Looking Back at Fall Planting - 2012

Sometime early this fall (October?) I resolved to branch out from the standard May-September stuff and try out year-round gardening.  While I did manage to get some stuff into the ground, by the time I really had that realization, healed up enough from an October knee injury, cleaned up the bulk of remaining weeds, and looked a little into options it was too late to do much.

My plant list:

• I planted some organic garlic that I sprouted from a purchase at either My Organic Market or Trader Joe's.  
• I tried some onions that were a birthday gift from the wife.  That is one heck of an experiment, though, since they were around 6 months old at the time of planting.  Many of them were very dried out.  I sorted through what wasn't mummified and used what was left.
• I discovered Egyptian Walking Onions by reading a great blog out of Massachusetts, Skippy's Vegetable Garden.  They seemed like a good experiment and the idea of planting multiplying onions appeals to me.  I like things that provide a lot of produce for not a ton of space or labor.
• Given that I didn't discover the Walking Onions until Thanksgiving, they weren't readily available from sources I was familiar with.  I discovered O.G. Roots Produce at LocalHarvest.org.  They were very helpful in correspondence, the onions were inexpensive, and they shipped promptly which was important given my very late planting time.  Thankfully, the weather and soil were both warm still.

When I planted the old onions and garlic, I tried experimenting with pre-fertilizing the "seeds" before planting.  I put the quantities of garlic and onions in separate containers with some old organic fertilizer pellets and some warm water.  I can't recall the exact proportions of the warm water and pellets offhand.  I had done a search online and found an article about using a seaweed emulsion and water for similar effect.  I think it was around 7 cups of warm water and 1/2 cup of the pellets.  I mixed up the water/pellets, put in the garlic and onions, and let that stuff soak for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.  I then planted the onions and garlic.

I fertilized the bed the walking onions were planted in, but didn't do the fertilizer soak.

I hope to do more Fall planting in 2013.  I'm planning on doing a Fall crop of Snow Peas in addition to some onions and garlic at the least.  Perhaps I'll try out Brussels Sprouts and Broccoli.