Agnes checks her onions

AGGIES BIG ONION

It seems like Agnes has succeeded. She has managed to grow a whopper of an onion plant, the largest in the picture topping thirty nine inches and still growing. (Background on this sordid tale may be uncovered HERE)

What Agnes has failed to realize is that there is little or no onion attached to that truly magnificent stalk. These, you see, are replanted onions which have overwintered as one onion. Agnes divided the onion into the three plants that it was developing into earlier this spring and planted them individually.

However, second year onions are devoting their energy to producing seeds, primarily, and the pods that look quite a bit like Greek orthodox church domes are where the seeds will develop. She will have quite a few Walla Walla seeds from just these plants, if she wishes to save them.

If the Agster also wants bulky onions she needs to water lavishly, fertilize with 10-10-10 fertilizer along with an additive of calcium, boron and magnesium and hope for the best. Otherwise she will merely get something that looks like a leek on the bottom of that over-large stem.

It would be a really good idea if she weeded a bit, too.

Agnes shares some onion lore

ONIONS ARE MANY SPLENDORED THINGS

"Howdy!"

"Agnes here and ah am fixin' to share with you a few tricks about onion growin' that ah learnt back when ah was a lil' gal in Texas."

"And the Mexicans still owned the state." muttered someone, probably Leatherface. 

"Whut?" said Agnes, eyeing the big man with suspicion, if not outright enmity. "Well never mind that fer now."

"Anyway we all get a little sloppy late in the gardenin' season and might not pick every single vegetable that we might orta be pickin'. Why jist this mornin' ah found a big overwintered onion right there where the termaters are scheduled to be planted!"

OVERWINTERED ONION

 "Whut do yew suppose ah did?"

"Had a shot of Jack Black?" ventured Farm Girl

"Well o' course ah did. It were a might frosty this mornin' if you recall.* But then ah dug that bad boy right up, savin' as many roots as ah could."

LOOKIT THEM ROOTS!

"Then I peeled away the yeller outer skin and the inner onion parts which was squishy and wound up with three small onions with their respective root systems. there's a peek at them below."

HERE'S THE PEEK

"Then ah split the plant into the three plants it were a' growin' into anyways..."

JIST YEW TAKE A LOOK

 
"Then ah planted them and jist look at them 3 big plants. What a jump on the season!"

THE AFOREMENTIONED 3 BIG PLANTS

There was silence for a moment and then Uncle Mac cleared his throat, a distinctly unpleasant sound.

"Agnes, did you actually do this with your overwintered onions when you lived in Texas?"

"Well no, generally we jist chopped 'em up and used them in stews and soups and omelets and sech."

"What is it you expect to get from these three plants?"

"Why, onions as big as pumpkins whatcher think?"


"Because what you are going to get is big green stalks, onions that look like leeks and a lot of onion seeds. You are misleading our readers..."

"Read-ER!" corrected Millie Quackenbush from the wings


"Read-er", Uncle Mac acknowledged, "and thereby contributing to the decline of this once much respected gardening blog. Now, had you been instructing our audience as to how to collect and save onion seeds this effort might have had some merit."

"Well ah'll just change it around a bit, and ah reckon it will do
right enough."

"Atta girl!" said Uncle Mac and reached for the brandy.

*In fact it was 72 f at dawn.