A Garden of Givers

 

Burgundy Globe onions from this year's harvest.

I made a stir-fry with vegetables from the garden last night. Chopping up a Burgundy Globe onion made me reflect on all the people who had had a hand in it's growth and drying. We don't have pictures of all the stages but this will give you an idea of the time and attention that were involved:

We started seed in February with students from OSU.

OSU student, Amy -- planting onion seeds.

Llyn with OSU students, starting seeds. We grow all our plants from seed (don't depend on other nurseries for our "starts"). In fact, we end up giving away about 2/3 of all the starts we grow. These go primarily to other "sharing"-type gardens in our area.

February is also time for re-planting onions that we'd kept in our root cellar over-winter (from last summer's crop) so they would 'go-to-seed' this summer keeping the full cycle of saving and using our own seed alive.

Many plants don't produce seed till their second year. We dig them in the fall, keep them in a root-cellar over-winter and replant in the winter/spring. Pictured: parsnips, onions and carrots.

Onions 'going to seed'. Kinda look like ocean-plants or something from an alien world!

Onion seeds, drying on tray. Soon they'll be ready for planting...and the cycle continues!

Onion seeds are incredibly slow to grow. We don't typically transplant the starts until some time in April and they just look like a blade of onion-grass when we do. Onions have shallow root systems so they must be kept evenly moist but not sodden. For some reason our local slug population enjoys nibbling the greens so we have to put out iron-phosphate pellets to give them all tummy-aches so they lay off our babies! LINK

Rows of onions. A tedious crop to plant,and weed.

Onions are also fairly heavy feeders (they have to be to put on all that weight!) so we soak compost in 5-gallon buckets and make a tea to pour over them.

Llyn making buckets of compost-tea to fertilize plants.

Llyn pouring compost-tea on baby plants. Plants that receive good nutrition are able to withstand diseases and pests. Just like people!

Next came weeding. Hours of pain-staking, tedious weeding around the rows and rows of onions. Doreen - who has the patience and focus of a monk, applied herself diligently to the task and made us all  feel inspired that we could get the job done. So, after she'd concentrated on the task for most of a morning-session,  a team of five of us carried the job across the finish-line.

Doreen - "weeder-extraordinaire"! She has been a part of the gardens since 2010 - our longest-term volunteer. Doreen has come to be quite an experimenter with healthy cooking and food-preservation since joining the gardens and shares generously with us, and the other volunteers with her "successes".

We've had an unusually dry and hot spring and summer here in the Willamette valley this year. This has made it even more important than in previous years to mulch heavily. It's hard to mulch around onions without covering them so Chris came up with this idea to spread a bunch of straw on the lawn and mow over it, collecting with the bagger attachment. We collected several garbage-cans full of this fine material and tucked it around the bulging bulbs.

We use literally tons of mulch in the gardens. Here's Llyn with fresh grass clippings; applied around newly transplanted starts it keeps moisture levels constant and slow-feeds nutrients to the plants as we water. Also feeds worms and micro-organisms in the soil below. (Note: fresh grass can burn plants. If applied green, keep it  from touching them.)

Weeding is more fun in groups! Here we are in the Fava bean patch - mid-spring.

Many of the weeds we pull, and other garden "extras" go to feed local chicken flocks. Here are Allyson and Elisa loading cabbage leaves into bags.

From this point we mainly just watered and waited.
When the tops of the onions began to die back,  we bent over their greens to encourage them to go into their drying/storage process. Heather, Joshua and Chris did this together. Then Jim pulled them all and layed them on screens in the greenhouse to finish their curing. We cover them with sheets so they don't become sun-burned. The last stage involved trimming roots and greens.

Elisa, trimming onions.

All that remains to do now is eat the onions! When I look down on my plate and everything but the oil and condiments used to prepare it came from the gardens it gives me new appreciation for the term "slow food"! From seed through harvest and back to saving seed again, that's full circle farming! Each onion has had (by my count) the help of at least 14 people who directly contributed to its planting, growth and harvest. Our garden-produce is delicious and nutritious, in part, because of all the caring and love it receives along the way.

