The exciting news this week is I harvested five pounds 12 ounces of Sweet Walla Walla onions. It’s about 20 onions. And I’m still in shock that I was able to grow them. I have never seen better lookin’ onions. I suppose it’s like having babies – you always think your own are cute. And just like a new mom, I’ll be posting entirely too many onion photos in this post – hope that’s okay. I haven’t cut into the onions yet, so who knows just how they taste, but at this point, I’m not really sure I’d care.
Right out of the ground they are dirty little buggers.
I wiped them off with a dry towel to clean them up. I have no idea what I’m doing, I should probably Google it.
Then I weighed them. Looks like five pounds 12 ounces – almost six pounds!!
I tied them up with some twine and hung them in the garage. Someone suggested I do this a few weeks ago when I mentioned needing help with my onions. This is supposed to “dry” them out a bit more so they don’t mold on me. I can’t wait to try them!
And here my daughter looks for red tomatoes. . .
We found quite a few! They are nearly all gone thanks to the kids popping them like they are candy. But that’s why we grow this good food. And yes, my daughter’s boots are on the wrong feet. She has a 1 in 2 chance of getting it right every time, but yet I think she has them on the wrong feet 90% off the time. Go figure. She’ll figure it out by the time it matters, I suppose.
Ahhh, sweet, beautiful tomatoes.
The chickens seem to be doing well. Here are two of the older hens eating my lettuce that is going to seed. These girls can put away lettuce better than most super models. Last week was the first week of collecting eggs from our newest batch of hens. We have a broody older hen that is essentially blocking the nesting boxes, so the babies have been laying on the ground. We moved the broody hen to her own cage until she breaks of it – but the babies still seem to laying everywhere BUT the nesting boxes. How can we correct this? My husband was going to pick up an extra nesting box today at Dell’s to see if that helps.
Still no eggs from our Ameraucanas – waiting to see if they are blue or green! Hopefully this week or next.
And here is Princess (an older hen) digging in my flower bed. Yes, she looks guilty, she had just finished digging up a bunch of my bulbs. 🙂 But I suppose if that’s the worse she did all day, she’s not doing too bad.
So that’s what’s happening in my backyard. Humor me and tell me what’s happening in yours. . . .
I used my son-laws golf ball-worked! He didn’t seem to want it back though….
You can put a golf ball or plastic egg in each box. They will figure it out.
We locked our hens in the coop every day until they had laid. It didn’t take too many days of that to get them in the habit of the boxes.
Good luck!
Put fake eggs in the nest boxes and they’ll get the hang of it.
Hey, having lived in Walla Walla for a while and my mom became an onion person — the sweet factor of Walla Walla sweets is best enjoyed ASAP after coming out of the ground. So dig in to those onions now! In a few weeks, the loss of moisture and cool chemical things going on inside the onions will make them pretty much like any other onion.
Oooh – good to know! I’m going to take your advice and try to eat them asap then. Don’t want to miss out on the sweet goodness!