Rainy days and Onion Starts

This Spring has been a cold, rainy one. And if you're a farmer, you've had to wait day after rainy day, wondering if you'll ever be able to transplant all those seedlings that are more than likely taking up precious space in your greenhouse.

A couple days ago, after starting some pea and sunflower sprouts in the greenhouse and setting the lettuce, chard, brussel sprouts, and kohlrabi outside to harden off, the farm manager decided it was worth it to try to plant some of the 9,000 onion starts she had ordered from Johnny's Seed Company.  Despite the thin mist, we donned rain pants and barreled down the hill to where the beds had been prepared with black plastic (to protect the soil from the nasty weed galinsoga).

Puncturing the plastic every five inches in long rows, we created little holes in the soil to place the small onion starts.

Basically, an onion start is a baby onion. In order to plant large onion seedlings when the soil can first be worked, you would need to start the seeds in your greenhouse smack-dab in the middle of winter, say January or February. To many farmers in the North East, this is cost prohibitive. Purchasing onion starts from a warmer climate far outweighs the cost of heating a greenhouse during the coldest months of the year. Not to mention the fact that it would take away from your off-season. So these "onion starts" are grown in the greenhouse, removed from the soil, bunched and boxed, and sent to your doorstep. There they wait until you're ready to plant them in the field. As long as you keep them cool and dry, they'll be fine.

So we marked the rows, pierced the plastic, dug the holes, and planted the onion starts over and over again,  as the fine mist changed its pace and turned into a downpour. No turning back!

As soon as I upload pictures from my camera, I'll post some photos from the fields and greenhouse. Since Onion Planting Day (which actually ended up spanning three days), we've planted chard, lettuce, bok choy, kohl rabi, and scallions. So far, it's rained at least once every day. The crops are happy and well-hydrated!