I broke down and ordered 2 sample packs from Dixondale this week. I got the short season pack, which I thought had Red River, but now I see it is Red Creole. Sigh, oh well. I almost bought the natural weed and feed. I didn't. Do you think Garden Tone is sufficient? DH was all gung ho to prep the bed before the rain. Hasn't happened. Ship date was 2/13 for my zip code.

The snakes are toying with you Dawn.

Chrholme, DH has been tryIng to kill a crape myrtle for about 3 years now. Good luck with that.

I think I would have a stroke if I stumbled upon a snake in the garden. Maybe I lumber along so loudly that they run for cover!

Amy, The onions need a lot more nitrogen than Garden Tone has. You can use blood meal to provide that nitrogen. The natural weed and feed has to be reapplied every few weeks and did not work as well as I had hoped. I just weed, weed, weed and then, after the onions have made a little growth, I mulch, mulch, mulch.

The snakes might be trying to toy with me. Heaven knows they have scared the crap out of me about a million times already.

Mary, I hate, hate, hate the snakes. There have been times I've had so many encounters with the supposedly rare (they're NOT rare here) timber rattlers that I've considered moving back to a city. I hate those things with a passion. Luckily, they're not as aggressive as some other common venomous snakes, but they also don't really want to leave---they want for me to leave. I feel like it is my garden, and I'm not leaving. So, we shoot them.

The way I feel about it is that the snakes are free to roam and live on about 12 of our 14.5 acres, but on the 2 or 2.5 acres that surround the house, outbuildings, poultry housing, fruit trees, gardens, driveway, gate and mailbox....snakes are not welcome. I think that is a fair compromise. If a venomous snake sees me and turns to leave, as long as it is retreating to our neighbor's property or headed off into our woodland, that's good and I just stand there and wait for it to leave. However, if their idea of retreating is to try to hide in a densely-planted garden bed or to try to go into the greenhouse or chicken coop, that's a fatal error.

It is hard to nearly impossible to keep beneficial helpers like toads, frogs, skinks and lizards in my garden because the snakes come and eat them. I consider it a good thing to eliminate the snakes and let the other creatures stay.

While rat snakes and chicken snakes won't hurt people, they'll eat our poultry, especially when the poultry is still small to medium sized. We don't tolerate them being around.

I gave up my backyard lily pond several years ago after water moccasins moved into it when the ponds and creeks dried up during a bad drought. I miss my lily pond, but we couldn't keep it. The water moccasins are hyper-aggressive and the walkway between our detached garage and house ran right alongside the pond, so the beautiful water garden had to go. We have not, of course, had a water moccasin near the house since we filled in the pond.

Copperheads are more common than rattlesnakes some years, and I don't mind them as much as I mind seeing a rattlesnake. They are fairly docile if not cornered and really would rather just get away from you than strike you. They will coil up and prepare to strike, but if you back off, so will they. However, our neighbor was bitten by a copperhead and her recovery was long and hard, so we don't tolerate having them around the house very much either. Chris stepped on a copperhead while getting out of his car one night (it did not bite him) and promptly pulled his leg back inside the car and closed the door. We were siting outside in lawn chairs talking with visiting friends, one of whom was Tim's police partner at work back then, so that poor copperhead didn't stand a chance. Had it headed off into the woods, everyone would have just sat still and waited for it to leave, but it headed for the side yard where we were sitting, so Tim and Ken shot it.

One of my worst and most frightening encounters was with a rattlesnake that a red hawk tried to grab. I came home from a wildfire and let the dogs out of the house and into the dogyard. It probably was in early to mid-Spring because I remember being cold.The dogs started barking and I stepped outside to see why. Lying right up against their fence (but, thankfully, outside the dog yard, was what I thought was a dead Buff Orpington Chicken. Underneath it was a snake. One of the firefighters who lives nearby came to shoot it. While he was on his way, I was trying to keep an eye on the snake so it wouldn't get away, while also getting the dogs back inside. What I didn't yet know was this......the dead bird was a redtailed hawk, but all I could see was its underside....hence, I thought it was a chicken. Had I been calmer, I might have noticed the snake was not underneath the chicken (I could really only see the snake's head well) but rather was grasped in the hawk's talons. After my friend shot the snake, he picked up the bird and turned it over and we discovered it was a dead hawk. Apparently the snake killed the bird, but then the snake was grasped in the hawk's talons and couldn't get away. It was just so bizarre. You never know what you'll see out here in the country.

