Starting Green Onions and Garlic

I have discovered it is actually quite easy to get plants for most of the onion family from leftovers you may have bought for eating! These here are a large green onion (like chives, but thicker) - perhaps a young scallion. If you leave at least 1-2 inches on the root end intact (so feel free to use all the greens for your meal) you can then place the root ends in some water in a glass. Change out the water daily for best results. The little bulbs then start sprouting more greens!

And here's a bonus I've learned: chives are perrenials! If you harvest only half of the onions, the rest will keep growing and multiply into more the next year!

Any type of onion bulb or garlic can also be growin into a full plant.

For bulb onions or garlic, simply let them sit somehwere, preferrably warm and with some light, and they will start to grow (after all, they are a bulb). For garlic, each individual clove will sprout and can be grown and will produce a whole new bulb with lots of cloves.

(Disclaimer: I have only ever grown garlic this way, so I cannot personally attest to the success of onions grown this way. Depending on the type of onion, they may in fact need two years to grow to full size. However, they are edible at any size!)

Garlic and onions are fairly cold hardy, so here in the pacific northwest farmers are already growing them out in their feilds. Some even start them in the fall and grow them over the winter!

Last year I planted garlic in my garden (simply by planting old cloves that had sprouted) and then planted pole beans among them not knowing that beans and garlic don't like each other (and also thinking the beans were the bush type). The pole beans completely smothered out my garlic, and then after I pulled out all the pole beans in the fall, my garlic all started growing again! They have been out there all winter and have kept growing even through a week of cold snow very uncharacteristc of Seattle.

Feruary's Seeds & The Newspaper Pot

This month I have a few seeds I'm trying to start. They consist of the seeds that I think will take the most time to reach maturity/harvestability.

Leeks and Chives both have a long period of time before maturity (as do most onions I'm finding) and then I have several flowers, including German Chamomile and some seeds gathered from my own perennial plants (of which I do not know the names). Last year I grew lots of flowers, like snapdragons, marigolds, and nasturtiums, but the snapdragons especially took FOREVER to grow! And then those snapdragons survived all winter out there (we even had a good week of lots of snow!). I can't find my snapdragon seeds (maybe I used them all up last year) but I am starting some other flowers early just in case.

Last year and this instead of buying seed flats (which I may still do later for my veggies) I am using a newpaper-pot maker. It's a small wooden two-piece contraption that you use to make little newspaper pots that then can have seeds grown in them and be transplanted straight into the ground. This really helps with the money side, and I feel good recycling newspaper instead of buying more plastic pots.

It's super simple to use and since I'm using newspaper that comes in the mail, it's like getting free pots! My mother gave me the pot maker, but I think they are not too pricey and will easily pay for themselves especially if you grow from seed instead of buying young plants.

Garden 2012

It's already the middle of February of 2012! I have been thinking about my garden all winter long and now finally is the time I can start doing things.

I purchased all my seeds at the end of last month. I tried out two new seed companies this year: Bountiful Gardens (www.bountifulgardens.org) and Le Jardin du Gourmet (www.ArtisticGardens.com).

Bountiful Gardens is a sustainable agricultrure research company located Willits, CA. All their seeds are open-pollinated and heirloom, and most of them are also certified organic. Since I want to be able to learn how to gather my own seed for the next season, I chose to try out this company. They have an extensive amount of seeds they offer, and all are very reasonably priced. They only have seeds, so no live plants, so you have to be confident in your seed-growing, but I am very excited and am very impressed with the quality of their seed and what their business supports.

I actually found out about Le Jardin du Gourmet from a flyer in a mailer packet (go figure). They specialize in the "40 cent sample seed packets". Since this was very inexpensive I decided to give them a try even though I knew nothing more about them. Their website is obviously simple and not super proffesional-looking, but it's effective and I was very glad to have an option to order online. They had a very nice selection of garden fruits and veggies, and also had some live plant options. I opted to just try out their seed this year, but if they grow well I may try their live plants next year to add some more herbs and perrenials to my garden. They also sell onion and shallot bulbs which I may try next year. All their products are very reasonably priced, and the 40 cent seed packet option is just right for a small gardener like myself. I still got a very decent amount of seed in each packet, definitely enough for my one-family garden.


So now I have all my seeds. I have sorted them by the month in which I should start sprouting them. With my new baby it has been a challange to make time to actually get things done, but here's hoping she starts sleeping longer!