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November 9, 2008
An Infrequent Visitor
An infrequent, penny slot, visitor to Las Vegas, I drove there last spring to collect meine Überfrau with her gems from a gem show. While there my left knee gave way, and I had to be carted about in a wheelchair. My knee had been iffy after hitting it on the ice last November while picking up coffee grounds for my composter at the Campus Coffee Bean.
Gardening with a malfunctioning knee is difficult. Kneeling is useful in gardening as well as praying, two closely related activities. In March, I was reduced to putting in my sweet onion sets while lying down near a patch of snow in the thawing mud behind an Oregon grape holly. As a young infantryman, I became adept at slithering through the mud.
Seeing me prostrate, the artist across the street, Peter Grosshauser, sprinted over to check on me. "Are you all right?" "Yeah, I'm just fine. I just can't kneel anymore." "Okay, I'm just glad you're not dead."
Then, the nurse next door, Linda Paul, who resembles a straight-talking Doris Day, standing atop a bank, arms akimbo, said, "Just what do you think you're doing down there in cold mud?" I replied, "Putting in my onion sets." "Why lying down?" "I can't kneel any more." "See here, Dana, I've watched you hobble around all winter. It's time you saw an orthopaedist, like tomorrow?" "Yes,m."
Then, Gretchen, a fausse Valley Girl from the Illinois prairie, seeing me slathered with mud and snow, said, "Gag me with a spoon."
Lying down or kneeling, onions are a gift to High Country gardeners, afflicted, as they are, with a short growing season. Onion sets can be planted three months before the last frost amidst snow and mud after the ground has thawed. The first issue, as with everything else in gardening, is soil.
Onions like a humus-laden soil rich in nitrogen and plenty of water which means that in raised beds the soil should be prepared in the autumn with lots of compost, blood meal, and a balanced fertilizer. High nitrogen fertilizer should be applied a couple of weeks after the sets have been planted and bi-weekly thereafter. Since water is dear, the best way to plant them is in a trench. In that way, they get plenty of water without waste.
Planting them in March means onions in the middle of June about the time of the last frost. Not only will the gardener have them early, but they will be far and way better than anything "boughten," so mild they can be eaten like a tomato just off the vine only just pulled from the ground, washed and trimmed. Make sure your lover eats onions, too, else it'll be "a cold night in a hot town tonight."
Onions mature by the length of a day's sunlight which means onions are categorized as long day, intermediate day, and short day varieties. Vidalia onions are short day, growing well in the South. Walla-Walla are long and intermediate, but best in long. Flagstaff is intermediate. Onions begin to grow their bulbs with 12-13 hours of sunlight a day, and in Flagstaff March 19 is the beginning 12 hours of sunlight a day.
Onion sets are best planted 5 inches apart, but if a gardener likes green onions, they can planted 3 inches apart and every other one can be harvested early, leaving the others to grow into large globes in July and August. Stored, they can be eaten right into November.
If the local commercial nurseries don't stock sweet onion sets fit for Flagstaff, they can be ordered through the Internet, such as Brown's Omaha Plant Farms at http://www.bopf.com. It's best to order them in January for shipment in March.
Three hybrids, Candy, Red Stockton, and Superstar, work very well in Flagstaff. One year I over-heated and planted 405 sets, not something I would recommend. Fanaticism has its penalties, but not a fresh sweet onion.
My knee is working again after some fancy arthroscopic knife work by Torey Botti, M.D., and rehab with Michelle Pitts although I enjoyed planting my daffodils this November while prone.
Dana Prom Smith, a Master Gardener volunteer and coordinating editor of the Master Gardener Column for Coconino County Cooperative Extension, can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com. For gardening questions, call the Master Gardener Hotline, 774-1868, x19, or visit MG Web site: highelevationgardening.arizona.edu.
Posted by maxmaddy at November 9, 2008 5:44 AM