First of all Onions!!! – I have now dug up all the Winter planted ones – and all the Spring panted ones – as you can see:
The Winter sown onions drying in the barn (the white ones are really very strong when used for cooking)
And the Spring sown ones – drying on the outside bench:
In all – 400 planted – about 250 grew enough to be used. This works to about 5 a week – I calculated in earlier posts that 7 a week would be needed for cooking – taking us to the same time next year – when the next harvest is being dug. At 5 a week we are not far off – I now need to use the proportional rate – 400 to 250 to calculate the number to be planted next year to have onions each day!!! As a basic calculation its a 62.5% success rate – so I need to plant nearly 600 (584) to get one onion a day. Yikes! (alternatively have fish and chips every night and don’t need to grow any onions for cooking )
About 90% of the onions will keep – so the ones that wont will be used first – they are the thicker stemmed ones – a sign that the started to grow again.
Anyway, elsewhere.
I actually hate this time of year – the whole excitement of Spring is nearly over – it’s all coming ready to harvest – and then dying back – its like its all over. As you can see – PSB growing, Climbing beans looking good finally, and Sweetcorn – already eaten some of these – they are real weather vanes – the corn has grown all the way up except an inch at the top – when the sun got too hot and the daily rain stopped. However they taste fantastic.
I’ve covered the peas and they are growing fast – I’m watering daily rather than leaving them to get on with it, in the hope this will speed things along a bit and get me a harvest before the first frost.
Look closely, they are there – bloody caterpillars……………not sure whether to get all organically chemical or just let the chickens have a go to clear them up – there are a lot of Cabbage White Butterflies about at the moment, but I need to stamp on this quickly.
Sweetcorn!!! Seems I am growing a dwarf variety – which it turns out is a good thing if you are a field mouse – you can reach the cobs!!
Haricot Beans – growing like good’uns – I will let these grow then dry them out – and they will be used for cooking during the Winter.
The result of about 2 metres of Potatoes. Pathetic. And they have blight. Just rubbish.
EDIT
These were our last onion harvest before we moved to our present location
Still, you’ve got onions..I have no idea having planted onions how they look when you pull them up – I hope, like yours!
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I hope they do to – you have to dry them off for a little while – until the outer, shabbier skin can be rolled off by your hand – to produce a lovely golden onion (or white etc)
I’ve added another picture to the blog post to show how a previous harvest was kept.
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