January marks another important time in the garden. Time to plant onions. On January 1st we plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into seed pots for transplant into the garden later on. On January 2nd, we plant onions directly into the garden. In December I ordered from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas two Short Day Samplers which consist of Creole Red Onions, Texas White Onions and Texas 1015 Sweet Onions. I also ordered 1 bundle of Yellow Granex Onions.
They came in the mail quickly, and I opened the box. Most of the onions are the diameter of a pencil or less. They arrived healthy.
Planting the onions takes a little work. First, you dig a trench four inches wide and four inches deep. To this trench, you apply fertilizer. I applied ammonium sulfate to the bottom of the trench at a rate of 1/2 cup per 10 linear feet. You can see it in the bottom of the trench below.
Then I covered the trench up. Then I dug a shallow trench 6 inches on either side of the fertilizer trench and planted the onions 1 inch deep and 4 inches apart. I use a nifty digging knife that my son Russ bought me. It is sharp and wide and has measurements engraved on the blade. It is perfect for planting onions.
It was an involved process and not kind to the back, but we got the job done.
When all was said and done, I had four and a half rows of onions planted in the garden! I went back and counted them and found that I had just planted 296 onions! That's what we planted last year.
Tricia let me know that we ran out of onions today from the crop we harvested from the summer. She had to go to the grocery store and buy 3 lbs of onions to cook supper. Well, we were able to eat off of the harvested onions for 6 1/2 months. That's not too bad. And we have onions in the ground that we'll harvest this summer. I checked on them today and they are already putting on new growth. It looks like they are well established.
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