Expanding the Garden to Jam in a Bunch of Onions

Mark, a faithful Patreon supporter who started supporting my work during the height of the Covid pandemic earlier this year, was generous enough to also send me a bunch – and by a bunch I mean 400 – of onion starts for fall.

Not only that, I also have more garlic, some green onions, and a bunch of multiplier onions from my friend Greg that need to be planted.

All that to say – it’s now Amaryllidaceae Day here at the Good Homestead!

Yesterday I plowed up a big area with my favorite borrowed tractor, just for onions:

That’s the ticket, right there. What a lovely blank canvas! Here’s a shot from the other corner:

I am going to plant the onions in rows 18″ apart, like I did with these brassicas:

Just gotta drag my row marker thing this morning and start planting. You can see this easy-to-make row marker thing in action in this video:

When life gives you onions, plant them!

I think the tiller boards on my homemade row maker are deep enough that I can easily plant all these onion starts.

As an aside, when I was using the tractor yesterday I re-did the main path through the garden and it looks great.

To the left of the path you can see the three rows of multiplier onions I already planted. They are thriving on Steve Solomon’s fertilizer mix. To the left you can see a half-bed of onions that did not get a dose of Solomon’s Gold:

Ouch! They are tiny!

Experiments aside, the market garden rows are doing well. I hope we can grow some onions in the new area. I’ve not had luck with onions but I only tried once some years ago. If we get a few hundred well-bulbed onions in the spring I would be thrilled.

I tilled in some 10-10-10 and some of Steve’s fertilizer mix in the newly tilled area and have high hopes. Based on the other single-row gardens, I think this hope is justified. I’ll film a video as I plant today, then you can watch their progress over the winter.

Stay tuned.

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