My easiest and most profitable crop is winter storage onions. I, too, have raised beds  66 of them  all 4' X 25'. For onions, I went to the extra work of purchasing four-foot wide, heavy duty, non-woven landscape fabric (I like GCI the best). I then spent several long winter nights cutting holes in the fabric while in front of my favorite TV shows. I made a grid pattern first, with all holes 4" on center. The next row is offset, and so on. Each piece has 1154 holes. I started with 3 pieces, they all held up for 6 years. I still have one in good shape - going on 8 years! I will make several more this winter.

The reason I went to all this trouble is that there is absolutely no weeding, the onion plants are set precisely, and harvest is a breeze  just pull back the landscape fabric and most of the onions just pop out of the ground. I then spread them out on the hoophouse benches to finish drying until their necks are very tiny. All together, the planting, the harvest, and the cleaning take less than 5 days work over the whole season for about 600 pounds of onions  in just 300 square feet. The work could easily be done on the weekends. I found a source on the web for mesh produce bags at 18 cent a pop. I give a 10# bag to each of the CSA members, offer more as an Onion Share, and also sell them at the FarmerÂs Market. The best use I have found for them is to trade them with other vendors at the market for crops I donÂt want or canÂt grow well  sweet corn, winter squash, etc. Although I plant a few specialty varieties (red, torpedo, scallions, etc.) the major of them are Copra onions. Well-dried, stored in good conditions, they can last until the following May or June. I used the last one from the Â05 crop on July 4th this year. You might have to spent some time this winter lining up customers for the fall, but you might try contacting a local food co-op (or warehouse) and seeing if they would buy all of them them.

This is a good answer to his question. Thank you for the ideas!

what about plant half in a cover and half in garlic then flip flop in year two? too late for this year but what about sunflowers for market and 50% in cover come spring? i am always dumbfounded by the popularity and prices gotten when in long stemmed bunches. good luck and enjoy your semi-hiatus.

Just be careful when you use the words easy and profitable in the same sentence. Tom

Is loodean still available? What is the diameter of your cut holes for large onions?

loodean hasn't been here in around 4 years