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.