Transplanting onions.

In November, we set up two 20 foot low tunnel gardens. In one 2' x 5' section I broadcast onion seeds. This was my first attempt at winter gardening.

All winter we watched as the plants slowly germinated. I knew I was late in planting, but better late than never. As the weeks passed I watched as the plants SLOOOWWLY germinated. In Februrary my onions looked like tiny wisps of green hair and I thought there was no hope. The onion tops were yellow and frankly they looked sick. As the weather warmed up, however, life zoomed into my tunnels at lightning speed. All of a sudden in March my onions had grown 4 inches.

Because I had broadcast the seed, the little green shoots were everywhere and far too close. Ivie told me how to transplant and that rather than hurting the onions, the disturbance actually stimulates them to develop into a bulb rather than just greens.

This is her formula:

First, water the soil so the plants pull out easily.

Second, gently pull them out. I used a trowel so I could lift a section at a time with dirt still on. I don't think this was necessary, but I will do it again next time as it worked so well.

The little onion looked so small and frail. Alison (my 12 yr old redhead) thought it was great entertainment to announce how much "hair" they had had on their head as she troweled them out of their home.

I had already prepared a spot of soil with mushroom compost, mulch from our local landfill, Ivie's chicken compost (we'll do another post on that later), and my rather flat and lifeless dirt. Hopefully this mixture will taste delicious to my little plantlings.

Then we replanted leaving about 2 - 3 inches between each green. 

It went quickly and now all I need to do is water. 

A rather exciting day for a newbie gardener. It is kind of hard to see, but the long thin section to the left of my glorious lettuce patch is my new onion row. In a few weeks I will let you know how the onions turned out. Today they are under about 4 inches of April snow. Errgh. If I only had put another tunnel over them.

This has been an amazing couple of months for gardening.  I will try to take pictures and write about them tomorrow.  Today however, as I was mixing up cinnamon roll dough and feeding my natural yeast starts, I decided I had to make a post.  I am constantly amazed at the miracle of my starts.  I have three.

The first one I sent away from from the authors of "The Art of Baking With Natural Yeast".  The second I got from a friend's sister-in-law.  My third and favorite, I started over a weekend on a visit to my sister in San Francisco.  It is a miracle.  I stirred up some flour and water, and in less than two days it would rise bread.  It is the most active start I have.  Amazing.  I use them all the time.  In my pancakes, waffles, muffins, sweet breads, and more.  I don't ever use yeast anymore.  I feel like I am really doing my family something good.  Several years ago, after reading in "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, I knew I needed to soak my grains, but it was very overwhelming.  Now, it is so easy and I feel in touch with past generations.  I love baking this way.

Last September I planted lettuce, spinach, Asian greens, carrots, Swiss chard, and onions in my garden to later be covered by low tunnels, and in my 10 X 10 greenhouse.  Everything under my low tunnels grew all winter long and I harvested regularly.  In my greenhouse, the story was not the same.  Nothing grew.  So in attempt to remedy the problems, which really are that it is just too much space to heat, and it doesn't stay wet enough, I decided to build a hugelkultur bed into the north side of the greenhouse.  This is something I have wanted to try for years.  Cindy and Jason Murray built one this spring and watching them gave me the courage to do it.  I wanted it just high enough so that water would drain off the bed into the greenhouse, but low enough so that I could vent the windows in the summer.

To begin with, I dug a hole 10ft X 2ft X 2ft.  Then, I used the largest logs from my woodpile to fill the hole and piled them up to about two feet above the ground.  I used mostly cotton wood, which breaks down fairly quickly, and apple wood, which is much harder and will take longer.  I washed as much dirt as I could down into the air spaces in hopes that it would minimize the shrinkage of the bed later.  

Then I layered wood chips and straw that has wintered over in my chicken coop, to a height of about four feet.  The chickens do a pretty good job of eating the seed from the straw, so I'm hoping not to have weeds.   Then I covered the pile with dirt I dug out of a newly planted asparagus bed along my ditch, and some mushroom compost.   I drove wood stakes through the middle to help hold it all together.  Then I added more of my straw/chicken compost.

I wanted to plant a perennial in this bed, so I chose asparagus.  Cindy and I ordered 100 asparagus starts between us, so I had to create space for 50 asparagus plants!  Asparagus likes good drainage and the moisture from the rotting wood should benefit it also.  One of the beauties of hugelkultur is that very little water should be needed because the wood has been soaking up water all winter.  I will add 6 more inches of dirt after I see some of the shoots coming up.  I also planted strawberries in this bed as they are a good companion to asparagus.  

We have had two snows since the semi-completion of this bed and it is the last place the snow sticks and the first place the snow melts, indicating that it is quite warm.  It will be a while before I know if it benefits the greenhouse, but I am hopeful.  This summer, I am going to try sweet potatoes inside the greenhouse.  They are a tropical plant and are not suited to our area.  I will post when I get them planted.