559 Onions

...is a lot of onions, as far as my hamstrings and quads are concerned. But they (the onions, that is, not my legs) look so pretty:

These are the sets that we started from seed a few months ago - they're only now big enough to plant in the ground, so for next year we'll be starting the onion seed much earlier! There are just under 250 each of Granex Yellow and Red Burgundy, and about 70 Cipollini Yellow. The last is really just an experiment, but I'm looking forward to the Granex Yellow because it's a sweet variety that should grow big enough for onion rings. (We've got a killer "tumbleweed" spice mix recipe for onion rings that I'll post a little later in the season.) 

Onion sets that tiny are the most fiddly things I've transplanted to date. It's important to plant them very shallowly, since onions develop at the surface of the soil. Because the root systems of those tiny sets are so small compared to say, a tomato start with roots enough to fill up a 4" pot, getting the onions in the ground at the right depth and still making sure they're deep enough to stand up is a delicate business. But I think they'll do well now that they're in. I cut the top half of each plant off before planting so that the bulb and roots would conserve moisture while adjusting to the garden soil, and so that the plant will direct its energy into establishing more roots instead of trying to do that and put on height at the same time.

Before I move on to a greenhouse update, some clarification: although the byline for all of these blog posts read "Katherine Mizell," the person actually doing the blogging is Meredith. Hence the references to my apartment and such - I live 15 minutes from the farm and work a full-time job during the week, so I only spend weekends indulging my farmer alter ego. Katherine, my mom, is the one who holds down the fort during the week and we use her name as the default for any written farm communication.

She's also a Master Gardener and the reason we enjoy as much success in the garden as we do. I hope to eventually follow in her footsteps and get my own Master Gardener certification, but in the meantime, I'm learning by watching her and doing my own work in the garden. So while I was planting onions, she was potting up parsley, basil, and tomatoes in the greenhouse. Although I cleared out all those flats of onions (save for one flat of shallots), those empty spaces in the greenhouse were quickly occupied, mostly by my growing armies of dill

and parsley.

And the rest of the parsley is occupying the risers:

(The plants leafing out in the center are a couple of horseradish roots - another experiment.)

I'm seriously going to take over the world with this parsley. There is so much that I'm going to have to plant the Catalogno straight into the garden, as we'll absolutely fall behind schedule if we take the time to pot all of it up again. The Catalogno is more sparsely planted, relatively speaking, so there shouldn't be a problem keeping it in clusters. 

Herbs are so much fun to start from seed because what looks like a tiny handful of seed yields a truly insane number of plants. I saved about a dozen heads of dill in the fall by stuffing them in a brown paper bag, and it worked beautifully. This grand dill experiment has been extraordinarily successful so far, and I've still got plenty more seed, so I'll be starting more of that soon. 

On the subject of herbs and saving seed, the sage is in bloom right now,

so I'd like to try saving some of that this year. A number of these second-year sage plants have reached unexpected proportions; I'm not entirely certain what we're going to end up doing with them. We'd planned to pot them up and sell them at the market, but they're just enormous. Then again, you'd be getting a lot of bang for your buck.

In other herb news, the first wave of basil should be entering the "rapid growth" phase soon - it's slow to start, but once it gets going, there's no stopping it. The Summerlong has doubled in size in the last week,

and every time I go in the greenhouse, I lightly brush the plants so I can smell that wonderful, summery basil scent.

On the vegetable front, the cucumber seedlings are up and going,

and of course the first wave of tomatoes are forming a jungle in the back corner of the greenhouse. They're positively irrepressible.

We're hoping that these guys won't put on too much growth before the market starts. But even if they do...well, there's nothing wrong with having some overly robust tomato starts. I've been trying to visualize how much room the tomatoes are going to take up this year because while this looks like a lot of open space right now,

it's going to fill up fast. Fortunately, harvesting the garlic at the end of May will free up a full third of the total garden space in the front, so we may be all right if we make sure we utilize the smaller plot behind the barn until then.

There's only one more weekend before the market starts, so I need to start working on some non-gardening things like signage, record-keeping, and stocking the Rubbermaid bins with my market kit. Mom and I will be at the market's vendor lunch this Wednesday in Greenville, and I'm very much looking forward to it. The market is just around the corner, and we're all excited!