I understand and normally I would start earlier. However, our summers get way too hot and it makes it a bit tricky. For example, last year it was 90 one day and 60 the very next day. There was no slow cool down and it stayed in the 60s for the rest of the time until it cooled down more. I planted my broccoli when everyone told me to last year according to my zone, and it all bolted. I can grow them indoors but they get too big and there is nowhere to store them. So I am experimenting this year. I might only have young leaves to eat and that's ok with me. I am just trying to get it down an area that is 6a but really could be 4a and 7a at different times in the season. It is such a weird place to grow in! I think it is because it's sort of a mountain area and we used to have 80s all summer and strong cool winters with lots of snow. I appreciate your guys help! You have all inspired me and gave me some new varieties that I would never had thought of :). I really love this forum!

With the exception of a freaky 3-day thaw a few weeks ago, it's been cold here since late November. We've had several week-long episodes of single-digit temps and every time I think,"Well, maybe that's the last of it." hahaha What an idiot. In the past 10 days or so we've had 1 day with temps over 15° (it got up to a whopping 28° - felt like a heatwave!) Last Sunday it was -11° when I got up around 5am. Yesterday the high here was 14°, and that was about 6 am. The temp droppped throughout the day and at 5pm was down to 8°. This morning at 4 am it was 4° and right now it's 12°. It was sunny earlier but cloudy & grey now with more snow forecast. O, joy. Either tonight or tomorrow night (can't recall which, and who really cares anymore?) the temp's supposed to go below 0° again with windchills of -25° to -30°. I wish they'd just shut up regarding windchills. Then, this weekend, the weatherguy claims there's a chance of a warmup (possibly skyrocketing to 33°) but, unfortunately, that'll also bring yet another round of freezing rain (our fourth so far this season). I've pretty much given up the concept of actually staying warm. Since mid-November I've bought 600 gallons of gas (3 deliveries @ 200 gallons each). The price per gallon was $2.93, $2.96, and $2.99, respectively. That's a dollar+ more per gallon than it was last year! Un-freaking-believable. My highest-priority for this year is finding a "tighter" house to either rent or buy. I'm betting I find it right after I get everything planted. ;-D Uh-oh, somebody better call me a wah-mbulance!

Bon, Remember that onions (and all the other types of alliums that we grow for food) are biennials. This means that normally they grow the first season and flower at the end of the second season. Their first season occurs when the seed is grown to transplant size and then the transplants are pulled, bundled and shipped to consumers. Once the consumer plants the onion transplants in the ground, the plants begin their second season. What should happen in the second season is that the roots grow, the leaves grow and elongate, more leaves form, etc. If nothing abnormal interrupts this second season, you will get harvestable bulbs, normally in the June-July time frame, though sometimes I have short-day types ready for harvest at the end of May. If you were to fail to harvest those bulbs, the leaves would die back, and then when growth resumed, they'd flower. The flower stalk would split the bulb and it would be of poor quality. If something unusual interrupts the second season, the onions often bolt and send up a flower stalk. I won't say it happens to 100% of them. Sometimes a few bolt, sometimes most of them bolt. Once that happens, they won't bulb up because they are putting all their energy into producing seeds. The something unusual that interrupts their second season could be something as simple as a few consecutive nights with temperatures below 45 degrees once the onions have at least 5 leaves, but also could be very heavy rainfall, overfertilization early in their growth cycle or anything else (like being transplanted again) that disrupts the normal growth that began to occur after you put the plants in the ground the first time. Each variety responds to interruptions in different ways. Some bolt. Some seem to stall and just not grow well. Some seem to grow fine and don't bolt but produce very small onions instead of the nice big bulbs one expects. There are so many variables involved that you cannot predict with certainty what will happen. DIfferent varieties respond differently, and even different plants of the same variety can respond differently, but when you transplant onions a second time once their second season has started, what happens most of the time is that you do not get a good crop. Must you move them? Can't they just grow where they are now and then next year you plant that new crop of onions in the new, enlarged garden area? To clarify, they tolerate being pulled from the ground, being shipped and being put into the ground a second time because they are biennials. If you then try to move them again, you're treating them as perennials. That interruption in their growth can cause split bulbs, rerooting, bolting, etc. Will transplanting kill them? No. Onions are tough and can survive being moved repeatedly at times, but the tradeoff is you likely won't get the bulbs you want. If you want onions that you can move around that way, you need to grow perennial bunching onions----but they give you little onions, not great big bulbs. In the spring, I often take whatever onion bulbs from the previous harvest still are in storage and are sprouting green leaves, and I plant them in the garden. They'll give us beautiful flowers (because they are in the third season at this point) but they won't give us big bulbs. Usually after they flower, the bulbs will have split into many pieces. I have left those ornamental onions in the ground and often had onions come back, grow and bloom for several years in that location, but I've never tried to harvest them. I'm not sure if the new onion plants each year keep coming from those split bulbs or if they are from seeds that drop from the flower heads after they are through blooming. I like the allium flowers because they attract tons of tiny beneficial insects. By attempting to move onions that already are happily growing, you're disrupting their natural cycle and there's normally a price you pay for that. Dawn

I have Gerbing heated gloves for my motorcycle. I highly recommend investing in a regulator so you can adjust the temperature. The first time I wore them, we started out from home at 28 degrees. I could not regulate the heat so they were on HIGH all the time. I had to switch them off and on periodically but I received mild second degree burns on the knuckles of my hands (blistering). You can check with any motorcycle shop and see if they can't order the battery powered ones for you. I have mild Raynaud's and use my heated gloves when the temps go below 60. My hands and feet are perpetually cold from November through March.