Western diamondback rattlers are aggressive and their venom can kill a person (most people survive if they get quick medical treatment, but sometimes they lose a limb) and we shoot all of them on sight. Pygmy rattlers look deceptively small and gentle but they aren't. Probably the only snake that's ever shown real aggression towards me, other than water moccasins, is the pygmy rattler. I was kneeling on the ground and did a backwards somersault to instantly put space between it and me. I'm glad no one was watching!

We've lost cats to snakebite, and one cat was bitten two separate times. The vet thought the second episode would kill her, but it didn't. She lived to be about 15 or 16 years old. Another cat got bitten in the face and her whole face was paralyzed. Our cat vet (he is a cat specialist and is like a modern-day miracle worker) kept her at the vet clinic on an IV for 4 or 5 days and worked very hard to save her life. He did it! I am forever grateful as she is a very sweet and loving cat. When he finally let her come home, she could breathe okay and would drink water and eat a little, and he thought she would survive. However her eyes were paralyzed wide open. It took about three weeks before she could close her eyes. Until that finally happened, she would go into the closet to sleep with her face against the wall, presumably to keep light from waking her up since she couldn't close her eyes. Every time I look at her, I'm so happy she still is here with us. We've had dogs injured by venomous snake bites, but they survived. Our neighbors were not so lucky and lost a beautiful cattle dog to a snake bite despite the vet's valiant effort to save it. Much depends on how many times a snake strikes and how much venom it injects.

I have a million snake stories (sadly) and 95% of them end badly. I'd be happy if I never saw a venomous snake again for the rest of my life, but that's not my reality.

Dawn

Turbo Cat, being loud helps. I never know what I'm going to find, but I find a ton of snakes. So far they are only the keepers.

I don't worry about being loud, necessarily, since snakes do not actually hear in the same way that we do. They don't have ears. Instead they feel sound waves/vibrations and then process those sound waves/vibrations in a way that translates into their form of 'hearing' and alerts them that someone or something is coming. I do like to stomp around or tap on the ground with along-handed garden tool while heading towards the garden. For whatever reason, a huge number of my snake encounters happen right at the garden gate, and shockingly so. Sometimes it looks like they are waiting for me to come open the gate to let them enter the garden through it.

One of my best garden companions is Mississippi Kites, which will raise a ruckus if they see a snake crossing a field, the street, etc. So, when a snake is headed my way, often the first I know of it is that the kites are shrieking and swooping down low to the ground, trying to harass the snake and make it turn away. I don't think the kites are doing it to warn me. Rather, I think the snakes are coming close to where the kites have their nests. Blue Jays do the same thing. Those birds are my early warning system.

my dogs brought me a dead run over rattle snake. They did not tell me where they got it from but hopefully not here.

on a more oniony note...

This is what I ordered for the total of 30 bunches. which according to my calculations can mean 1500 to 2500 :/ Can anyone say planting party !!!

20) 1015Y Texas SuperSweet

(4) Red Creole

(2) Candy

(2) Red Candy Apple

(2) Long Day Sampler (RW, RM, WW)

Kim, Do you mean they brought you a rattlesnake recently? I hope not. It is never a good sign when they're out in January (and they were last year).

That's a lot of onions to plant! You need more than an onion planting party---you need an onion planting marathon.

Dawn

There are several you tube videos about planting onions using a pvc pipe. From a standing position, you stick it in the dirt, drop the plant down the pipe and move on. The videos very with just an ordinary pipe, to one cut and sharpened diagonally and one guy had a fancy tool. I didn't listen to the videos, but "fancy tool" was poking through plastic or weed cloth with his and the others used their feet to firm the soil around the plant. I have never figured out how to link a you tube video, but they sell the fancy tool here. The video is titled "planting onions". He trims the roots on the plants first. So they slide down the pipe or for another reason, I don't know?

Some people trim the roots of the onions really short and also trim off the tops really short. I tried it for a couple of years to see if it made any difference in the performance of the plant. It did not. If anything, when I trimmed them, they were slower to take off and grow. I wonder if the theory is that pruning the roots and the tops help initiate growth? I don't know, but I didn't find it worthwhile. When using those tubes to plant, their reason might be to avoid having anything stick in the tubes.

With all that those poor onion plants have been through by the time we plant them, I would think trimming them would set them back. Sounds like a DH OCD thing to make them look better, LOL.

It probably is. Lots of people like to peel off the skin/withered leaves, which as you know usually looks ragged and dry on store bought plants, but often only a wilted faded green on plants shipped direct from DF. This is a mistake. The skin contains compounds that prevent rot, which might explain why the poor plants survive in the cold, wet ground as well as they do.

