Winter gardening – green onions

Winter gardening - growing green onions indoorsI’m getting restless. Seed catalogs have been coming in the mail and I’m chomping at the bit to start a garden. Some days the weather is so nice that I’m tempted to start now, at least with some kale or spinach. I’m also feeling kind of guilty – last year we didn’t have any garden. At all. So as someone who professes to be as self sufficient as possible, it’s kind of driving me nuts that I can’t garden. I did buy an indoor grow light to try my hand at micro greens, but that’s in the garage where it’s still getting as low as 16° F some nights. Well, last night right out of the blue my wife asked if we could try growing some green onions inside. Really??? Not just yes, but oh HECK YES…

Baby steps…

The thing is, my wife isn’t a prepper. In fact she has a really bad case of normalcy bias. Also she let me convert our living room into a home gym last year, so I wasn’t going to ask for more space in the house to experiment with an indoor winter garden. So when she asked about growing green onions, indoors, now… it was kind of a miracle. As far as prepping goes, growing green onions in our kitchen isn’t a big deal. Almost nothing in fact. But… baby steps, you know? It gets my wife interested in producing some of our own food. It gives us experience with indoor gardening during the winter. And, well., it should be fun…

Winter gardening – green onions

Green onions are really easy to grow. You don’t even have to start with transplant sets, let alone seeds. We just went to Walmart and got a pack of green onions. Make sure to get ones that aren’t trimmed – they need to still have the roots on the bottom of the bulb.

green onions ready to plant
Tops trimmed, ready to plant. Make sure to not trim the roots on the bottom of the bulb.

You don’t need to make this complicated. The soil needs to be at least 4″ deep, but deeper than 6″ is a waste. Home Depot and Lowes have 6″ deep x 6″ wide x 24″ long rectangular planters that would be perfect. We just used a plastic dish pan I had in the garage. Soil should be something that drains well. I had a bag of potting soil in the garage so I used some of that.

green onions planted
We planted ours in an old plastic dish pan. Make sure the bulb is covered by the soil with the leaf part of the plant above the soil.

Once you have your pots and soil set up, just plant the onions so the transition between the bulb and the leaves is level with the top of the soil. You might be asking “What’s the point? You just stuck some already grown plants into some soil. You could have just eaten them as is without the extra trouble.” If I was eating the whole plant, you’d be right. The nice thing about green onions though is if you just cut the leaves, they’ll keep growing back. So we’ll have green onion leaves as long as I can keep the plants alive.

Peace out,
porcupine

What did you do to prep this week?

My family has spent most of the last 2 weeks with nasty colds (thankfully not all at the same time). I was second, so the week before last I didn’t get much done. I did manage to go to CERT orientation and rethink meds for a prep kit. The past week was better so at least I didn’t have to waste 2 entire weeks…

CERT

On the 4th I went to CERT orientation, which is different than the CERT Academy. Basically went over paperwork and SOP’s regarding operations, chin of command, etc. In my area, CERT is under the authority of the Sheriff’s dept. That was the boring part. The good part was getting to meet some of the local CERT team leaders. We have 6 CERT teams within an hour drive of my home, and it was interesting to hear about each of them.

Last Wednesday I went to the monthly training of one of the groups that meets close to my home. Training was good (wildland fire evacuation and helicopter safety) but I probably won’t be joining that group. This coming Thursday I’m going to the group meeting that meets close to my work which is probably the group I’ll join. The other 4 groups are just too long a drive…

Prepper Meetup

I went to my Prepper Meetup this past week. Topic was open forum/general prepping questions. Mostly we talked about earthquake safety and when/why to bug out. It was a good discussion, except it resulted in me spending money. More on that in a bit…

We’re down to only 5 core members which kind of worries me, because the one other topic the group organizer sent out in his email was “the future plans for the group.” That kind of bummed me out because I thought he was going to disband since only the same 5 or 6 people seem to be showing up. No worries though, he just wants to change the focus of the group from “beginning prepping” to “intermediate prepping.” Oh, and go on social media to help promote the group.

Another new tool

One of the things that came up at the Meetup was “what if the building you’re in collapses in an earthquake”? Someone mentioned the Stanley FatMax demolition bar. So when I got home I looked into it. Turns out they make 2 styles in 2 sizes: the “peon” model and the “tacticool” model, both are offered in your choice of 18″ or 30″.

The difference between the 2 styles is the “tacticool” version has a gas shutoff tool, 2 types of fire hydrant wrenches (square and 5 sided), and a spanner wrench built in. The “peon” version doesn’t have these, except from the pics it looks like the 30″ “peon” version has (at least) the 5 sided fire hydrant wrench. Oh, and the “tacticool” version is hard to find and wildly over priced IMO ($36 vs $91 for the 18″, $62 vs $160 for the 30″).

I couldn’t care less about the hydrant or spanner wrenches, but the gas shutoff could be really handy if I had a gas leak in my house, so I sucked it up and splurged on the 30″ “tacticool” model. It left a bitter taste as I ordered it. Why don’t they put the gas shutoff on the “peon” model? Not like it would be harder to make that way. OK so off my soap box…

Gardening

I ordered 2 fig trees and 2 blackberry bushes. They got here yesterday but I probably won’t have time to plant them until Mon or Tue after work. I also bought some of the things I need to put hoop houses over our planting beds. I messed up on the rebar. I thought I needed 3 foot sections. After pounding 2 of them into the ground, I’ve decided that 2 foot sections would be better. So another trip to Home Depot tomorrow 🙂

For next week, I hope to finish the hoop houses over our raised beds. Already talked to the wife and she’s on board. In fact, it was her idea to get some Agribon. Still need to order the clear plastic that goes over the hoops, but one thing at a time. Hopefully next week we’ll all be healthy and I can get back on my regular schedule. What did YOU do to prep this week?

Peace out,
porcupine