The sun was out making today a beautiful day. So gorgeous in fact that I decided to try planting some onions, both in the cold frame and in the summer garden area. I originally planned to only try growing them in the cold frame, but they are supposed to like cooler weather so I put them in both places as a sort of experiment to see where they do better.
The cold frame was extremely warm when I opened the top. It was like a heat wave on an already warm day. The soil inside was very dried out, so after making my rows and planting we soaked the ground and covered it with a layer of leaves to help retain the moisture. We placed a thermometer inside and this evening it said the max temp reached 87 degrees already! Wow.
The summer area was covered with a thick layer of leaves for the winter. After moving away most of the leaves I found the ground to be very moist and ready for planting. I made a couple rows, planted, and recovered the ground with some leaves to keep the moisture in. We use the leaves a lot around here for mulch. Instead of fighting the mounds we have every year we look forward to the free, natural mulch 🙂
So the stage is set. Now we have to see which area does better. I think the cold frame will show signs of growth first since it will obviously be much warmer there, but the summer garden area could do very well too. I decided to try this because one year as we were cleaning up the summer area to get ready for planting, we found an onion we had missed picking the year before. It was growing great under the leaves. I hope these will do well also, but time will tell.