Last year I had help planting but they planned way too close so I will just take my time and get it done.

Yes Dawn the rattler was here about 2 weeks ago. It didn't really bother me because it was run over and then carried here by oreos my puppy. But she doesn't wander more than a half of a block so still a concern.

It is hard to imagine rattlers being out in January, but then again, they were out last January too. Having that rattler out so early bothers me. Of course, we hit 79 degrees this past week, so it doesn't shock me either. How bizarre is it to have a high of 79 and a low of 22 in the same week? These widely fluctuating temperatures allow/encourage some creatures who normally hibernate in the winter to come out and eat on a warm day, and that includes the snakes and the bees. The warm temperatures also encourage fruit trees to bud early. We even had wasps swarming on that 79-degree day.

While it is not unheard of for snakes to come out on a warm day in winter to hunt for a meal, having one that close to you means you've got snakes hibernating near you. And, if they are hibernating near you in the winter, that means they are around in the summer too.....and that is what is worrisome since your little man enjoys being out in the garden so much. Really though, for as many snakes as we always have here along the Red River bottom lands in the warm season, we have plenty of years where only 1 or 2 people in our county get bitten by venomous snakes, and some years none get bitten so even a plentiful population of snakes doesn't necessarily mean any humans will be bitten by them.

Since we are surrounded by pasture on 3 sides it does not shock me. I have to believe oreos drug it up from pasture or street. My 2 usually won't stop barking if there is any live thing around this is sophie. She is full grown mutt quick as a wink. I keep her with me always in the tall brush. She is a good hunter. Very protective if me and my littleman,

Beautiful Sophie. beautiful story. <3

Oh, she is so gorgeous and so adorable. I've seen dogs put themselves between people and wasps, people and bees, people and skunks and people and snakes. Good dogs are very protective of the people they love.

Thank you She is a sweet mommas girl. Littleman actually picked her or she picked him. I am glad they found each other cuz the rest of the litter was short wiry hair. I am not used to small dogs but she is so comical it didnt take long to love her. Unfortunately she started roaming and around here roaming dogs disappear so she has to be contained. I let her run when I am here but she is so energetic I feel sorry for her. She never roamed until she went into heat now she wants to go all over town. Hopefully one day I will have a nice tall fence around this place.

Which of the onions I listed will be ready first most likely?

It is hard to guess because sometimes some of the intermediate day-length varieties in my garden will be ready before the short day-length varieties. However, the long day-length varieties usually are last.

Theoretically, you'd expect the short day-length types to mature first, but an intermediate day-length type whose DTM is 85 days (like Red Candy Apple) can beat a short day-length type whose DTM is 115 days (like TX1015 Supersweet). It just depends on what exact day-length is needed for a specific variety and all we have are general classifications for short day-length (10-12 hours), intermediate day-length (12-14 hours) and long day-length (14-16 hours).

It is the combination of both day-length and DTMs (which are estimates only) that determine when each variety matures, and I have no idea when your day-length, for example, reaches 10 hours or 12 hours or 14 hours.

Based on the estimated DTMs for each variety you're growing, if maturity were based on DTM alone, your onions would mature in this order:

Red Candy Apple 85-95 days

Walla Walla 90 days

Candy 90-100 days

Ringmaster 105 days

Red Creole 110 days

Red Wing 100-120 days

TX1015 Supersweet 115 days

However, since day-length influences maturity, I don't really think Walla Walla, Ringmaster and Red Wing will beat any of your other varieties. On the other hand, I don't grow those varieties so I'm just guessing based on day-length alone. Since I don't know when your day length hits at least 14 hours per day, I can't guess when they'd mature, but it likely wouldn't be until the day-length hits at least 14 hours, and those varieties might need up to 16 hours.

I haven't grown Walla Walla, Red Wind or Ringmaster because I believe my day-length might not be long enough for them here in south=central OK. But, I do see Walla Wall plants sold in stores here so maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe I should pick up a bundle of WW and plant them just to find out for myself?

Of the long day-length varieties that Dixondale currently sells, I have grown Red River, which has a DTM of 95-105 days and is considered an early long-daylength type, Copra, which has a DTM of 110 days, and Highlander, which has a DTM of 85-90 days and is an extra-early long day-length type. With those three, once my daylength hits the right length, they do mature in exactly the order the DTMs indicates---Highlander first, followed by Red River, followed by Copra. I'd expect your long daylength types would do the same.

