Onions and Garlic!

This week I dug up and cured my onions and garlic. We’ve tried onions for the last three or four years here, from both starts and sets. Never have they ended up growing very well—usually ending the season just about as large as they started it.

This year I could tell the plants were growing much better, and was excited to see the large onions and heads of garlic being sold at the farmers’ market.

It was hard not to be a little disappointed when we started digging ours out–not quite the size I would have liked.

But then I re-framed my perspective and mused contentedly to Jeremy, ” Our biggest onions yet!”

These onions will actually be able to hold their own in a recipe even–with a partner of course.

This was my first year growing garlic, and though I worried I might have waited too long to put them in last fall it was exciting to watch them break ground this spring, right on time.

Though the little heads are barely the size of two cloves of commercial garlic, I am satisfied with knowing that mine were grown without chemicals or artificial fertilizers, not to mention in my own backyard!

After letting the lot cure in the sun a few days I consulted this tutorial for braiding onions and garlic to string them all up (which was another idealized gardening dream fulfilled–to have braids of my own onions and garlic hanging in my pantry).

I live for these concrete visual reminders of the efforts I have put into helping my family grow and thrive.