Saturday, May 23, 2009

Invasion of the Monster Onions - And Making a Raised Bed - Easy!


Invasion of the Monster Onions!

These Volunteer (Second Year) Onions are getting entirely out of hand! Does anyone know if they might be dangerous? They seemed to be pretty tame when I took this picture yesterday. The're certainly outgrowing the onion patch! I'm afraid they may get too confident and leave the onion patch. And get out of the garden gate! Then What?

Does anyone know how to collect seeds from these things. They are just ordinary little bulb, stick-'em in the ground green onions. Last year was definitely not a good year for my onions. This year they seem to be doing quite a bit better.



Simple Raised Bed Methods
The soil for this 4 X 8 plot had enough clay in it to grow clay pots and little else. I amended it of course with a mix of topsoil, cotton boll compost and a little commercially processed steer manure. It seems to be paying off this year! I made my 4 X 8 plot by using 3 "Garden Timbers". Two full length timbers made the sides and the third - cut in half - made the ends. Lowe's or Home Depot or your local hardware store should have the 6 inch galvanized spikes to nail the corners together. 4 should do. You won't be moving it much. If you want it more than 3 -1/2 inch deep, you just nail another layer of Garden Timbers on top of that. And maybe even another layer. Two rows would make it 7 inches deep. 3 layers, 10 -1/2 inches deep. Another method for making a raised bed is to use ordinary concrete blocks. Fill the holes with dirt.
Lay down a 6 mil sheet of plastic or better and add dirt or water. If you add water, you could now raise beautiful Koi. But i digress....

Another method for makeing a raised bed is to use Common 2 X 12 Lumber. Not Treated. Paint or seal the outside and possibly use a plastic liner to protect the wood from deteriorating. A few years back, people were often using old tractor tires and truck tires for raised beds. Not Good! There is the danger of Chromium leaking into the soil so I've heard,As well as noxious fumes. Especially from newer tires when that July sun starts bearing down. Check this out for yourself before using tires to plant edibles in!

So now you have some ideas about making raised beds for your garden. But I still don't know what to do with those two Gargantuan Onions!

Bob
GrandBob
Copyright Robert Mader 2009

All Rights Reserved


Note:

I would enjoy hearing about your experiences (or inexperiences!) raising onions. I first attempted to grow Big Bulb onions 5 years ago. It took 3 years and 3 tries before I raised decent onions. Now I am starting out in an entirely new bed in entirely different (clay) soil) and I think I just might have a handle on raising these things again. Please leave a comment about your trials with onions - and any hints. I have a long post coming up this fall or winter about how to raise them and I would like your input too! Thank you folks. I try to answer my mail promptly. You can e-mail me at RobertLee97@GMail.Com. Or just leave a comment here. I'll get it right away.

1 comment:

David said...

This is my second year trying onions. Last year, I planted the onions too late and too deep so the bulb only grew a little (about the size of a tangerine). The stalk however, grew huge and eventually flowered. You have to let the flower open fully but, if you cut the stalk when the flower bulb is closed, it will open anyway. Once it opens, cut it and let it dry.
I put the flower head inside a brown paper bag and shook it. I got A LOT of seeds this way. I planted some seeds this year and they actually sprouted and they are young right now. I could pull them up and eat them like spring salad onions if I wanted it.
The onions I grew from set are not growing too well. I don't know if it is because of all the rain we got recently but some are plain sad looking. I planted them in soil made according to Mel Bartholomew's recipe (for square foot gardening) and I did not plant them too deep. I think they should be much bigger by now but I'll leave them in the ground to see what happens.