With the short day and intermediate day types, I don't keep written records, but I do know that some of my intermediate day types mature before some of my short day types. This sort of thing can occur because maybe one of the short day types needs 12 hours and has a longer DTM and maybe one of the intermediate types also needs 12 hours but has a shorter DTM. It will drive you crazy if you think about it too long.

Now, if you had asked a different question, like "which varieties from Dixondale are likely to mature and be ready for market first?" my best guess for my area would be that they would mature in this order in my garden from a mid-February planting: Red Candy Apple, White Bermuda, Superstar, Candy, Yellow Granex, Texas Early White, Texas Legend, Red Creole, Southern Belle Red, and Texas 1015Y, followed by the long day-length types based on DTMs. That's based on my day-length here, and based on the general order in which they seem to mature here. If your day-length gets longer earlier than mine does, the order might be different for you.

If you want to have the earliest onions at market, the earliest short day types that I routinely grow are Texas Early White and Texas Legend and they mature about the same time, and for me that generally is in May. Texas Legend is very similar to TX1015Y but can mature 1 to 2 weeks earlier. I believe that 1015Y wa used in the breeding of Texas Legend. Both Texas Early White and Texas Legend beat 1015Y to harvest virtually every year so far (both Texas Early White and Texas Legend are fairly recent introductions) in the years that I've grown all three of those varieties. However, sometimes the earlier varieties of Intermediate Day-Length types beat them so nothing is guaranted.

Take all the talk of days-to-maturity with a grain of salt as they are estimated and in real life you may see earlier or later DTMs than the quoted numbers. Actual maturity can depend on growing conditions each year and we cannot predict in advance what our growing conditions will be like.

Dawn

Update: I have the bed cleared of overgrown indian hawthorns and euonymus double hedges as well as crape myrtles. I dug out the 32 rootballs, so I hope this helps with any suckers. (it better help because I now can't walk!) I managed to plant about 81 onions yesterday before I ran out of daylight. I hope to finish the rest of the onions and start planting the potatoes tonight! I found some elephant garlic that needs to be planted- can I go ahead and stick that in too? Would I still harvest in June like normal or would I need to push that back some to accommodate for the late planting?

Oh my, that's a lot of root balls to dig out. I hope you're able to walk again soon. It hurts me to think about how hard you punished your body with all that digging.

You can plant the elephant garlic if you want. It ought to grow and produce. When garlic in general is planted late, it tends to produce just fine as long as it has some cold exposure in winter. Sometimes garlic from a late planting doesn't differentiate into cloves and only forms a solid bulb that's more like an onion, but you still can used it. In this case, the sooner you plant the elephant garlic, the better, because it will get some cold exposure once it goes into the ground. I'd just watch it this summer and harvest it after most of the leaves have turned yellowish-brown and started to die back. It will grow until it is done, and the yellowish-brown leaves will tell you when it is done. Plants ignore the calendar and grow until they've finished doing whatever they need to do, so it might be June, might be July. Time will tell.

chrholme thats too much work! My farmer friend is planting onions today too in Lubbock.

Dawn I knew you would say that lol. I wish there werent so many variables sometimes but then it would be boring if it were predictable. I mostly was trying to plan 3 rows that might mature be ready to pull by June 1st so I can get my sweet potato slips in. I was thinking if I could pull 3 rows turn that into 2 nice rows for sweets I could plant more sweets earlier this year.

Kim, Gardening is pretty much nothing but variables. It keeps life interesting and keeps us on our toes.

Why don't you make that your plan and then see what happens. It probably will work out fine.

Dawn

Okay! Onion order is in. I just ordered 2 bunches--the same as last year. Red Creole and Texas Legend. I never read much about Texas Legend, but they did really well for me last year. My order is so boring compared to y'all's. Last year, the bunches were huge...and I only lost a handful to hail, so I had a decent harvest.

2 bunches sounds great to me. I did Texas legend last year and do not remember what any thing was when I harvested so THIS year I am keeping better records..... no really I am......seriously I AM !!!!

OK I convinced myself

Hazel, I think that Texas Legend and Texas Early White just haven't been around long enough yet to get a lot of attention yet. I don't remember if I planted them the first or second year after Dixondale Farms released them, but I know that my first year to grow them was 2013. Texas 1015Y, by contrast, has been around since the 1980s and has attracted a cult following for several reasons. When you have an onion variety that is that popular, it can be hard to get people to try some of the newer varieties because they're so immensely happy with the older ones that they've grown forever. When "Candy" came out, it did immediately become hugely popular both because of its flavor and its huge size. A lot of people I know who have the space to grow only two varieties always grow Candy and Texas 1015Y and it is almost impossible to get them to try any other varieties because they're so happy with those two.

