Knowing your onions

The onions are already in.

It's slightly on the crazy side trying to work out the quantity of veg you need for the year in one shopping list.  It like a weekly shopping list but with larger quantities.

This crop is being shared between four people.  A hundred for one, two hundred for two people and four hundred for another leaving a hundred to never root or take.

Crops fail.  It seems the only way to combat this is to mix the varieties up and plant more than you need leaving some contingency.

They come out around June/July time.  Put simply it means they have to be stored from June all the way through the hot months of August and September through the winter and in to the spring.

Today, I checked last years crop and one has sprouted and there's about seventy left - they're getting used pretty quickly.  It's mid February, it's wid-winter and cold so they're going in to lots of Italians, Onion Gravy and other good stuff.

Having them rooted before planting out gives them a better chance of staying in the ground rather than getting pulled up by foxes, cats and birds.   There's a rough mix of half white to red and a couple of hundred really large Hercules Onions to bump up the crop.  They'll get planted out around early spring and in just 12 to 14  weeks of being in the ground they'll be fully grown.

Getting to know your onions has been a great thing for me.  It's the one thing that used to cause me an extra trip to the supermarket and in doing so usually another £50 over the till.   There are no cash registers around a food garden.  Each onion I pick is a big saving in petrol and things I didn't really need in the first place leaving some time and money left over for the things I enjoy more.

February is for dreaming about Icy Cold Bohemian Beer

I'm in to my second full year with the allotment and the blog is already helping me reflect on the mammoth life journey the kitchen garden really is.

Unlike my first year, there is no need for me to dig up the roots of what looked like the Amazon Rainforest.  The rigorous digging throughout last February and the choice planting of potato and other crop throughout the year has left the soil in a friable and fluffy condition.  The soil has been winter dug with a spade to kill all the soil gremlins in the freezing temperatures.

There's a new chap up at the garden that I had the pleasure of meeting at the weekend.  He has the right idea, he simply said "it'll be great in the summer to open a cold beer and put the feet up after all the hard work".   12 months ago I was saying exactly the same thing.   He's on the same page I was on last year.  The beer in your first summer tastes like the one they describe in Shawshank Redemption when they're on work release from the prison tarring the roof.

If you fancy drinking your Icy Cold Bohemain Beer, the best time to take the an allotment having done so is late summer going in to winter.  It gives you time to clear the ground for the first time and remove all the plants and weeds to make preparations for sowing seeds and planting.  It is a very manual laborious task.  It's a personal journey that I can see the new guy is going through.  Payback is of course sometime in the future so the first spade depth that you dig is literally paying it forward 12 months for a taste of something special.

So what's great about February?  Well, today there's food in the ground.!  Lots of it.   Kale, Leeks, Sprouts, Carrots and Cabbage.  Whether it's a Sunday dinner or Sausage & Mash it's all there when you include your potatos and onions that were harvested 6 months earlier.

If you are starting to dig, take it from me the payback does come - just focus on the Icy Cold Bohemian Beer and you'll be on the right road.