Thanks for the feedback grandad, I just put it back, I thought it might have a chance even though disturbed. I've got plenty of scapes from some green onions I planted. My wife got some store bought last summer, so I cut 'em down to the whites and planted those. They've done really well, but I may have to pull them up soon. Their in the way also. I've heard they can do alright indoors, I thought I might try and transplant to a container.

Tina, I went to visit the garden near my house that Tom was talking about and here is my report. While everything is producing in the ground, tomatoes including, he even had some ripe already, they started to show signs of disease, a lot of yellowing leaves and wilt. As for the artichokes they were producing really well! huge heads but they had bugs that came from all the animal bug planet, I have never seen them before, the interesting thing is that I saw no small animals eating them even the garden is in the open and we have in the area, squirrels, armadillos, skunks and others. About the blue tomato plant, out of my 45 different varieties, a lot of them from Tom, they are producing fruit now, but I could not called them the strongest plants, the experts said the strain are not set yet or something like that. From all the blue plants that I grew some of them have purple stems and some not, we will see how the tomatoes turn out. Another new tomato that is showing to be very productive is the cherry, tomato berry and it is shaped like a strawberry, cute! Keep the sweet potato slips moist till established, after that they will be very hardy in the garden and don't forget to keep some sweet potatoes for the future. Silvia

Posted by skybird. . . Sure wish I had enough space to grow a few SWEET onions! Gardeners aren't usually able to claim that they don't have enuf room for onions, Skybird. I've got them out there dancing cheek to cheek from the very earliest of the season. What I do lately with sweet onions is to sow seed in the unheated greenhouse in February. I pay some attention to conditions in there so that the soil doesn't freeze. The heat goes on in mid-March but the onion seedlings (they've sprouted by then) are moved outside after only a week or 2, once the heat is turned on. I'm hardening them off but soon, they are staying out overnight. Once again, I'm trying not to let the soil in the flat freeze. Nearly as early as I put onion sets into the open garden, I'm out there pushing the little sweet onion (& bunching onion) seedlings into a prepared bed. I doubt if they've got 4" of ground between them. As they grow, most of the onions are pulled for scallion use. That leaves room for maybe 1/3rd remaining to reach a mature, sweet onion size. Scallions from sets come out first, then those from sweet onions, next come those bunching onions. There's no wait. While the bunching onions are still coming out of the garden -- the sweet onion bulbs are ready to harvest. As I noted above, I have several sweet onions each year but Ovation really lasts well beyond the time when the Utah & Walla Walla's are gone (about the 1st of December at the latest). Apparently, my basement is a good place for onions. Since I've only got the Ovation for storage this year, I will have to keep track of how long they last but, they should do well. Anyway, the mature onions are so crowded that they are almost, but not quite, pushing each other out of the ground at harvest time. Steve

I'm not sure to what to attribute my success with onions. It isn't a special knowledge. For example, I just learned about "water mold," a common and sometimes serious onion disease. It's why even large onion farms are using drip irrigation rather than overhead sprinklers. I use the sprinklers and have some problem with water mold every year. It doesn't damage them all that much. I was briefly reading about planting by the moon the other day. They put onions in the root crop category. Onion bulbs aren't roots. They are the base of the leaves. Onions have plenty of stringy roots. Fertilize them more like corn or lawn grass. Those leaves need to grow to produce good bulbs. Leeks and bunching onions don't form bulbs but need that high N fertilizer, too. My leeks struggle through the summer heat. I will get some fish emulsion on them soon so that they can take advantage of the cooler days ahead to make some growth. All these weeks since they sprouted indoors back about the first week of February. They won't gain baseball bat size in this climate but they really should after all this time. Nothing like leek and potato soup so I'm happy to have them in the garden. Steve