My onion seeds
are ripening and I’ve started harvesting them to save for next year. This year, we planted yellow onions, white
onions, and some large “bunching” onions (bunching onions are attached at the
bulb…you may get three or more onions in a bunch). We pulled up the onions and
they are now hanging under the porch roof of our garage/storage shed. (We let the onions hang to “cure” for several
weeks because we plan to store them for later use…not sure if everybody does
this, but my family always did it so I do it, too. )
Onion seeds can
be saved by letting a few of your onions develop flower “heads” (little puff
balls of white flowers at the top of the plant). We let these plants grow until the tops fall
over and then pull the onions up and cut the seed head off. We put the seed heads on a tray and let them
sit in a location that is dry and has good ventilation. After a couple of weeks, a lot of the seeds
will have fallen out onto the tray. To
be sure to as many of the seeds as possible, I simply tap the seed head against
the tray and watch the shower of large black seeds fall onto the tray. We try to save as many seeds as possible as
the germination rate for onion seeds is fairly low. While it is easier to just buy onion “sets”
(tiny little onions that someone else has started from seed) and just stick
them in the ground to grow, we get personal satisfaction from beating the odds
and coaxing the onions to grow from our seed.
When you live the simple life, you learn to take great pleasure in life’s
little triumphs.
On another topic,
one of the big hurdles in our kitchen renovation has been cleared, due to
Charming’s creative and engineering mind!
When we moved into our “run-down ranch,” we inherited a cabinet from the
previous owners. The cabinet wasn’t in
good shape, but it did have a white enamel top on it…like the ones that the old
Hoosier cabinets have. (My Momma had a
Hoosier-type cabinet when I was little and she used to roll the most amazing
pie dough on that cabinet top.) Shortly
after we moved into this house, Charming was loading the cabinet onto the truck
to take to the landfill when I yelled…“STOP!” Not surprisingly, Charming has developed a
healthy fear of my deep and abiding affection for all things old. However, he patiently asked me what in the
world I wanted with the cabinet. “Not
the cabinet,” I replied. “Just the top. We’re going to use it in our future kitchen
renovation.” Poor Charming! I remember that his shoulders actually
slumped when I said that. Bless his
little heart; he removed the top and stored it in the basement where it has
been these many years.
So, when Charming
decided to make cabinets for the new part of our kitchen from scratch, I saw my
opportunity. I started planting the
seeds (with my gardening experience, I’ve gotten good at planting seeds…ha, ha!)
first by saying, “I wonder how that enamel top would look on part of the new countertop.” Then when we were discussing the cost of the
renovation, I slipped in the comment, “Well, you know if we used that enamel
top on part of the counter, we could save the cost of about four feet of
countertop.” After strategically
planting seeds like this as often as possible, he started to formulate plans to
make the top work with the new kitchen counter’s design.
He cut wood strips
and fitted them to the underside of the enamel top and then added more strips
to the cabinet…all the while mumbling something about counter-sinking screws, adding
shims, and needing stronger wood glue. Before
I knew it, he was lugging the enamel top up the basement stairs and fitting it
on top of the cabinet. After positioning
it into place, he seemed surprised that his plan actually worked, but finally he
said something about being “proud of himself”.
I have to say that I’m proud of him, too.
Even though the
progress on this project is very slow, I know that the kitchen renovation will
eventually look “AWESOME!” I’m just
hoping the enamel countertop will help me to make amazing pie dough like my
Momma’s!
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| A previous picture of our garden...You can see our "bunching onions" on top, left of this photo. The white seed heads on top of the onion plant contains the seeds for next year. |
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| These are the seed heads that have been drying for a couple of weeks. The picture shows me tapping the seed head against the tray to release more seeds. |
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| With Charming's ingenuity, a plain enamel top from an old cabinet becomes a functional part of our new counter top. The cabinets above will house my baking supplies, while the cabinets below will have metal pull-out shelves that will corral my mixer, mixing bowls, and baking pans. The counter top also gives the kitchen the "retro" look that I love. YAY! |
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