Fall Garden - Onions & Garlic

Intermediate Day Length Onion Sampler 

Onions are one of my favorite plants to grow since they're available for picking scallions half the year, take up little space, and are practically pest free.  Although I plant all storage varieties, usually half my onions are grown for bulbs and half for scallions. We have scallions available throughout the winter, spring, and summer.

Although ACES, the Alabama County Extension office, suggests you just grow short day varieties, this year I plan to experiment with some intermediate day length varieties too. Short day onions are triggered into "bulbing" during the short 10-12 hour day lengths of winter while intermediate at 12-14. I'll post back how the intermediate's perform in central Alabama.

 

Garlic

For the last several years, I've just planted garlic cloves from the grocery store and purchased onion sets from the local hardware store (always simply referred to as "yellow" or "white"). Today, I branched out and ordered the short day sampler pack and intermediate day sampler pack. 10 dozen onions of the following varieties should be arriving very soon, I hope:

INTERMEDIATE DAY

• Candy (yellow)
• Super Star (white)
• Red Candy Apple (red of course)

 SHORT DAY

• Texas 1015Y (yellow)
• Contessa (white)
• Hybrid Southern Belle (red)

Detroit Beets

SPACE

Garlic and onion 2"X10" apart.

10 dozen onions = 120 plants = 240" row = 20' row

20 garlic cloves = 40" row = 3.5' row.



COST

The garlic was free since we used leftover cloves from last year's harvest. They've sprouted nicely already. Just today, ordered 10 dozen onions for $14.00 including shipping from Dixondale farms in Texas. Not bad.

Next year, I'll try to track down a nice garlic sampler pack and maybe even some leeks although I've been pretty pleased with the grocery store garlic variety so far.

Grand Rapids Lettuce & Rabbiteye Blueberry