I like Texas Legend a lot, especially since it is so early to produce. It gives me tons of onions right when I need them at salsa-making time.

Kim, Been there, done that. I have tried and tried and tried to keep records. Even in a year when I start out keeping good records, once I get busy, it all falls by the wayside. I'm okay with that. In whatever time I'm not in the garden or canning during the peak gardening/harvest season, it probably is more important to eat, sleep and clean the house than to sit down and write notes about the harvest. Sometimes there's just a limit to what one person can do with the 24 hours available in each day.

Dawn

Need some tuber advice, on when or if to add soil/mulch to the potatoes as they grow.

I planted potatoes around Presidents' Day, some in raised bed, some in a modified /amended bed but flat, and a couple in large containers. I planted all the cut pieces four inches down, per osu instructions. I wish I'd read more or y'all's posts and planted deeper in trenches and filled in gradually, but ah well. I now have healthy happy looking potato plants with foliage ranging from 4-8 inches above ground. Do I add/mound more dirt only when the tubers themselves peek above ground? Or mound around the greenery even if no tubers are visible?

thank you!

Ok, I cannot figure out if my onions are trying to bolt or if this is natural. About 1/3 of them are sending up flower stalks... seeing that I planted them so long ago, could this be natural? Or is it most definetly bolting and ruined?

fitz, sorry no one has replied to your comment. I just saw this... and really am new to potatoes too, and have the same questions. I saw a neat video that showed a guy who planted potatoes in half composted leaves and then he just added more leaves as the potatoes grew. BUT, I'm still confused on when to add dirt/leaves/straw/compost/etc. I added soil last year when the foliage was about 4 or 5 inches tall, but I also got early blight on those potatoes and wonder if it was caused by the soil touching the foliage.

chrholme, I think that means your onions have bolted. That hasn't happened to my onions in the 3 years I've grown them, but I have read about others who have had that issue. When did you plant them? How long ago is "so long ago"? lol!

I planted my onions on 1/30/17.

Thanks for bumping the thread, Hazel. So sorry no one responded, fitz.

If I understand it correctly and well, it's iffy, the actual stem is root-like on a potato plant until that root/stem (the portion just below the leaves) is exposed to enough air and light for long enough that it turns into a stem instead of a root that can produce tubers. The tubers are potatoes. Those should always be beneath ground and covered up. Tubers/potatoes exposed to light turn green and are toxic when eaten.

The purpose of hilling is to allow more roots to grow from the stem. Essentially, when you block the light at the main stem of the potato plant it will grow root shoots that will produce more tubers. Some just bury the potato very deeply and level the soil atop hoping the original potato has enough energy to climb all the way up to the soil surface. I suppose there are reasons potatoes are normally dug into trenches and buried as they grow, but I know not what they are.

I'm assuming trenching is giving the potato plant the benefit of the sun and air early on to provide energy to produce more potatoes rather than spending energy climbing up through the earth all by itself or, maybe, trenching shortens the length to maturity. Maybe its both.

I've only grown potatoes once, successfully, and when I did that I didn't hill them up.

Chrholme, bolted onions don't store well. Use them first. Or chop and freeze them. Bolting can be caused by cold temps at the wrong time or planting transplants that are too big. Dawn may chime in with more details. I'm a little foggy this late at night.

You don't want potato tubers exposed to the sun. You add dirt or mulch to prevent that. As the plants grow I keep adding mulch or dirt, so there is 6 to 8 inches of plant above the mulch. Eventually, when I've added another 6 to 8 inches of mulch/dirt above the initial planting, I let it grow, and watch for tubers that might be exposed. I'm not an expert. That's just how I've done it.

FItz, Sorry, I guess somehow I never made it far enough down the page since last week to see your potato question. I would mound up that soil now since your seed potatoes are only 4" below grade level. Research has shown the potato plants initiate tubers along roughly 8" of the stolon (stems) that grow upward from the seed potato. So, to get the best crop, you want to have at least 8" of the stolon buried, preferably under soil, so you'll get the most potatoes possible. So, for me, as soon as I have leaves sticking up out of the top of the soil, if I know my seed potatoes are not yet buried under 8" of soil, I add more soil. Normally I dig an 8" trench, plant the seed potatoes, add a couple of inches of soil above them and then, about once as week as they emerge, I keep putting more soil back into the trench until it is level with the surrounding ground. After that, once they continue growing, all I add is mulch. Trench planting often is used in this way, particularly in cold, wet winters, to get a healthy stand of potatoes because the seed potatoes are not buried under 8" of cold, wet soil with the stolons struggling to work their way up through that cold, we soil. Since you didn't trench and didn't plant at least 8" down, your goal for this year should be to mound up/hill up soil around the potato plants until you know that the seed potatoes are buried under 8" of soil. If you don't have that much soil to work with, you can use compost or mulch. Potatoes grow pretty freely in both compost or mulch.

