On making Earth.

While doing my kitchen duties...I realized out in my yard in the compost bin...I am making earth...

This earth will feed my family, nurture the earth that I own (yet I know I do not own it.
I am a steward of the earth I tend As I am a steward of the children I raise, a friend to the man I love and walk with through this life.

I am making earth.

Does anyone else stop and think of how profound what we as gardeners pull life up and out of... see it?
To me it is like an honor to toil in the earth. See the seed emerge and flourish under our educated eye. What effort to understand and gain the knowledge to do so.

Next time I do cabbage I will understand her need. As I have began to understand my own needs. How seldom I stop to tend to the earth of mine own being. How to make it thrive. It is the garden that I live in that I so seldom attend too.

What an honor it is to tend to life.

Root, Leif, Flower...

Check the acidity/alkalinity of the soil.
Then think...

Root, Leif, Flower...

0-0-0
Is as example much higher numbers may or may not be represented in the product used.

Root veggies ... have a great need for the 0-0-10 last number to be higher

Leif... Needs 10-0-0 for example, or when that is the growing time of the plant before it flowers

Flower...Needs 0-10-0 for the time that comes to set the fruit.

So when the seed to soil a good 10-10-10, but when the food set to type increase the needed equation.

Think of your crops as Root, Leif, Flower...

Root= beet, carrot, radish, potato, you get the idea...
Leif= lettuce, kale, cabbage so on...
Flower= tomato, pepper, beans, berry and so on...

All the while to remember the other balance of 13 essentials. So to ready the soil a 10-10-10- that is balanced in the other 13 essentials.
Each food has a need that it will speak of...Learning to listen is the beginning of understanding. All this knowledge won't do you a bit of good unless you gain the understanding of how to make use of it.

This the great lesson of the spring crop of 2009

Onion storage after the harvest.

The bucket is the compost pot, the left greens are yet to be trimmed, greens in the colander need to be washed and used.

Time for some Mongolian beef...

Storage...
After the harvest it is storage at the forefront of the mind.
The trimmed greens are like a green onion once cleaned of damaged lief. The stalk trimmed of any soft area makes for a good cooking green for kabobs.

Before I get to that I just thought I would be a miss to neglect....When you see the onions lay them self down...it is harvest time. It is finished. The onion is ready.
This may be hastened if things get a bit too dry, or if the soil is tired.
I have been preparing a better understanding for next year...
root veggie=potash or 0-0-10,
10-0-0 for the leaf formation in the beginning.
Some soil deficiencies can cause issue.

So cut off the end and wrap in foil. Do not let them touch each other. Store in a cool dry place.
If you yield two types of onion those with the darker outer layers are best for a storage onion. The whiter the onion the shorter the storage. Some onions last a very , very long time.

seeds

I found some heirloom seed at a health food store

Word Filled Wednseday

Onion harvest
When they lay them self down, they have finished.
Genesis 8:22

"While the earth remains, Seed time and harvest, And cold and heat, And summer and winter, And day and night Shall not cease."