[chili]

Popped down my plot today for a recee and at the end of our section 2 brothers have a plot, i have seen them once this year to plant their spuds and other crops, everything seems to have grown except the weeds, their onions look superb compared to mine.

so my 1st question is onion related. i planted mine before winter (over wintering variety) and they are only just bigger than a golf ball where as these 2 brothers are looking bigger than mine already. How? are over wintering onions not ideal to grow?

also spuds...am i too late to plant some more spuds or is their still time

thanks

[Nikkithefoot]

My plot neighbour on one side has onions the size of a small bowl, and they were planted well after mine....................the difference............he uses lots of artificial fertilisers and no organic matter on his plot.

I firmly believe that hard work over time ie working in lots of organic material will pay dividends, but is is a bit depressing to see his yields compared with mine. Having said that I dug in loads (approx 7 tonne) of manure into my spud bed last autumn and I have had a brilliant harvest so far especially given the dry weather. Hopefully things will improve for me over the next 2 or 3 years as I get more.

In terms of spuds if you can find any of the 'early' spud varieties you might just still have time for some to grow as they are normally ready to harvest after roughly 12 weeks. Main crops take much longer and you are a bit late for those.

[fatcat1955]

Depends on the variety of onion. If you are growing japanese overwintering onions they will never get as big as the show onions that people grow. Size is not eveything. If you are happy with the amount/taste of the produce you grow, be happy don't worry.

[ember]

Size is not eveything. If you are happy with the amount/taste of the produce you grow, be happy don't worry.

I couldn't agree more. There are only 2 of us at home so small things are good with less waste. If we have bods for meals we just pick extra.  Same for supplying others, you can pick to need much more easily. Showing - well that's another matter.

M

[stompy]

Size is not eveything. If you are happy with the amount/taste of the produce you grow, be happy don't worry.

We are the same as a family of 4, but the 2 girls, 6 and 3 don't like butternut squash so we only use half (we put the other half in the fridge) for our roast chicken thighs and veg.
Now if we could get a smaller but more proliffic squash then that would be great.

Same with onions, we like them in salads but the girls don't, so we have a medium size onion each, one large onion wouldn't be enough and two large onions would be too much.

I think we sometime get preocupied with bigger is better rather than medium and tasty is just right