Farm Onions.  Click HERE for the Dixondale Farms website.

Saturday proved to be a nice day to get the onions in the ground.  I tied a string from fencerow to fencerow to make a straight row.

We use the "Back to Eden" gardening method so our soil is covered with four inches of wood chip mulch.  I rake back the mulch under the string with a rock rake to expose the soil.  Then we hoe up a narrow strip for planting and add chicken litter and biochar that has been inoculated with composted cow manure.

I use an old screwdriver as a planting tool.  I poke the screwdriver in the soil and plant an onion plant in the resulting hole, being very careful to only plant the onion plant 1 inch deep.  Any deeper and you run the risk of the plant not bulbing.

The onions are planted 4 inches apart.  In no time at all, the onions were all planted!  Five rows of beautiful onions.  

We will keep them watered and weeded and will nurture them until harvest time.  Can't wait!  Nothing like French Onion Soup,  Or caramelized onions!

Do Onions Make You Cry?

When the tops of the onions turn slightly yellow, bend and fall over, they are sending a signal to you that it is time to harvest them.  This year we planted three bundles of Short Day Samplers that consist of Texas 1015 Sweet, Creole Red, and White onions.  The onions got off to a very bad start.  Our can got into the garden and proceeded to dig up an entire row of freshly planted onions.  I replanted them, but a bunch of them had already dried out.  Oh well, we got some to harvest.  In the photo below you can see that they have fallen over.

I pulled them up and laid them on top of the hay.  This allows them to dry in the sun for a day or two.  Unfortunately, it had just rained, and it was very hot and humid.  I'm not sure how much "drying" is going to take place.

After a couple of days, I went back to the garden to cut off the tops and put the onions in crates for further curing.  Here is a Texas Sweet 1015:

Here is a white onion.  These actually did the best this year.  Not many of the Texas Sweets survived.  Too bad, as those are my favorites.  The Creoles' bulbs are smaller than the others.

After I snipped off the onion tops, I loaded the onions into our garden wagon.  I'll bring these inside to continue drying in lower humidity.

Our yield of onions was noticeably smaller than in previous years.  I attribute that to THE CAT, a very wet growing season, and I did lose some to rot.  In fact, some of the smaller Creole onions are soft right now.  I'll have to watch them closely.  If the onions don't dry properly, I'll have to quickly chop them and freeze them so that they don't all go bad on me.  We love onions and although our 2019 crop wasn't exactly up to par, we'll try again next year!  We'll not cry over the onions... well, at least not until we cut them up to cook with them.

Getting the Onions in the Ground

During the first week of January, a package arrived at our door that I had been expecting.  Late last year I ordered 3 bundles of onion sets from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, TX.  This is my third year planting onions from them and I highly recommend them.  I ordered the Short Day Sampler which contains Red Creole Onions, White Onions, and Texas 1015 Sweet Onions.  They came in a box with instructions to take them out of the box and put them in a cool, dry place until time to plant.

The cost is reasonable and you can order online.

They send instructions on planting and care in the box, but they also email you a wealth of information to help you grow the best onions possible. 

They advise to plant pretty quickly because the earlier you plant them - the bigger they get, but the wet conditions we've had prohibited that from happening.  This past weekend was the first semi-dry time between storms, so I figured I had better get them in the ground.  A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how we were using "metal mulch" to crowd out weeds.  In the photo below I pulled aside two rows of tin to expose soil to start planting.  You can see the area to the right has tons of winter grass, proving the tin to be successful in keeping out weeds and providing soil ready for planting.

Planting onions is easy!  You simply separate each individual bulb, poke a hole with your finger, insert the onion set and cover.  You don't want to plant any deeper than 1 inch or the onion won't bulb properly.

You want to plant the onions 4 inches apart to give them room to expand.  As soon as the onions show growth, I'll mulch all around the onions with hay to discourage weed pressure that would crowd out the onions.

I was able to enlist Russ' help to plant.  I simply made a trench about an inch deep and poured some organic garden soil.  This wasn't really necessary, but the garden itself was still very wet.  Planting directly into the garden would have been planting directly in mud and not a good idea.

When all was said and done, we had five rows of onions planted.  They take about 110 days to mature. 

As I mentioned we planted 3 bunches of onions this year.  Last year we planted 2 bunches.  A bunch contains between 50 and 75 plants.  After we harvested last year's crop, we stored them indoors in an old milk crate and were able to keep them for 6 months!  We were very pleased with their production, taste, and storage.  Hopefully we'll have another bumper crop this year!