Onion update

I'd been wondering if the onions would grow after their initial bulbing.

At least with the rain we've been having, the answer is an emphatic "yes." We've been noticing how they seemed to growing substantially, but didn't have empirical data until today.

The first onion I picked ten days ago was about 3 1/2 ounces, and it was one of the biggest I could find at the time. I picked another one a few minutes ago, and while it was on the large side, it wasn't out of the ordinary. Weight: just under 7 ounces.

That means the fifty pounds of onions I'd previously calculated for our harvest has doubled to closer to one hundred pounds!

Maitilda's greens

Maitilda (1995-2009) was an exclusively-indoor cat from just about the first moment after she strayed into my yard and I adopted her.

It took a while for her to adjust. In the beginning, she desperately wanted to go outside, and I tried putting a harness and leash on her, so I could take her out in the garden with me. She always got too excited, though, and wound herself up in the leash as she rolled in the dirt.

The only "green" she really cared about was grass. Over the years, we reached an agreement: she wouldn't try to follow me outside, and when I came in, I'd bring her a blade or two of grass to eat.

She's going to miss this year's harvest, and I'm going to miss her.

Resistance is futile

The onions have been taunting me for the last couple weeks, ever since they suddenly started to form bulbs.

Imagine 200 excited donkeys from the Shrek movies, all shouting, "Pick me! Pick me!" That's what I've been hearing and trying to resist.

I haven't grown onions often enough to know whether they've maxed out already, with the remaining time in the ground only required for curing purposes, or if they'll actually continue to get bigger until the tops fall over.

In any event, I couldn't stand the temptation any longer, and picked a couple. The first one weighed 3.7 ounces, and the second was slightly larger, around 4 ounces. We have something in the vicinity of 150 onions this size, plus another 50 small ones (ranging from an ounce to perhaps 2 1/2 ounces) for a total of at least 50 pounds.

In the grocery store today, red onions are selling for 99 cents a pound, so our crop would cost us $50+ to purchase fully grown, and the seedlings cost us a little under $30. Not a huge return on investment financially, but factoring in the better flavor of these onions, it's a worthwhile crop.

It's raining snails

Yesterday, I was pruning some of the brambles encroaching on the garden, and started to hear the pitter-pat of heavy rain hitting the landscaping fabric at my feet. Except it wasn't water: it was snails!

LOLgarlic or garLOLic

I swear, this is how they grew, without any human help.

They're garlic plants in love. Holding scapes, instead of hands.

I probably shouldn't anthropomorphize them too much, though, because, even as I'm thinking, "awww, how cute," I'm also looking forward to the day (soon) when I can tear them out of the ground and devour them.

At least we haven't named them.

Not rhubarb

The swiss chard is almost as big as our pitiful rhubarb plant.

These plants are the Northern Lights variety, although this picture doesn't do the colors justice.

We also have some basic ruby chard to use as filler as spots open up in the garden, but for the moment, until the onions and garlic are harvested, the garden is stuffed to its limits.

Sun (a little)

While I wasn't looking (because the rain kept me indoors), the garden grew.

In no particular order, today I found a 2" banana pepper that's already set (while many more pepper plants are flowering, both bananas and Ace); yellow squash on the verge of blooming; and grape tomatoes that have set. The swiss chard is starting to look good too, while the basil is struggling in the cool dampness.

For a while, the onions were threatening to be very large scallions. It's more than time for them to have started bulbing, and as of a few days ago, they looked like leeks (except they were red). We'd have found a use for them anyway, but I was pleased to notice a definite trend toward globe-shaped root tops. I still think they're going to be late, but they could turn out hugely magnificent with all this rain.

We've harvested about a quart of sugarsnap peas so far, most of them eaten before they leave the garden. Many of the pods are extra-long and empty of peas, though, more like snow pea pods. I'm attributing it to the rain, which may be causing the pods to grow too quickly, sort of the same way sudden, excessive rain leads to cracking tomatoes.