Muck

New York State's Orange County still has considerable farming activity despite the high demand for homes within commuting distance of New York City. Dairy farms have been replaced with more than million dollar homes but onions are still commercially grown there. An ancient lake covered much of what is now Orange County and the black muck soil of the former lake bed grows prodigious crops of onions. We have a small pond that is filling with muck. Perhaps this muck will grow great onions here.


Six pails were filled with the muck. Some how boys of all ages are drawn to water in the spring. Without getting my shoes wet or soiled, the pond muck was moved to the garden. In the past muck has been added to the compost piles. This was less than fully successful as muck bricks baked in the sun.


Three days of working the muck with a stone fork have produced this black crumble. Rain is helping to mix the muck and the soil. Daily attention may eventually produce a fine soil mix. We will have side by side trials of onions grown in the standard garden soil and onions grown in the muck mix. We will report success or failure.

Onion Planting Begins

Yesterday warmed up beautifully and Ed lost no time in getting onion plants in the ground.It's a satisfying feeling to get started on the planting for a new garden year. Copras and Red Zepplins are under the first two cages. The cages are there because we have problems with something, perhaps crows , pulling the new plants out of the ground. Potato onions and shallots are planted between the cages. The next cage will be Walla Walla, Ringmaster and Mars. Bought in a sampler pack, they will be mixed although Ed tries his best to separate the kinds.

I placed flat stone markers to keep track of where things are planted.I write on both side of the stones with permanent marker. The sun tends to fade the lettering, but the downside remains intact. Every year I plan to mark everything we plant in this way. So far so good.

Today looks like another wonderful day to be out there. Time to go!

We had a fabulous time in the garden. It was warm and the sky was blue with just a few wispy white clouds. Looking up we watched a bald eagle soar on the air currents. His wings held flat, he rode the wind using very slight wing movements to change his direction. We watched for a long time and never saw a single flap. Eventually he became a tiny speck in the distance on the other side of the river valley.What a treat!

Now the clouds have rolled in and the temperature is dropping. Rain is beginning to fall. What a fun day in the garden!

Onion Plants , Our First Catalog Order

The first catalog order is done. Since we have been pleased with the onions grown last year, we simply repeated the order for this year. The variety Red Zeppelin is pictured above. Red onions that keep are a first for us. Their colorful contribution to winter meals seems to make the meal more pleasant. If there is a downside to this variety, we have yet to discover it.

The copra onions are almost gone. They are a definite favorite. They are so uniform and such a nice size, that when you want a large onion it's just natural to reach for a copra. We used to grow these from seed, but we had such great results with plants ordered directly from Dixondale Farms in Texas that we have made the change. There is a wealth of information on growing onions in their catalog. I'm happy now! I can check ordering the onions off my to do list.

Bodacious Braids

Here we have one of my Copra onion braids. It contains about a dozen onions. Copras are big, round, hard, dense and heavy so a short braid is best. I still have more of these to braid.

Here are the red onions and potato onions hanging in the basement. I get a real kick out of seeing them hanging there. It will be a joy to use them this winter!