Day 72 - More Rain, Less Spring Onions

If you live around Brisbane, you will have experienced the torrential downpour that we had on Tuesday. It was the most rain in a 24 hour period since 2001, and caused mayhem. In my experience, when we have extreme weather it usually affects suburbs or the surrounding countryside. This time, however, the city copped the whole lot of it. Living 8km from the city centre, my apartment (and therefore plants) took a hammering. The force of the rain was so strong that it ripped most of the leaves from my chillies. The other, smaller leaved plants fared better.

It was another bad week for the spring onions. Even with the addition of seven new plants, the yield was a paltry 5 grams for the week.

I've decided to take a new approach to the harvest of my garlic chives, spring onions and afro parsley. Instead of harvesting all that I have available, I will only take one gram each of afro parsley and garlic chives and five grams of spring onions each week (parsley and spring onion day is Saturday, chive day is Thursday). This will continue until either a) I run out of crops,  b) they grow to an optimum height (spring onions and chives) or c) the afro parsley starts going white (which it does if I leave it too long).

The amounts harvested per week are intentionally below the weekly average so far, as I hope to have some fuller looking plants. I'll keep you informed!

Day 65 - The Effect of Rain

We all know that without water our crops will die. However, I would much prefer that when rain comes it is accompanied by at least a few hours of sunshine each day. The effect that rain without sunshine has is striking: last week I cut 12g of spring onions. This week - 5g.

In other news, the jalapeno has come out of its stupor and is now producing flowers like there's no tomorrow. I think it's liking the sub-30 degree top temperatures that we've been having.

That's it for this post - expect about two per week during school terms and a bit more during holidays.

Day 61 - What's New

Not much is new in the Australian Kitchen Garden. I've gone back to school (teaching) and am almost back at university (doctorate), so I'm letting the garden do it's thing. In some ways it's going to be really good for the garden - I tend to pick anything as soon as it looks half ready, such is my impatience. Now the garden gets a break to grow during the week.

My wife picked up some more spring onions to plant in amongst the current ones. While the first bunch comprised 11 onions, this latest one consists of only 7. They are big 'uns, however. I'm hoping they don't take over the little ones, as the family's spring onion appetite requires all 18 to be flourishing!

We had quite the downpour last weekend, with a 24 hour total of about 90mm (20 of those coming in half an hour). Luckily everything seems to have survived, although things just don't grow without sunshine. Darn it!

Day 58 - The Spring Onion Experiment: Part 3

Over the previous week, I've been taking measurements of my spring onions to see how I should be harvesting. I grew two groups of crops, one harvested back to the base and one harvested so that there were shoot stumps remaining.

Day 2: No Stumps: 5.6cm each - Stumps: 5.7cm each
Day 4: No Stumps: 12.2cm each - Stumps: 11.7cm each
Day 5: No Stumps: 14.2cm each - Stumps: 14.0cm each
Day 6: No Stumps: 18.0 cm each - Stumps: 16.7cm each
Day 7: No Stumps: 21.6cm each - Stumps: 19.2cm each

It's pretty definitive - prune your spring onions back to the base and you will have better growth. I harvested them again today (this will probably be a weekly occurance) and they all went back to the base. It was pretty surprising that the results were so clear - I was expecting nothing too big.

By the way, growing spring onions is a cinch. I got 12g of shoots from one week. Why would you ever buy spring onions?

Day 56 - It's Really That Quick!

My spring onions are loving life at the moment. The picture below was taken one day after they were cut back to nothing - in other words, almost everything green is less than 24 hours old.

 

Four days later, they are still flourishing. My wife points out that they now have established roots, which means that they will have quicker growth now than when they were first planted.

Day 53 - The Spring Onion Experiment: Part 2

After the success of the previous spring onion experiment, I decided to do a little more investigation. But first a little background information. My spring onion bases that I planted back at the beginning of the month looked like a stick with roots. Over time this stick grew shoots, so the plants had 2, 3 and in one case 4 hollow cylinders coming out of the base.

I came to harvesting today and wondered whether to cut back to the base, or to leave a few millimetres of each shoot. I could see reasons for both - plants often respond to savage pruning, however saving them the effort of creating a new shoot must mean something.

Anyway, I'll see how the differing plants respond over time. Keep an eye out for details!