I made a stir-fry with vegetables from the garden last night. Chopping up a Burgundy Globe onion made me reflect on all the people who had had a hand in it's growth and drying. We don't have pictures of all the stages but this will give you an idea of the time and attention that were involved:

We started seed in February with students from OSU.

OSU student, Amy -- planting onion seeds.

Llyn with OSU students, starting seeds. We grow all our plants from seed (don't depend on other nurseries for our "starts"). In fact, we end up giving away about 2/3 of all the starts we grow. These go primarily to other "sharing"-type gardens in our area.

February is also time for re-planting onions that we'd kept in our root cellar over-winter (from last summer's crop) so they would 'go-to-seed' this summer keeping the full cycle of saving and using our own seed alive.

Many plants don't produce seed till their second year. We dig them in the fall, keep them in a root-cellar over-winter and replant in the winter/spring. Pictured: parsnips, onions and carrots.

Onions 'going to seed'. Kinda look like ocean-plants or something from an alien world!

Onion seeds, drying on tray. Soon they'll be ready for planting...and the cycle continues!

Onion seeds are incredibly slow to grow. We don't typically transplant the starts until some time in April and they just look like a blade of onion-grass when we do. Onions have shallow root systems so they must be kept evenly moist but not sodden. For some reason our local slug population enjoys nibbling the greens so we have to put out iron-phosphate pellets to give them all tummy-aches so they lay off our babies! LINK

Rows of onions. A tedious crop to plant,and weed.

Onions are also fairly heavy feeders (they have to be to put on all that weight!) so we soak compost in 5-gallon buckets and make a tea to pour over them.

Llyn making buckets of compost-tea to fertilize plants.

Llyn pouring compost-tea on baby plants. Plants that receive good nutrition are able to withstand diseases and pests. Just like people!

Next came weeding. Hours of pain-staking, tedious weeding around the rows and rows of onions. Doreen - who has the patience and focus of a monk, applied herself diligently to the task and made us all  feel inspired that we could get the job done. So, after she'd concentrated on the task for most of a morning-session,  a team of five of us carried the job across the finish-line.

Doreen - "weeder-extraordinaire"! She has been a part of the gardens since 2010 - our longest-term volunteer. Doreen has come to be quite an experimenter with healthy cooking and food-preservation since joining the gardens and shares generously with us, and the other volunteers with her "successes".

We've had an unusually dry and hot spring and summer here in the Willamette valley this year. This has made it even more important than in previous years to mulch heavily. It's hard to mulch around onions without covering them so Chris came up with this idea to spread a bunch of straw on the lawn and mow over it, collecting with the bagger attachment. We collected several garbage-cans full of this fine material and tucked it around the bulging bulbs.

We use literally tons of mulch in the gardens. Here's Llyn with fresh grass clippings; applied around newly transplanted starts it keeps moisture levels constant and slow-feeds nutrients to the plants as we water. Also feeds worms and micro-organisms in the soil below. (Note: fresh grass can burn plants. If applied green, keep it  from touching them.)

Weeding is more fun in groups! Here we are in the Fava bean patch - mid-spring.

Many of the weeds we pull, and other garden "extras" go to feed local chicken flocks. Here are Allyson and Elisa loading cabbage leaves into bags.

From this point we mainly just watered and waited.
When the tops of the onions began to die back,  we bent over their greens to encourage them to go into their drying/storage process. Heather, Joshua and Chris did this together. Then Jim pulled them all and layed them on screens in the greenhouse to finish their curing. We cover them with sheets so they don't become sun-burned. The last stage involved trimming roots and greens.

Elisa, trimming onions.

All that remains to do now is eat the onions! When I look down on my plate and everything but the oil and condiments used to prepare it came from the gardens it gives me new appreciation for the term "slow food"! From seed through harvest and back to saving seed again, that's full circle farming! Each onion has had (by my count) the help of at least 14 people who directly contributed to its planting, growth and harvest. Our garden-produce is delicious and nutritious, in part, because of all the caring and love it receives along the way.