Garden journal 2013...Chicken storm disaster, #74

[journey11]

Well...now that things are starting to get going in the garden, I figured I'd go ahead and start a journal for this year to put my pics in.

I pulled up all of my onions yesterday, reds and yellows, and got lots of big ones this year. I had put the wire panel across the back of two chairs and brought DH out to see my onions and the dang thing fell over on me and dumped most of my onions on the ground. He just LAUGHED and said he saw it was about to go! So I told him I'm going to feed him raw onions every night for dinner as his punishment (good for the heart anyway...so I guess his real punishment would be extra years of having to put up with me.) Seriously, I get this Little Red Hen complex sometimes! LOL I grabbed a couple of rachet straps and fixed it up...this will do the trick.

You guys would not believe the weeds I have pulled from the main garden this week. All that rain really brought the weeds out in full force. I think I am going for the gold in Marshall's weed-pulling contest. I've got 2/3s of the garden straighted out this week and I'll take some pics once it is presentable again. Under all those weeds though, I discovered that my tomatoes are setting lots of babies and found lots of peppers coming along nicely. And lo and behold, despite a couple "prunings" by the deer, the beans are producing too!

Late last night, I also ordered 30 Cornish X chicks to come in mid-August. Sometimes I think I might be crazy taking on so much right now. But I can't go another year without homegrown chicken.

 

[thistlebloom]

You've really got some giants in there Journey, nice harvest!
Are you going to use your new tractor for the meaties?

 

[dewdropsinwv]

I tried to weed our garden the other day. It was so hot by 9 am I had to quit . When I came in the house my sun dress was soaked with sweat!!!! We have had so much rain it's been impossible to keep the weeds under control :/ We did have a pretty nice harvest of green beans today though, and we have corn coming on too

 

[journey11]

Thistle, I can't wait to put the meaties in there. It was designed especially for them and to make my life easier!

Dew, the only good thing about this heat is that it kills the pulled weeds pronto. I got to the weeds before they had a chance to go to seed, so I've been laying them out on the sidewalk to dry, then I'm gonna use them for mulch. Serves them right, huh!

I've been getting out into the garden of an evening here lately, much later than usual because I burn to a crisp in this sun, so I wait until 6pm. But I have gotten to enjoy some truly glorious sunsets here lately.

 

[lesa]

What a wonderful harvest! Do you have any trouble storing that many onions? I planted a bunch this year- but I usually have quite a few rot in storage. Any tips? We have had the same situation with weeds here. I have never seen anything grow so fast! I used to tell people we were "crazy busy"- now I just say we are crazy! Good luck with the meaties!

 

[Collector]

great looking harvest Journey, hope ours get as nice as yours...

 

[Ridgerunner]

Lesa, are those onions really truly dry before you store them. Don't ask me how I happen to know about this, but if that stem is not really truly dried out, that can cause rot.

What varieties are you trying to store? Some keep a whole lot better than others.

How are you storing them? They need dry conditions and good air circulation. Fairly cool too once they dry. I dont have that cool place so mine dont last extraordinarily long either just hanging. I chop a bunch and freeze them in vacuum bags, then open one at a time and keep those chopped onions in a zip-loc in my refrigerator freezer. When that bag runs out, open another vacuum bag. You can tray freeze so they are loose before you vacuum freeze them, but I have a hammer conveniently placed and the top of a 2x4 used to support shelving where I can loosen them before they go in the refrigerator freezer.

Journey, I do the same thing with the heat. I may stay in the house or work in the shade somewhere a lot during the worst of the heat, but after supper I go out in the garden and stay until it gets dark and I lock the chickens up.

Dont give up on the weeds. You can catch up. I had a late wet spring plus I made a trip to see my granddaughter and another to see my mother, both trips long planned and both just happened to be during a fairly dry stretch. Then a septic emergency cost a couple of days. Then an emergency re-screening of about half the back porch. I think that stuff is call life. Those trips were worth it and Id do it again but with that combination the weeds were way out of control. I finally got it cleaned out and mulched so it looks pretty good right now but that was a struggle. I put the weeds, grass, and garden waste in a pile in the corner of the garden. When I start a new compost batch, I get a lot of my brown from that pile. Its somewhere between 3 and 4 tall right now after it has sunk quite a bit.

 

[canesisters]

Those look GREAT! How many do you have there?

I finally got around to pulling all the walking onions the other night. I just brushed off the dirt and tied them into loose bunches of 2 or 3. Then hung them under the rafters of the back porch to dry. They looked pretty crazy with those long stems sticking out in all directions and it never crossed my mind that I had hung them directly across from the sliding glass door, after my roommate had gone to bed, only feet away from the door and the porch light...
I can't say that I blame her for her less than pleasant reaction to walking past the door early the next morning....

 

[journey11]

I planted one pound of sets and I ended up with 4 three-gallon buckets full of onions, not counting the tops. The chicken wire panel they're on is about 10 feet long, 2 feet wide. This is a little more than I put up in the past.

I wait for the tops and the roots to completely dry out and cut off the top leaving about an inch, and pull the roots off by hand. Then I spread them in a single layer inside of shallow cardboard boxes and store them on my canning shelf in the basement. My basement stays around 65-70 degrees, even with the woodstove going in the winter. I will dehydrate any that I dont' think will keep long. Small ones and twin bulbs seem to go first, so those get dehydrated. I end up going down to get an onion to cook with almost every day, so I look thru all the boxes while I'm at it and remove any that are going bad so the off-gasses don't spoil the others. If I start losing too many, I will just dehydrate all the rest. But usually I can get to about February with the yellows. The reds don't keep nearly as long.

They say you really should spray your onion patch with fungicide several times during the growing season to end up with better keepers. I've never gotten around to doing that and I hate to spray anyway, but I might try it in the future.

 

[Jared77]

Thats a heck of a harvest!

That's great that you can keep them till Feb with those temperatures. What variety are they do you know?