It’s a start. Whenever they reach 3-4″ (7.5-10cm), I trim back the onions to about 1″ (2.5cm), and now they’re thick enough to collect and EAT! I don’t have the greenhouse up yet, so didn’t start lettuce REALLY early, so it’s not a whole seedling trimmings salad like last year… But these baby greens are great: tender, with a delicate onion flavor and just a bit of bite. Taste-wise, they’re easily over-powered by stronger, heavier foods. We tried them on burgers and in a salad, but they’re best more on their own. My favorite: quite finely snipped and sprinkled on a boiled (farm) egg, with only salt and pepper. Tastes like the garden!
onion
Seeding as we go…
It’s spring! The ground is clear, hasn’t snowed in a while, but it’s still cold, and the tiny farming action remains mainly indoors. We’re steadily filling up the racks (here, Lynn populates a plug sheet with Red Russian kale; under the lights, parsley and onion). I’m spreading things out a lot more than usual, instead of starting a whole lot on one day. We’ll see what difference a few days or a couple of weeks make to the various veg… It likely won’t be much, but some interesting things could happen if we get really drastic week-to-week weather changes around transplant time, like we did last year. An experiment!
Grow lights on again!
It took a day to sort things out after the move on Sunday, and now the onion seedlings are back in the light racks in the new seedling room, soaking up the cool white fluorescent light. Three trays in all of onions, along with a still-to-germinate tray of parsley, made the little old farm-new farm road trip, and that’s the season’s start so far!
Onions emerge
Four days from seeding and the first Red Wing onions are popping up. A fine sight to see, the first new on-farm veggie greenery of the season! These guys will be transported to the new farm on Sunday… So many things going on at once—seed starting while moving the tiny farm—if you’re a fan of the slightly surreal (I am!), this is just great!
New seed started!
This is it, the official start of the new growing season (since there wasn’t time to plant out garlic in the fall at the new farm)! I seeded a fresh packet of 1,000 Red Wing red onion seeds in three 72-cell plug sheets. That’s 4-5 seeds per cell—after the good results last season, I’m going the multi-plant route again, 3-4 onions in one spot, instead of singles. There are lots more onions and leek to come, including sets, this is the beginning. I’m still at the old farm, the new seedling room is not quite ready, so I’ll be starting a few more things here in the next couple of days, and take them along on the move! For the Red Wing, I hung a couple of lights on one of the light racks. As usual, the trays are covered in plastic wrap to hold heat and moisture. This tiny farm marches on!
Tossing onions
Well, Friday harvest is over…what to do? A few onions and a little winter squash you’re set for ALL-TERRAIN ONION BOCCE. Libby used yellow cooking onions (Stuttgarter), Grant took a mild white (Superstar), I went red (Red Wing), four onions each. A stunted orange acorn squash (Table Gold) served as the target ball. Toss away!
The rules are simple: the player with the closest one or more onions to the squash scores a point apiece. The all-terrain part means the winner of a turn gets to toss the squash anywhere. We played up and down the gangway to the barn, through gravel, long grass, chicken hazards (roosters peck onions)… Good thing no-one got really competitive, ’cause onion bocce is pretty imprecise, what with eventually exploding onions (largest piece counts), and ragged edges that make down-to-the-millimeter measuring kinda futile. Still, we did get out the tape measure… Wholesome outdoor fun on the farm. With veggies. Must be a new age of innocence! :) (Guest measurement photo by Libby)
This week’s share
Another rather nice fall CSA share this week! Thanks to no killing frost so far, we’re still picking beans (Jade), peppers (Gypsy, Ace, Cayenne Long Slim), and zucchini (Golden Dawn III). There’s also winter squash (Table Gold acorn), cauliflower (Minuteman), onions (Stuttgarter), beets (Scarlet Supreme), carrots (Nelson, Purple Haze), spinach (Spargo, Bloomsdale), parsley (Green River curly, Plain Italian flat), and garlic (Music). Plus a newsletter. Monday shares are left at a drop-off spot, with shareholders’ names printed on the handles…
