Dirty Business: Gambling, and The Secret To Large Onions and Leeks

I mentioned in the very first post how we determine when to start our seeds based on the projected last frost date.  I had stated that we were going with the 50/50 last date of May 25^th.  Well, this time I decided to gamble and put some plants out early.  Over the weekend of May 15-16, I put eggplants, Escamillo and bell peppers in the ground.  This is essentially the 70% last frost date, but the weather forecast shows overnight lows not even cracking 50 degrees over the next week so I feel pretty good about taking this bet.  Besides, if the eggplants croak, then I won’t shed any tears—and if the sweet peppers fail, then I’ve got more room for chiles and jalapeños.  There is a method to my madness.

The other aspect of this gamble is the amount of time that the plants have spent in the cold frame.  The sweet peppers and eggplants have been in the cold frame for a little over a week, which is actually pretty quick.  The post on cold frames stated that we typically have the plants in the cold frame for two weeks before planting them.  These plants have had a few overnights in the cold frame so this won’t be as big a leap as it might have been, but still pretty rushed from the standpoint of the plants.

I had given the beds another turning of the soil about a week prior, so that the weed seeds and the bad-bug larvae could get exposed to the air and either get eaten by birds or just plain die.  So, before planting, I took a garden rake and smoothed out the beds with the flat side of the rake.  Also, Spring planting faces another, more insidious, threat:  cutworms.  I’ve never actually seen a cutworm in our gardens before, but I’ve seen the aftermath of their destruction.  Have you ever put a young plant in the ground, and then a few days later you see that the plant is lying dead on the ground, looking like a very tiny lumberjack felled it?  That’s what cutworms do.  They literally just cut through the base of a plant at the soil line.  The good news is that they can only get through a very tender plant, so it’s pretty easy to thwart their diabolical plans—which I’ll show you in a moment.

So, first things first, I dig a hole in the ground so that the plant will be just a little deeper than it was in the pot.  At this point, some people put a little compost or fertilizer in the hole, but we’ve never bothered with it because of the fish emulsion we use in the first watering.  Also, it’s important to note here that when it comes to peppers and eggplants, I do not trim any of the lower leaves off the plant.  I will do this for other plants—especially tomatoes—but not the peppers and eggplants.  Also, as I mentioned in the post on the first transplant, it’s important to make sure the potted soil is wet enough to hold together so that the root balls don’t get exposed to the air and die.  Anyway, I take the plant and turn it over in my hand, then gently squeeze and tap the pot until the plant pops out.  Then I cradle the soil end in my other hand and gently lower the plant into the hole.

From here, it’s time to break out my defense against cutworms:  the cutworm collars, which are just 1-inch-wide strips of newspaper which are roughly three inches long.  Cutworms can’t get through the paper, and the paper eventually degrades into the soil so this is a very effective and simple solution.  By the time the paper degrades, the plants will be thick and strong enough to resist the cutworms.  I take a collar and gently wrap it around the stem of the plant where the soil line will be.

Then it’s just a matter of sweeping the soil back into the hole, taking care that roughly half of the cutworm collar is poking out of the ground, then gently firming the soil around the plant.

The general spacing recommendation for peppers and eggplants is to plant them 18 inches apart—but, again, we don’t do that.  For us, it’s all about maximizing as much yield as possible out of our very, very small space.  So, these go in the ground about a foot apart, in staggered rows to increase the density.

Then I give everything a good soak with the diluted fish emulsion/water mixture, and place an anti-groundhog/rabbit cage over the plants.  The cages are made from galvanized fencing, with hatches built into the tops.  They don’t look pretty, but they do the job.  When we had a regular, rectangular garden, we simply used rabbit guard fencing (which has smaller holes at the bottom and larger holes at the top), which was lined with cinderblocks on both sides to keep the groundhogs from tunneling under.  But now we have narrow terraced beds, so we had to get more creative.

Then, after mowing the grass again, I gave the plants a good 1.5-inch layer of mulch.  I didn’t show the mulched bed here because, with the fresh grass, you won’t be able to see the plants.

At some point within the next week, I’ll start laying down the soaker hoses for irrigation, but that’s a subject for another post.

The onions and leeks have been in the ground for around a month now, so they’ve had time to establish their root systems and are now working on growing their greens.  Here’s the thing about onions and leeks—just letting the greens grow is only going to let them go to seed faster, but it will not do much of anything for making the bulbs grow fatter.  So, it’s time to start trimming the greens.  Think about an onion or a leek:  if you cut one in a cross-section, you’ll see all those layers.  The layers are all connected to a green above the ground, so fewer greens means fewer layers.  If I want more greens—and therefore, more layers in the bulb—then I need to trim the greens once they get to be around 4 or 5 inches tall.  I’m not trimming them back—just snipping the tips off.

I’ve got something like 250 of these damned things right now, so it took me the better part of a half hour to get through them all.  But I’m also starting to harvest every other plant as I need them for cooking, which makes space for the remaining plants to grow fatter.  In about a month, I’ll be closer to having 100-150 plants.  Anyway, by snipping those tips off, it stimulates the onion or leek to grow a new green to take its place.  When that new green gets tall enough, I snip that one too, and the whole process starts over.  By the time I’m ready to harvest the onions, I’ll have a bunch of nice, big bulbs with a bunch of long, dried-out greens, which enable Mrs. Butcher to make braids for hanging and storing in the basement.  The leeks don’t store well so we use them up as needed.

One final note—I do not trim the garlic.  It grows its root heads without the need for outside stimulus, so we just let them grow on their own.  I also don’t cut the scapes for cooking because I need them for the braids.