There are different ways to plant though, and I adapt mine to whatever weather we've been having. This winter/spring wasn't cold or wet so I just dug down 8" and planted the seed potatoes and covered them back up all the way since there was no cold, wet anything for them to fight their way through. I prefer this method because I don't have to spend a lot of time hilling or filling in trenches. (Hilling can be tricky in raised beds anyway, and is easier to achieve in rows of potatoes planted in/below grade-level soil.) I do normally use trench planting in cold, rainy winters/springs. Now, all I have done is put roughly 4" of mulch on top of the raised beds and the plants have grown up through it. Over time, wind and such will pack down that mulch and sort of compress it, so I'll keep adding more mulch on top as needed in order to keep any tubers that form near the surface from being hit by sunlight. I like having 4" of mulch on potatoes at all times, and even 6-8" is better if we are really hot really early because it keeps the ground and the plants cooler. Keep in mind that tuber initiation ceases once the soil gets hot. That's why we have to plant so dang early here! Our soil can get too hot for tuber intiation very early some years, so by planting in the traditionally cold season, we give the plants the best chance of producing a good harvest.

Honestly, it is hard to mess up potatoes, OK? They want to grow. They have a biological imperative to grow and to form the storage tubers (which are the part of the plant we harvest as potatoes). They try to form tubers wherever they can---underground or in dense mulch. So, just pile on the soil for a while if you can and then keep piling on the mulch.

The only issue with mulch is that if you are rural to semi-rutal and have field mice, rats, voles or whatever that like to eat potatoes, having potatoes growing in mulch makes it easier for the rodents to find and eat the tubers. So, do keep an eye out for varmints in your mulch! Nothing is worse than digging down to find those potatoes at harvest time and discovering you've been feeding varmints for month and aren't going to have a harvest for yourself.

crholme, I'm sorry, but they are bolting. Remove them and use them as green onions or whatever because once the seed stalk begins to form, it is easy for bacteria and moisture to get into the onions and cause them to develop soft rot. Once the bolting starts, the onions that are bolting aren't going to survive long enough to bulb up properly so you might as well use them now.

You probably planted too early and the onions were exposed to too much cold or, really, what they were exposed to was too much fluctuating temperatures. I usually plant around Valentine's Day and that is about right for where I live, but sometimes we still have too much fluctuating temperatures at that point and I still get bolting. What happens is that once your onion plants have 5 leaves and/or the plants are about as big in diameter as a No. 2 pencil, it only takes about a week of cold temperatures to trick them into thinking it is winter and they stop growing for a while and temporarily go dormant during that cold week. Then, when it warms back up, the plants (being biennials) perceive that their first "year" or season has ended and that they now are in their second year. Since they form flowers and seeds in the second year, that's what they start to do, and then the gardener sees this occuring and realizes they have a bolting problem.

Sometimes the gardener has contributed to the problem by planting too early. Sometims the problem is that all the onion plants available for purchase already are at or beyond the 5-leaf stage when you get them, so then any little cold blip is going to set them off and cause them to bolt. Sometimes it is just the weather that is the culprit because it fluctuates too sharply from warm to cold back to warm or hot again. Sometimes it is a combination of all these factors. Bolting is awful some years and non-existent in others. I just try to go with the flow and be happy with whatever onion harvest I get in any given year since they are tricky to grow in our climate. Hopefully you'll still get a good crop from the ones that haven't bolted yet.

Hazel, The plain, unvarnished truth is that early blight just happens, and it typically happens pretty much no matter what you do. Please understand that early blight is a fungi that can live in the soils, it can live on plant material, it can go airborne and travel through the air. It is relentless. Absolutely, totally relentless. It is everywhere in our climate. Our only real defense against early blight is to spray the plants on a regular basis with fungicide, alternating at least two different fungicide products to prevent the disease from developing a tolerance of either one of them. If you do this from early in the plant's life and also mulch heavily, you may be able to prevent EB from attacking your plants, but most years it shows up somewhat no matter what you do.

