Wheee! I was just checking the calendar because I believe the group order is supposed to arrive this week for pick-up on Thursday. I was wondering if there was any way in heck I could get my garden ready (haven't done a thing with it since last year) and now am looking at the forecast (high 60s this weekend!) and thinking there is a glimmer of hope!

I just mentioned planting onions this weekend in my tree thread. lol

For anyone who is in Tulsa or nearby. I called Southwood Nursery and they should be getting their dixondale order this week also. They typically have about 5-6 different types. I think about $3-4 a bunch. Also will have their other root crop stuff.
I havent found anyone else around here that gets Dixondale.

mike

I suppose we're all lucky that the winter precipitation that has fallen lately hasn't fallen in large amounts. If it had, all of us would have soil that's too muddy for soil prep or planting.

Mia, A glimmer of hope is good. My family kept looking at me like I was crazy when I used our last three good sunny days to do a lot of cleanup, but I was just trying to beat the rain. No problem, here, apparently, because not enough moisture has fallen to give us much of a mud problem. About 2 days of windy weather will dry out what little moisture currently resides in the soil. I was worrying we'd get more rain before onion-planting time and that I'd have to mud in my onions like Larry has had to do a couple of times lately, but the sleet or snow that fell melted down to practically nothing. We aren't supposed to get enough tonight or tomorrow that it will threaten my plans to spend the weekend playing in the dirt.

Mike, We always get in a sort of Catch-22 with onions. We have to get them in as early as we reasonably can so the plants have time to get nice and big before the daylength induces bulbing and, yet, we don't want to plant them so early that they freeze and die. Some years you can plant them at exactly the recommended time and still have them freeze repeatedly and bolt and/or die or rot because it rains a lot at the same time it is very cold. It kinda makes you appreciate the fact that we get onions to produce a crop most years despite the weather.

I'm always hoping for rain in January because so little tends to fall here, but then in February I have to abruptly reverse course and start hoping it won't rain until after I get the onions in the ground. Then, I find myself hoping for enough rainfall to keep them happy, but not for so much to fall that they get waterlogged and cannot grow.

You know, if I wasn't a gardener, I could pretty much ignore the weather. Instead I feel obsessed by it...what it is doing, how, why, when, where, etc.

Dawn

Mia - I KNOW!!!! I'm waiting for the e-mail to pick up too!!!!

Dawn - thanks for the heads up!!!

and Neeny Neeny Boo Boo.... I've already got my onion bed ready as soon as I get a good day...AND I have a really large frost cover!

Don't be hatin'.....ha!

Paula

I got my onions in mail today, too. Looks like this weekend will be perfect weather for planting... to bad I have to work all weekend. I'm off now until Thursday, so I'm wondering it will be warm enough on Thursday. Either that or I just have to hope for good weather next Monday.

Dawn, I know what you mean about obsessing about the weather, lol. Between my gardening and my running I constantly have to check the weather just so I know how to schedule my day or week.

mksmith- I have found Dixondale onions the last 2 years at Carmichael's on Memorial in Bixby. Usually 6 to 8 varieties. Last year less than $2 a bunch. These are full bunches. The ones I saw at Southwood last year seemed to be partial smaller quantity per bunch. Carmichael's usually gets them in around this time but I have not checked yet.

Thanks BixbyM. Carmichael's is right down the road. Not sure why I never thought to check there.

Cynthiann, Go ahead and plant on Thursday if you can. It is perfect onion-planting weather. My definition of perfect onion-planting weather is this: sunny, soil that is not obnoxiously wet, wind that is not strong enough to freeze your fingers off, and no severe weather in the forecast for the next 5 days. We cannot put off planting our onions too much because they need to settle in and have enough days to grow before our daylength reaches the number of hours per day that causes them to start bulbing up.

Y'all, I haven't counted the number of onions per bundle, but I will say that the bundles I received look overpacked. One variety in particular has too many that are too big and those are likely to bolt this spring, but I'll just plant them in a separate area by themselves and use them as scallions if they start bolting.

I left my box of onions in the mudroom the first day they arrived because it always stays cooler there than in the rest of the house since it isn't heated, but never drops below the lower 50s or maybe the upper 40s since it is well-insulated. Therefore, the mud room was stinky....in a delicious onion-y sort of way. It kinda smelled like spring in there.

I probably won't plant them today. I'd like for the soil to warm up a little bit before I stick my fingers in it, but I might start planting them tomorrow.

Dawn

Atwoods had Dixondale onions. They also had seed potatoes. Yay.

I'm so excited.

I bough Dixondale 1015Y today $1.79 per bundle at a small grocery store southeast of Ft. Smith. I only bought 2 bundles but I plan on buying more .

Just got mine in the ground down in Ardmore. Did 2 of the Mixed Sets. Planted on the edges of a few beds and in between on some. I may have planted a bit too early but its a knee jerk reaction from planting too late last year. Matt

This post was edited by oldfishinglure on Thu, Feb 13, 14 at 14:17