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The unofficial start of spring: Ordering begins

February 19, 2013

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I’ve resisted the gardening urge as long as possible, and frankly, I did better than I do most years. But fellow bloggers are posting pictures of bulbs starting to peek out, and I suspect if I dug a little (and was actually at home during daylight hours), I might find the same thing, so that’s enough of a sign for me that it’s time to start planning for spring.

The first thing that goes in the garden every year is onions. I really enjoy growing onions, and not because it’s a huge cost savings to grow my own (onions, unlike tomatoes, aren’t that expensive in stores and at farmers’ markets). I just really like onions and have found the ones I’ve grown to be absolutely delicious. Although all of the varieties I’ve grown can be stored, we eat onions at a rather astonishing rate so I’ve never really gotten around to storing any for more than a few weeks.

My favorite place to order onion slips from is Dixondale Farms. I like nurseries that specialize in just a few plants. There is a level of expertise that comes with a specialist nursery that is rare to find in other places. Dixondale, who I’ve ordered from for the last four years*, sends nice big bunches of slips (baby onions).

So, this weekend I made my first official garden purchase of 2013. I always order the Long Day Sampler, which usually includes yellow, white and red varieties and I did again this year. Dixondale changes up the included varieties from year to year, but this year it includes Walla Walla, a sweet yellow favorite; Redwing, a beautiful red that is slightly strong, but not gross strong; and Ringmaster, which is a nice white onion that makes up in reliability what it lacks in flash.

Walla Walla
Ringmaster. Territorial Seed Co. photo
Ringmaster onion.

I also ordered some Borettana Cippolini slips. Although I’d heard about Cippolini onions before (if you watch cooking shows, they often use them), I had never tried one until last fall, when my husband got a roasted organic locally grown Cippolini on top of a steak at a restaurant. The steak was good, but the onion was to die for. It had been roasted with just a touch of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sprinkled with just a few flakes of salt and had a taste that made me know, within seconds of putting it in my mouth, that I was going to have to get my hands on more of these onions. They are wide and flat and you usually find them relatively small, although you can grow them to be larger. One of our favorite ways to eat onions is just grilled whole and I can’t wait to get some Cippolinis on the barbecue.

Borettana Cippolini onions.  Dixondale Farms photo

Cippolinis look like the photo above when you pull them out of the garden and clean them up. But this is how I really want them to look, all glistening and shiny in their carmelized glory:

Food Network photo

Because I’ve decided I really love growing onions, I’m going to dedicate more space to them than I have in the past. The past couple years I’ve grown them in half of raised Farmstead bed I won through a giveaway at North Coast Gardening, but I think I’m going to buy another raised bed from Eartheasy exclusively for onions. The best part about growing onions is that nothing touches them, so I don’t have to build a fortress around the raised beds to protect them from critters both domestic and wild.

So fess up, have you ordered anything for the spring garden yet?

*Interestingly enough, when I was going through old posts to figure out exactly how long I have been ordering from Dixondale Farms, I found a post from February 16, 2010, in which I declared that I couldn’t stand it anymore and I had to order some onions. I’m nothing of not predictable, I guess.

onions shopping vegetables
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
3 Comments

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Comments

  1. Loi Thai, Tone on Tone says: February 19, 2013 at 7:16 pm

    I'm dying to start digging in the dirt!! Sadly, I currently do not have a plot or beds for veggies šŸ™ Perhaps that will change soon šŸ™‚

    But, I'm looking forward to taking all my houseplants back outside. Boy they are getting big!!!

    Reply
  2. Maureen says: February 19, 2013 at 7:33 pm

    I'm getting the spring gardening bug again now. I find it really strange how it creeps up on me without any conscious effort on my part. I love onions too and will try roasting them with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Do you have any other good recipes?
    Best wishes and have fun gardening
    Maureen

    Reply
  3. Heather - New House New Home says: February 20, 2013 at 12:30 pm

    I've been drooling over seed catalogues for a few weeks now, but have managed to hold off a bit longer. We do have some bulbs peaking through under a sunny window.But they are stalled with our frigid temperatures right now.

    Haven't grown many onions in my life – tried shallots last year and was somewhat pleased with the results. I think I didn't let them get big enough before harvesting. Lately we've been eating a lot of green onions, so I might give that a try this year.

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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These sister dahlias are big, beautiful girls. Pen These sister dahlias are big, beautiful girls. Penhill Watermelon (first picture) and Penhill Dark Monarch are the best two HUGE dahlias that I grow. They share slightly twisty petals (Watermelon more so) and, when you look closely, subtle striations that add a beautiful depth of color. Watermelon grows taller than Dark Monarch (7 feet tall or more sometimes) and they both need serious staking, but it’s worth it because they produce a lot of flowers for a large-flowering dahlia. 

I like them both but if I was forced to choose (and who would make me do that?) I’d give the edge to Dark Monarch because it’s a little easier to manage size-wise, produces more flowers and has a bigger variation in flower color so it’s always interesting. 

Which do you like better?
I don’t love tools that only do one thing. But w I don’t love tools that only do one thing. But when there’s only one tool that does that one thing really well, I’m here for it. This pottery/container knife from Sneeboer makes it possible to actually get plants out of pots without breaking or damaging the pot. It’s also really expensive. šŸ˜€
A little snippet of a bouquet from the weekend. Zi A little snippet of a bouquet from the weekend. Zinnias, pycnanthemum muticum and bronze fennel shown here.
My love for Nicotiana is not a secret. I love tryi My love for Nicotiana is not a secret. I love trying out new varieties and I feel like they just work so well in my garden from both a design standpoint and a cultural standpoint (they are happy here). Because I grow so many, the ones that self sow can be surprises. 

All of these self-sown Nicotiana are probably at least partly the children of the F1 hybrid Perfume series, which grow to be about 24ā€ tall or so. Last year I grew purple, pink, white and lime versions and these are likely new variations on those. 

Picture 3 is, in my opinion, a good example of how these self sown second-year hybrids can go wrong. I’ll probably rip that one out. šŸ˜€

And the last photo is of my favorite colorway, lime, popping up amongst the Zinnias. I find these self-sown Nicotiana popping up all summer, so there’s always a fresh-blooming supply. 

Are you as enamored with Nicotinana as I am?
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