including when i moved here over 2 years ago
i use to buy my onions at local feed stores or at some of the local nurseries in the austin area
my preferred location was the natural gardener in south austin
a nursery that i compare all nurseries to
no
i havent found an equivalent one in this area yet
one thing i noticed when i would get my onions at these locations that most of them got them from the same location
dixondale farms linked here
they as i have found since living here give good service and have good educational instructions and videos on how to plant and care for onions
they have a map where you put in your zip code and it tells you which types of onions you should plant
interesting is that the type we need here short day onions are the same ones that i use to plant in the austin area
here we are close to the intermediate day ones but the short day ones work the best here
although you can see both at some of the local nurseries
so
what i do is
i go to their dixondale website
verify the ones that work best here
then
order them
now onions wont get big here like they do in texas
things are bigger in texas
since
it doesnt get cold and since we have a lot of cloudy weather in the mid to late spring that hinders growth and promotes some onion fungal diseases
but
ive decided i would just learn how to deal with that
so
i ordered their short day sampler bunch linked here
which includes
the 1015y texas super sweet onion
the texas early white
the red creole
a little of each was in each bunch of 50-75 onions
in my community garden i selected the bed where three of my tomatoes grew this summer
several weeks ago i had cut off the tomatoes at the soil level
leaving the roots to rot in place leaving their root minerals in the soil
had the tomatoes had disease i would have removed the roots
i added 4 inches of good compost made in the garden
forked it in with a large pitch fork
added a dusting of good organic fertilizer
i then planted a mixture of green manure crops of peas beans oats and hairy vetch and let it grow until right before it was onion planting time
i also soaked the area with a mixture of liquid fertilizer seaweed molasses
when it was planting time i snipped them all off at the ground level and fed the tops to my worms
knowing that the worm poop would end up back in the soil
some would till the tops back into the soil but i do it this way
it helps to keep the worms happy
this year i added three drip lines with emitters spaced 6 inches apart
they were evenly spaced across the bed which is 3 feet x 9 feet
i planted the onions on ether side of the drip line and spaced then down the row every 4 inches
knowing i would be pulling up green onions as the season went on
each plant was planted 1 inch deep
then
watered in well with that liquid solution above
i planted around 110 onions in that bed
every two weeks i will do a good feeding with the liquid fertilizer solution
i also will probably add some organic dry fertilizer each month to boost the growth some since the onions are heavy feeders
now
in texas thats all i had to do plus add some watering and the end results were nice large onions
here
i have to do a little more to get good results
even then
the onions like the garlic do not get as big as in texas
the biggest issue is fungal stuff from all the foggy weather we get at the end of the growing season
so i will have to use serenade on them or an organic solution i got from dixondale that is hydrogen peroxide based
even last year when i let the fungus stuff sneak up on me
i still got a good crop of onions that lasted for several months
i had an extra bunch left over so i planted them at mr h and ms b house in their small raised garden bed which mr h has been using it as a sandbox after the summer garden was harvested
interesting was that the onions i grew there last year were bigger and disease free like the ones i grew in texas
must have been that extra cultivation that mr h and ms b did on the soil
two years ago i ordered my onions from a california based company but i noticed that they were getting them from dixondale out of texas
so
i just ordered them directly from dixondale last year and this year
here is hoping for a good crop of those sweet texas onions that dont burn your eyes
also
guess mr h needs a new sand box huh
santa are you listening
the organicgreen doctor
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