Growing

Recycled Onions Sprouting With Greentails

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We love to use onions in most dishes we cook and we even use them in fresh salads, so there are always onions in the pantry, garage or refrigerator.

Onions Growing in the Garden with Greentails
Onions Growing in the Garden with Greentails

Last Autumn we harvested onions from the garden. Once the onions were apparently dry the tops were cut back to a couple of inches in length and allowed to dry some more.

The onions were placed in cardboard boxes in layers. In between each layer a couple of sheets of newspaper prevented the onions from touching each other as much as possible. When they touch, that’s were a rot can start.

Some of the onions never did dry out and instead they rotted. As the cold months went on a few onions were disposed of that started to go to mush. Many others were eaten.

Make sure the boxes for storing onions have lids so the onions can be kept in the dark. Storing onions in the dark will prevent sprouting until early Spring. Layering the onions with newspaper might help to keep them in a hibernated state as long as possible.

Once Spring did arrive the onions in the pantry started sprouting, so we planted them in the garden. See the photo above? The onions are really growing great. It feels like we’re recycling the onions in a way or maybe reusing them.

I like to snip off a green shoot or two and chop them up for salads or sandwiches.

When clipping off some greentails to eat, don’t take too many leaves from one plant because these long, green onion leaves will feed the plant and help to grow the onion bulbs that we could eat in a few months time.

Parsley Coming Back To Life in Year Two

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Parsley is one of the plants that might just come back alive in your garden. It doesn’t seem to mind a rough winter, like the one that we just had that was very cold.

Parsley Shoots Growing in Year Two
Parsley Shoots Growing in Year Two

Parsley that was planted in the garden last year is coming back to life very quickly. It’s the ultimate example of a biennial plant. One that takes 2 years to complete its life cycle.

The first year provides lots of greenery for the kitchen and the second year’s growth will bring us into the heat of summer with lots of green leaves to harvest.

Once we get into the hot weather the flower stalk will take lots of energy from the growing plant to do its reproductive thing. And you really don’t want that unless you aim to collect the seeds.

The life cycle of parsley goes like this —

  • first year growth from seed to green plant
  • plant dies back to the ground in autumn after frost
  • the roots overwinter
  • new shoots grow out the second year in early spring
  • a single flower stalk rises from the center in late spring
  • parsley plant dies back after second summer

Clip off the flower stalk before it grows very tall. That allows the plant to put its energy into growing the leaves, not seeds.

In the second year you’ll be able to harvest some parsley leaves before the plant dies back.

Collecting leaves and either drying them or freezing them might let you get away with planting parsley every other year. But if you like to use a lot of parsley, plant one each year. That way the second year’s growth on the first plant will provide leaves for the kitchen while the second plant grows up. You can harvest from the second plant as the first plant starts to decline in summer.