Onions - A Garden Post

So it's that time of year again, time to get out and start planting the garden. Every fall I get so excited about planting my garden in the spring. I love growing things. I grew up always helping my mother in the garden and and though there were times I'm sure I complained about picking beans or digging potatoes....

Actually I doubt I ever complained about digging potatoes cause I still love doing that...its like a treasure hunt. ;)

Anyway I'm sure I didn't love it all the time, but I really do enjoy being out in my garden!

I was asked earlier this winter about doing some post's on my blog about gardening. So I am going to try and do some to help anyone out there who is thinking about starting their own garden.

Two years ago, I did a post about planting potatoes. If you missed it here is a link to it as well as the post I did about Harvesting Potatoes.

Well today I am gonna talk about something else that I always plant that are super easy to grow....      

Onions.

Now there are two ways of buying and planting onions.

1. You can buy bundles of small onion plants like these in the picture. These usually come in bundles of 25....which means 30-60 plants ;) This is the way I usually get my onions and then I end up planting all the plants even though I will never use all of them. Just more to give to my friends.

2. You can buy what are call "onion sets". They usually come in a bag and are just little bulbs with no green tops. I have done these one time and they worked fine, but I like doing the others because after they are in the ground it already looks like something is growing.

Ok lets talk planting.  

First you need a nicely tilled / worked up soil. 

Once that is ready I like to steak a line from one end of the garden to the other.

This Helps to plant everything in a strait line.

Fact: Eventhough I put this line in, I still usually manage to plant crooked and Caleb makes fun of me for it.  

Now what I like to do to make planting go fast is lay all the onions out first. I plant them in two rows that are about 2 inches apart and I stagger the rows.

So in one row I will plant 2 onions that are 2 inches apart and in the other row I will plant an onion that is at about the 1inch mark between. I should have taken a picture of this, but I didn't think about that till now. Also I don't measure every single onion, I just eyeball it. So some might be 3 inches apart and some might be 1 1/2 inches apart. 

Once I have them all laid out I will got to where each one is and stick my finger in the ground and dig a little hole with my finger. 

 

Then I will stick the plant down in the hole...

and pinch up the soil around it.

 And there you have it, you planted an onion. Pretty easy, right ?!?!

Now move on to the rest of the onions and plant as many as you want. 

As far as what to do now, well you just let them grow.  

If you want green onions you can plant them close together and you can cut the tops off the onions and use them, cause they will grow back.  

If you get the onion sets instead of the plants I would probably dig a little trench like I do for potatoes and then just lay them in the bottom and then cover them once I get them all laid out.

I usually wait till the tops completely die till I harvest them all, but if I need an onion while they are growing I will go and grab one.

So there ya have it. That's how you plant onions, they are really easy and kinda fun to grow. I hope some of you give them a try.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

JP      
 

Hank's Night Life

 So I have told you many stories about me dogs, and most of them have revolved arround my little Jack Russell, Jasper, and his killing sprees he goes on. I really don't give much credit to the other dogs, that was until last night.

I have always thought of hank here as lazy, lover boy of a dog...

Who likes to give lots of kisses...even if they are not wanted! 

 On a side note this was when Chester was 10 months old and  my goodness my little man has grown!!

Back to Hank. He is seriously the sweetest dog. He loves everyone. I never worry about him biting anyone. Jasper on the other hand I tell everyone to stay away from him, he is my dog and nobody else. I tell people as long as you don't bother him he won't bit you. Hank on the other hand, I just worry about him licking someone to death.

I have never thought of Hank as much of a killer. besides maybe a fish when he can get his mouth on one. But otherwise he always seems like a scaredy cat. He seem to run from everything. But last night around 11 p.m. that all changed.  Caleb and I were laying in bed...reading and he was trying to go to sleep, but the dogs were barking up a storm and wouldn't shut up. Then all of a sudden the had cornered whatever they were after in the front of the house. The was the ruckus sounded I thought it was something big and mean...so I am think a raccoon. So I pull on a hoodie and check it out. I turn the light on and open the door and this is what I see...

Yeah that's a coyote that my dogs are fighting there in the corner. Needless to say my heart starts racing and I yell to Caleb telling him they have a coyote out here. He grabs his shotgun and comes racing up to the front of the house. 

I really don't know why we thought a gun was a good idea...

First - there wasn't a chance in the world of me getting all three of my dogs called the beast so we were never gonna have a clean shot at the beast. 

Second - Even if I some how got them all called off , shooting a big hole in the side of the house wasn't a good idea. :/

So after watching this mess occur for awhile, the beast finally escapes from the corner and they all run to the back side of the house.  I grab the spotlight and Caleb still has his gun and I proceed to spotlight the beast for the dogs while they keep attacking the wretched animal. Then Hank finally gets ahold of the neck and does the kill shake. He gets two of them in and that's all she wrote for the coyote....thank goodness!! I wouldn't have been able to sleep a wink if that beast wasn't dead.

After it was over Hank was pretty wore out and he was really starting to scare me. I found our big rubber tub and filled it with water and hank just jumped in and layed there for a while trying to cool down.  Jasper however was still attacking the dead coyte. I worried about ol' Hank for a while, but before I could get to sleep I heard him and the other dogs barking at the night again.      

This morning I went out to get a picture of the beast and...

Got a reenactment of what took place last night, from Hank and Jasper. 

They thought they were pretty big stuff....

and today I would have to agree. 

Now I know I didn't really mention Kit, my broader collie, she was part of the action too. She keeps the beast corralled and wont let it get away, while staying away form the mouth so she doesn't get bit. She's my smart dog! 

After seeing Hank last night it kinda makes me rethink some of those critter kills that I have been giving Jasper credit for, as well as the time I told you about them getting into a muddy fight with what I had thought was a big ol' raccoon when it very well could have been a coyote.

I never thought my dogs would take down a coyote, but they did, and now I hope they NEVER do it again, but I doubt that will happen.  

Oh something I forgot to say earlier, the corner where I took the picture of the coyote last night.....well it looks like a massacre  happened. My job for this afternoon is to clean it up so people don't start wondering about is....lol

JP