Wall-o-waters!

I'm in the process of getting the garden ready and planted this week.  I've been to Stillwater Milling to pick up some different types of compost and peat moss.  I like going to Stillwater Milling for all my garden needs.  It's not one of those fancy little garden centers, you can buy worming stuff for your cattle, electric fencing for the horses and get yourself some fancy boots and clothes along with pet food!  It's also one of those places that old retired guys who like to talk hang out and no one gets onto them! 
I'm a bit of a talker myself, so this is the place for me.  Last year, an older man told me that the best tomato for around here was Jet Star.  I bought a couple and, sure enough, that little plant did better than most.  So this year, while I was picking up the compost, I went out to the greenhouse and picked myself up a couple of those, plus some broccoli for spring planting. 

If you remember last year, I went to a raised bed system for most of my garden and added a drip irrigation system.  I was pretty proud of myself because it sure made watering easier!  In the background, you can those tall, green tubes sticking out of the ground.  Those are wall-o-waters for tomatoes.  I used them last year for the first time in a long time.  I had my tomatoes out at the end of March when most people aren't planting tomatoes around here until mid-April.  I had tomatoes about mid-June because one of the ones I put in the wall-o-waters was a cherry. 
I'm working on getting my wall-o-waters out today.  I am adding compost to my soil and will fill the wall-o-waters with water(thus the name!) and let that water sit out in the sun for about a week to warm up.  Science teacher time: water is a great insulator because it takes a lot of energy to heat up and a lot of energy loss to cool down.  That's why around large bodies of water, there is not as great of a temperature change.  Anyway, once those chambers get heated up, I'll plant my tomato starts in the ground. 
I love gardening, it is great exercise and I think it's good for my soul.  I can think to myself, sing and pray in my garden.  Kate, my big black dog, comes and guards the garden so no forest monsters get me.....she hates squirrels and thinks they are her enemies so she guards me!  My husband is always trying to get me to stop carrying the big bags of compost but I just tell him that it's a weight bearing exercise...good for blue-eyed women who are prone to osteoporosis!
Plus, with the cost of fresh veggies right now, anything I can grow for very little helps the bottom line! 

Green Onions

We've been eating fresh green onions from the garden! It's so exciting to make that little walk down to the garden and cut a fresh onion for my salad.  I also have chives up and have been cutting them as well.  I don't buy green onions during the winter because they are usually so expensive that I can't justify spending money on something I  know we'll have ten months of the year. 

I grow something called 'walking' onions.  I've seen it in garden catalogs as egyptian walking onions.  I don't know if they came from egypt but around here, we call them walking onions.  My mom gave me a start several years ago and she was given a start from someone at church.  That's sometimes the best plant, a pass-along plant.  When she passed these along, the directions were like this....'plant them like a regular onion but don't ever pull the entire onion.  Just cut them down to the ground and they will resprout over and over.'  Just like that, they do!  Mid-summer, they send up a very thick flower stalk and bloom like a chive.  Once the bloom is over, the little flower becomes many little onions that will drop off and replant themselves. 

They were so proficient at my house that last year I dug up a bucket full and sent them with my husband to work.  They were eager to try them.  I really like them because once you put in a place, they stay and you  never have to replant!  The perfect recycling plant! Each spring, very early I might add, you can go out and start cutting.  It seems those onions like to be cut, the more cutting the faster they seem to grow.  I throw out a little vegetable food every spring just to help them out a bit, but they pretty much are plants that don't require anything. 

I love those kind of plants!  I take my grandma's mantra concerning plants.  I asked her one time how all her plants always looked so good,.....she said, 'I only grow the ones that will grow!'  Pretty profound really, she didn't believe in wasting time here in Oklahoma trying to coax plants that didn't do well to grow.  She knew what grew well and she grew a lot of each.  That's why her garden did so well!  My mom and both my grandma's had green thumbs and they all pretty much do that...grow what grows well.  Plus, they take a bit of a hand's off approach.  They didn't hover over....it either lived or died. 

I like that garden mantra, I have too many other things to worry about than green onions.  I need them to grow well on their own.  I like my 'walking' onions!