Onion Watch 2024

UPDATE 20241212:

The onions as yet thrive, with another plant that I forgot about bursting through the soil at least two weeks after planting. The birds still show no interest in the plants and the plants continue to grow and produce multiple stems. I read up on these and one of the key things is to do your best to prevent these from flowering, because that will make the bulbs smaller, so I haven’t been watering them to any real extent at this point.

I bought one of those self-watering raised beds over at Lowe’s earlier this summer and planted some peas and radishes in it. To my dismay, the peas were pilfered by a gang of morning doves and the radishes succumbed to the heat of summer, so there was no joy in the raised bed.

With autumn and winter coming, I found the one seasonally appropriate vegetable that I could plant — onions. I figured what the hey and planted a few in the bed and then let chance decide their fate.

I got one green shoot about a week after planting and it remained the lone sprout as the days passed. It grew like a weed while the rest of the bed remained eerily silent. Was there a surfeit of water? Was it too cold? Were they bereft of sunlight? As days past and the lonely little sprout grew what seemed to be inches a day, I wondered and waited.

A little more than a week later, I found several green tips just at the point of breaking through the surface. It turns out I just had the Usain Bolt of onions in my bed. The remaining bulbs grew just as quickly as the first, though a couple still remained in silent slumber under the soil.

Those holdouts finally burst through and now I have all the onions bulbs sprouted and growing, so my attention naturally turned to the Dove Gang, who had been mysteriously absent for months until my onions started growing. A few days ago, I spied four of the miscreants hanging out near the raised bed, but none seemed interested in molesting my juvenile alliums. Could it be they aren’t partial to onions? I hope so, since throwing a net over them doesn’t seem practical for these plants.

As long as those birds steer clear of my thriving onion bed, I should have something that I can gather and use here in a short while. We’ll see how it goes.