Mulching very well to prevent fungi in the soil from splashing up onto the foliage helps, but it doesn't completely prevent EB since the EB can go airborne. It basically only takes 15 minutes of having moisture on the plant leaves (it can be rain, dew, irrigation water...whatever) and that EB can start growing in that 15 minutes. There is a likelihood in springtime in OK that most plants have some dew on them most mornings. So, we just have to deal with it. Once plants have it, they cannot be cured of it. Sure, you can slow down/minimize its spread by removing every diseased leave you find and by spraying the rest of the healthy leaves with a fungicide in order to hopefully slow the spread of the EB. We have to be realistic, though, about following the advice to remove diseased leaves because some years the EB seems to hit so hard so fast that you'd have to remove every leaf, and not having leaves at all would halt plant growth. I hate seeing early blight appear in a garden, but appear it does. I try to avoid freaking out, crying, getting mad and throwing things, cussing, etc. because they don't help.

Mostly I try to focus on creating healthy soil. What I have found is that the healthier the soil is, the better the plants can withstand EB and other foliar diseases after they occur. It has always struck me as funny (not in a humorous way, but more in a dejected 'what else can ya do' kind of way) that the strategy to keep EB off tomato plants really cannot be as effective on potatoes because of the way we have to hill them up. How can you prevent soil splash from occurring during the hilling up period? I'm also not so sure the strategies we use with tomatoes (removing lower limbs and mulching heavily to reduce soil splash) work all that well either, but other than spraying with fungicides, it's all we can do.

And, for anyone wondering how commercial growers grow so many and deal with these problems. well.....they use chemical products, often systemic ones (which mean the product is absorbed into ALL parts of the plants, including the parts we eat) in order to keep the EB in check. And, in our climate, we spend pretty much our whole growing season with temperatures warm enough for EB to develop, whereas in some parts of the country where things like potatoes or tomatoes are a huge commercial crop, their climate is either much colder than ours until they are getting close to harvest time in summer or much drier than ours. We have the unfortunate combination of plentiful moisture (in terms of how much EB needs to grow) and humidity plus lots of heat, so we have the perfect climate for growing EB.

Dawn

On a side note, I pulled all 7 onions that bolted and they were all white Bermuda. I wonder if I bought a bad crop of if that variety is just picky? My 1015 and red creole don't seem phased at all!

It is hard to say. It could just be that the white bermuda were a little further along than the other varieties in the first place. I have not necessarily found any correlation between the variety and the amount of bolting. It really is all about the size/age of the plants when cold weather comes back and hits them. Since white bermuda is a short daylength type and it has a DTM of roughly 95 days, I'm going to guess the plants were just a touch older than or bigger than (or both) the other varieties so reacted to temperature fluctuations a big more, assuming you had some temperatures fluctuations from hot to cold, etc., as we tend to have from January through March.

Honestly, I believe you planted too early for Lubbock's climate, even though we have had an unusually warm winter across the southern plains. For me, late January would have been too early and I'm also in zone 7b. I know we had some of the cold nights in February that likely would have caused the onions to bolt later on. It even makes me a tiny bit nervous planting more or less on time in mid-February because generally the cold nights really aren't done with us yet. I tend to plant onions about a week, and sometimes 2 or 3 weeks, later than my recommended planting date for my specific location because experience has taught me that planting slightly later reduces the chances of having onions bolt in a typical year. (Don't ask me what a typical year is----because the last few winters have been so abnormally warm ever since about 2010 that I am getting confused about what is the new typical year versus the old typical year.) I think that for your climate in a typical year, your time to plant onions would be March, not January, and that's because you have just enough recurring cold nights in February and perhaps early March to cause bolting.

Planting onions too early is worse than planting some other crops too early because they are biennial and react to wildly fluctuating temperatures by bolting some years. There's no real warning---it just happens. Some crops that are not biennials don't react much to being planting too early as long as they survive it and don't freeze. Another type of crop that can bolt due to fluctuating temperatures after the plants reach a certain size is the brassica family---I have seen it more often with broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts than with cabbage, kale and mustard.

Count your blessings that only the white bermudas have shown some bolting. Some years, once the onion bolting starts, everything bolts....so having just one variety bolt is not a worst possible case scenario. You're new at planting in that climate so just keep good notes the first few years to remind you each year what worked the previous season and what didn't. I know I did that for the first 3 or 4 years we lived here, and mostly what I learned was that I was planting things too early. I was trying to use almost the same planting dates that I had used in Fort Worth, and I needed to slow down and plant a bit later here than I did there, even though the mileage difference was only 80 miles and the difference from zone 8a to zone 7b. It takes time to work out the best planting times in a new area.

