First Planting of the Year!

Yesterday, I got to plant some vegetables.  I intended to plant peas, onions, and carrots, but I ran out of time to plant the peas.  I'll have to plant them later in the week.

I bought the garlic and onion sets at the grocery store. I was excited to see that could buy onion sets there. I bought red, white, and yellow onions. The garlic is organic so it hasn't been treated with spouting retardants.

I had a couple of onions that I missed last year.  I planted them too late, so they never got very big. I dug them up and planted them with the onion sets.

To plant the onion sets, I put on a garden glove and poke 2" holes in the soil, about 3" apart.  Then I drop in a tiny onion.  Finally, I cover up the hole and water the planted onions.

Wordless Wednesday: My First Big Harvest of the Year

Wordless Wednesday

Amish Produce Auction

[Note: I purposely did not take any photos of the Amish out of respect for their beliefs about graven images.]

Last Friday, my sister, her friend Jerry (and now my new friend), and I went to the Amish produce auction in Greens Fork, Indiana. We went as a group because at these auctions, the produce is sold in lots. We agree on a lot of produce that we want to buy and then we split the lot after the auction. After the auction we went to a berry farm and bought some fresh strawberries.  Friday night, we had a barbecue and ate some of our purchases.

We bought some potatoes.  For our barbecue, we grilled the potatoes in foil with olive oil, garlic, sea salt, and rosemary.

We also bought zucchini, spring onions, and asparagus.  Jerry lived in Japan for several years and made us some decadent Japanese bar food-asparagus wrapped in bacon and grilled.

To make the bacon-wraped asparagus:
Rinse the asparagus, cut off the fibrous bottom, and cut the spears in half. Dip the half spears in a mixture of olive oil, black pepper, and sea salt.  Wrap each dipped spear in a half a strip of bacon and secure the bacon to the asparagus with a toothpick.  Grill the bacon-wrapped asparagus spears until the bacon becomes crispy.

Wordless Wednesday-Veggies

My Onions and Shallots Are Coming Up

I planted my red onions and shallots a couple of weeks ago.  They are poking through the soil.  I'm relieved because I should have planted the shallots last fall.  They overwintered in my mudroom and were pretty dry by the time I got around to planting them last month.  I don't see a lot of them poking through, yet.  I suspect that some of them didn't make it through the winter indoors, but I should see at least a few more.

Planting Shallots and Onions

I'm so excited.  I'm going to try growing onions and shallots for the first time.  I bought some gray shallots from Territorial Seed Company and red onion sets from a big box store.

From what I've read, the gray shallots are really easy to grow.  I love to cook with them, but they're not cheap in the grocery.  I'll be so excited if I can successfully grow them myself.

I'm a little worried about the shallots.  They should have been planted in the fall, but I ran out of time before the ground froze.  They are fairly dried out, but I cut a small one and a large one open and there was some hydrated/tender center in them.

I started by digging a trench that was about 1 1/2" deep because shallots should be planted so that the top of their necks stick out a little bit from the surface of the soil.  They should also be planted about 8" apart.  I marked 8' on the handle of my Japanese hoe so that I would space the shallots appropriately.   Once I placed the shallots in the trench, I covered them up with soil.

The onions are a lot fresher, so I'm not so worried about them.  

I planted them the same way that I planted the shallots, only the trenches were 1" deep and I planted them 5" apart.