2012 planting

I've already started planting for next year. After digging up the potatoes, I sprinkled what remaining chicken manure (dried, pelleted) fertilizer I had left on the area, then turned over the dirt with a shovel. I saw some of the fattest worms I've ever seen in there. When they were not extended, they were about 4-5" long and almost as wide as a sharpie marker. Thats got to be a good sign for the dirt.

After turning over the soil, I planted a few different things. First was 12 cloves from the garlic that I harvested in July. According to the internet the size of the garlic plant and the yield is proportional to the size of the clove that is planted, so I took the biggest cloves from three different bulbs. Some of them were quite large and most, if not all, were larger than the cloves that I planted last year.

Next up was the "potato onions". I'd read about these previously online. They are supposed to be kind of between shallots and regular onions. Each plant makes 4-8 bulbs of varying size, the largest ones probably being almost the size of normal onions. Much like garlic, you can just just keep a few of the onions to plant for the next year and eat the rest. Supposedly they are what most people used to grow in their own veggie patches 100 years ago, but fell out of favor because they weren't really appropriate for large-scale farming. I do plan to plant some regular onion sets in the spring in case these don't live up their promises.

Lastly, I planted a small quantity of fancy french shallots. Supposedly they are the kind that are most prized by foodie types. I'm not sure that I have a refined enoung palate to care about such things, but I figured I'd give them a shot. Again, these should hopefully produce a cluster of shallots for each one that I plant.

I probably should have taken a picture of all this stuff before I planted it, but I forgot to. These all get planted in the fall because it gives them time to start a good root system and get primed for fast growth in the spring. This variety of garlic is quite hardy and shouldn't have a problem surviving the winter around here (no problem last year), but the potato onions and shallots are somewhat less hardy. These potato onions are supposedly ideal for Virginia. To try to help them survive the winter, I put about 3" of compressed leaves on the area, and then I put some of the potato vines on top just to keep the leaves from blowing away. Here is what it looked like when I was done. Hopefully those fat worms don't eat all the insulation before winter.