Winter Has Come – COLD!

As I predicted back in November, winter has arrived in February. With Arctic winds coming down and from the east. It got down do around -30 in Poland, and -12 here, but things seem to be surviving. I’ve even seen bulbs yesterday that had been growing like it they thought it was spring, actually still going and starting to flower! I’m more confident now that the garlic and onions will survive till the real spring. I’m not sure how long this winter blast will last, but I am slightly worried that this is a sign that winter will drag out and spring and summer will be delayed or be a wash out.

Winter that never was?

The weather continues to be strangely mild. This appears to be confusing all the bulbing plants into sprouting like its spring. God know what it will do to them if we suddenly get a hard frost!

Checking the plot, everything looks good. The onions and garlic are all sprouting and growing. I hope they know what they are doing, else I could lose the lot in a frost!

Winter Update (what winter?)

The weather is bizarre this end of year. It is almost December and we still haven’t had a frost and the temperatures are more like early autumn! I’ve see blackcurrants and strawberries still, flowers and daffodil shoots! Everything is a bit confused.

Up at the plot, lots of the onion and some of the garlic have sprouted. I don’t know if they are supposed to and what will happen when the frost does come, do they think it is spring? The weeds are making a really come back effort in this weather. Much of the areas we dug have now got small weeds scattered every where. I am hoping they are just confused too and will get killed in the first frost. We should give it a rake and hoe over at some point, but worst case, I don’t think they will get established enough before winter really comes. My prediction is that winter will hit in February. I really don’t know what the result will be.

Onions and Garlic Bed Planted

So the garlic joined the onions today, Solent Wight in the foreground and the other on the far end of the bed. It looks as though my worries about the soil were unfounded as with a bit of rain the soil has turned pretty good and broken up well. With a good winter I am sure all the dug soil will be excellent for the coming year. Its quite a large area of the plot dedicated to onions and garlic, but it should be satisfying to get a good crop from it all, and its all a learning experience.

Pink Onion Seed Sprouting

The old pink onion seed has started to sprout, but by the looks of it, only the lesser old of the two packets I had laying around. If the number that germinate stays constant from now I’d be satisfied, but most likely we are going to end up with a forest that needs thinning down!

The Garlic Has Arrived

The garlic has finally arrived and unfortunately, like the onions, I think I went a little over the top! I bought four bulbs each thinking I would get around 5 cloves per bulb. On the plus side they looked like fantastic garlic, but when I broke the bulbs up it was more like 10-15 cloves per bulb! We’ve got the potential of ending up with over 100 garlic bulbs (to go with the 200 onions)!

The one on the left is the Solent Wight and the other is Avignon Wight. Tasting a small piece of the Solent, it was definitely worth the effort, strong and yet sweet! I just need to figure out where on the plot they should go and get the in the ground. Remember the Solent Wight was bought classed for eating, which was cheaper than classed as ‘seed garlic’ for growing. Personally I can’t see that there could be a difference, but we’ll see if it all grows ok!

If this is the amount of cloves that comes from the average bulb, there should be no problem keeping some bulbs back to grow the following year!

70% Cleared and Overwintering Onions Planted

The plot is not roughly 70% cleared and dug. Just a strip in the foreground and the top end to go. The overwintering onion sets have been planted. They took up roughly a 3-4 metre square area. I worry that I’ve planted them in the area of the worst soil. It was quite a pain digging space to plant them in the lumpy clay soil. I surrounded them with poles to mark them. It should rain all this week, so I’ll check them next weekend to see if they still look ok. I’ve never done onions like this before, so I’m not sure if there is anything particular I should have done to help them survive the winter.

The soil nearest the composting area is still quite full of weed roots, which is why I didn’t plant them there. However, it is much softer and looser and would have been better for them, if I had thought ahead.

Growing Sweet Pink Onions Sets

First experiment of this plot! Is it easy to grow your own onion sets?

I’ve always wanted to have sweet onions suitable for salads. I bought sweet pink onion seeds some time ago, but never got the right time or situation to try them. People growing onions from sets seem to have such an easy time, but they are mostly stuck to the same mass produced varieties. The thought is, can you grow your own onion sets and enjoy the benefits for variety from seed, but the easy of planting sets in spring?

Doing minimal research and using fairly old seed, I’ve sown (too much) seed in a try indoors.

The advice is to sow seed much earlier outdoors, or wait till the spring (but end up with smaller crop and the hassle of seeds). My theory is somewhere between the two, that I should be able to get some kind of set out of seeds indoors from now leading up to and over winter. If they bulb earlier enough, I can just pull them out as sets and dry them ready to plant when the weather allows in spring. If they take a long time, I’m sure I’ll have something transplantable by spring. The main risk is that they don’t bulb at all, that is something I will have to figure out when the time comes.

Onions Sets All Ready to Go!

We have all our onion sets now ready to plant. The shop bought ones are definitely looking the worst. Some of the sets are mouldy and some are sprouting already. Overall we should have about 50 white, 50 red, 50 troy yellow and 50 Japanese yellow. Two HUNDRED onions! I’m not expecting to end up with 200, but we might!

The plot still has some digging to do, which has to be done today at least enough to plant these tomorrow. The weather tomorrow (Sunday) is supposed to reach 18 degrees (22nd October!) and then rain the all next week. If we can get these in the ground by the end of tomorrow, all should be good.

The plot is 4m wide and the onions are supposed to be planted roughly 15cm apart. Could be 20-25 per row, 3 rows each…ish? 4m by 4m area, roughly will do. Have I gone over the top with onions?! And I’m growing more for spring, oops! That’s another post though.

Garlic Ordered

So the garlic is on order, though it pains me to pay so much! Last time I on the shared plot I couldn’t face the thought of paying so much to buy garlic same as you could get from the supermarket, here’s what I said:

I’ve always really liked the idea of growing my own garlic. Problem is, it’s never really worked. Maybe because I can’t bring myself to buy ‘planting garlic’, I mean look at it, it’s just garlic garlic.. I can buy garlic garlic from a supermarket, I don’t need to buy ‘special’ planting garlic do I? But does it make a difference,

So I bought large garlic bulbs from a deli and planted them. Now as it turns out nothing really grew well on that plot, but I believe to a certain extent I proved that it would grow (Previous Garlic Growing Results).

I realise now that we had a ‘Hardneck’ variety, which confused my at the time why the green stems were so stiff! The end result of that garlic experiment was though that the garlic was just not very tasty. In looking for tasty sounding varieties for our new plot, I’ve come to the conclusion I need to bite the bullet and pay the extra. However, not completely.. the website had buying growing garlic and eating garlic sections.  The growing garlic was much more expensive, but had a range of varieties.

I’ve bought two varieties, four bulbs each. ‘Solent Wight’ from their eating range, which is supposed to be a good all round and tasty

Our best garlic in terms of overall eating and keeping quality. Hard dense bulbs that exude a presence of their own. Long keeping – to April and beyond.

Elegant bouquet that retains its flavour during cooking. Large white, bulbs that are easy to plait. Most attractive garlic plaited and hung in the kitchen

 

and Avignon Wight from the growing range, which is supposed to produce really large bulbs.

Large, white softneck garlic, – produces largest bulbs of all garlic types. This is most vigorous and potentially the highest yielding garlic. Big fat cloves that can attain 80mm+ size.

Both are ‘Softneck’ varieties and so should be easier to plait and store longer. All being well, I would hope that I would be able to keep back some grown bulbs to plant again for the next year. Ensuring I don’t have to suffer the pain of paying so much for garlic, and hopefully begin to build up an adaptation to my soil.