Part 1 Gardening "Firsts" 2013: Onions

 I am really bad at "Series" postings, but alas I will try again.  I got a new camera and I love it.  I have been really busy with many things, but one of those things has been gardening.  I am really expanding my gardening beyond just growing a few simple things to make myself feel like a "gardener".  For a while now I have planted tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and just enough variety that it makes me feel like I am doing something.  The reality is I have never been very good at it and I am not a "real gardener".  In my quest for healthier non-GMO, pesticide covered food I have decided that I will drive myself crazy trying to buy organic through co-ops, groups, or mass purchasing to save money.  And buy organic in the store is way too pricey for our income level and family size.  If I have to pay $7 for a pound of strawberries, we will not be eating strawberries.  So, I began with looking at what we eat or could learn to eat and I have been busy planting and learning from past year's mistakes.  That means learning more about composting, soil amendments, container gardening, raised bed gardening, companion planting, natural organic gardening, etc..  So, I think I will do a "series" on what I have done to share some successes and failures. 

These two pictures may not look too exciting, but they are very exciting to me. One is yellow onions and the other is purple onions growing away in the dirt. This was another "first" for me. I have never grown anything but green onions before. These planted in two different containers.  The tops on this got huge this year, but until the last couple of weeks the part underground did not seem to be growing much... maybe because you could not see it. I can tell by the peek I am getting that they are probably baseball size. That's the good news. The bad news is I should have planted way more. I had some more, but I must not have gotten them in the soil early enough because they did not make at all. Those were in the ground.  So, you can bet the next chance I have to plant onions I am going to plant a ton! ~I am also seeing my kids more interested in gardening and I think it is because they sense my excitement about it.~

Details:  Yellow Onions & Red Onions; planted in containers on my patio in February 2013; pic taken in May 2013; soil was just dirt from the ground with some composted leaves (nothing fancy); containers are a large galvanized washtub and a large planter pot; I let the clover grow simply because I like it and love the little purple flowers that come on them.  I also feed the clover to my rabbits, so I guess it counts as a companion plant (even though I did not plant it)

 ~Yellow Onions~

~Red Onions~