One year we had a super warm winter up here in southcentral OK and I bought onion plants at Marshall Grain Company in Fort Worth and planted them the first week in January....and I totally got away with it! Know what? It was a lucky fluke. I'd never, ever, ever plant 6 weeks earlier than my recommended planting date now because I know that 90% of the time, I'd get bolting onions.

Dawn

Will it help to cover the onions when we have the cold nights in the next few weeks? Mine are finally growing. I'm coming to realize your idea of hoops and netting this time of year is truly smart. I just can't do it by myself. I will come up with something.

It will help if it holds in the heat. I normally use the DeWitt Ultra Supreme row cover that gives 10 degrees of protection on a cold night like we're expecting even if it is overkill just because it holds in the heat so well. (Almost too well---if I don't lift it early in the morning and we warm up quickly, the plants can roast.)

Usually, what causes bolting is several days of cold temperatures, not just a odd scattered one here and there. I don't know that all 5-7 cold days have to be in a row, but I more often see bolting after one prolonged period of cold weather than after a scattered cold night here or there. It is a hard subject to pin down because everyone's experiences with their onions in any given year would depend on many variables.

We're only expected to go to 42 so I'll just cover up the tomatoes and peppers and probably the pineapple sage since it is in bloom. I might be overreacting by covering up anything else, but since my microclimate often drops colder than forecast, I'm going to do it on that night. I am undecided about the next night when we are supposed to be 45 degrees. I haven't covered up on the other two recent nights we were forecast to go to 44---and it worked out fine because we only went down to 47 or 48.

My use of hoops and netting evolved over time and with lots of experience with late cold and early hail. While the hoops and netting really are meant to keep hail off the plants, they keep cats out of the beds, so that's a bonus. Then, if I have to throw row covers over the beds, I can do it really quickly with the hoops and netting already in place. I won't lie. There are times I hate the hoops/netting, like when I have to lift them up to do weeding or mulching. However, most of the time I appreciate having them in place.

At least we aren't in the parts of the TX & OK panhandles with a chance of snow in the forecast.

What!!!

No, not you! It is further north and west, I am almost sure. Like more up towards Dalhart, TX; Clayton, NM and then the fairly sparsely settled westernmost county in the OK panhandle. Isn't that Cimarron County? So that would mean cities like Kenton and Boise City. I think you're safely too far south---yay for that. Still, keep an eye on it in case it slides a lot further south.

No no no ❄️! I think it would do me in! I'm just getting this new yard into some kind of shape...

Thanks dddddDawn I went into panic mode. Here I am happily singing along and the thought of snow. My local 70 yo friend says don't plant anything until after Bob Wells weekend, the last Saturday of April. I never listen but they have had frost that late before.

crh, The yard looks great!

You're too far west for the snow, so that's good.

However, your area of Texas has a Red Flag FIre Warning today. I guess that means you have the unfortunate combination today of high wind and low humidity. At this time of the year, the weather doesn't like to leave us alone to just have a pleasant, mild day very often, does it? My favorite days are the days when none of us have any advisories, watches, warnings, etc., but those days are fairly rare.

Kim, I didn't mean to scare you. The TX panhandle is a big place and I'm glad the snow is staying north of you.

Yes, cold weather can come really late there, sometimes shockingly so, but I wouldn't let it keep me from planting in a year like this. In a warm year, the odds are more in your favor that the cold won't come back. In a cooler or colder year, early planting becomes more risky but it is a risk a lot of market gardeners will take anyway because of the need to have bountiful harvests by the time the markets open.

It is April on the southern plains, so of course we are going to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown at us, weather-wise. At least we are safe from tsunamis here. (grin)

Dawn

Thank you- it has been a long road the past 6 months to get it to this and I'm still no where near being finished. The garden is just to the left (out of the picture) but I'll take one of it tonight!

We are having wind and cold here. Supposed to get a little rain later.

The wind and cold were expected there, right? It arrives here tomorrow and then tomorrow night and Thursday morning are our coldest time, though expected to stay in the lower 40s. We are supposed to be windy sometime today but the strong winds haven't really arrived here yet. All they said on the noon news was that the stronger winds would arrive this afternoon.

The wind has arrived here and created a large dust storm....not really cold though.

Well, we harvested our onions today! Here are some pictures!

That's a nice harvest. Congrats! Your little garden helper is so adorable!!!!

Looks good! Your baby girl is so cute!