I just finished doing my evening rounds – it is so gorgeous out there right now! – which gave me a chance to see how far my daughter got on the garden bed she was weeding.

Before I left this morning, she asked me which beds needed to be worked on, and if there were any surprised to watch out for, like fall plantings of some kind. I said no, we did the fall garlic in the old kitchen garden beds this year, and those were the only fall plantings we had.

The bed she started on is where we planted the Roma VF and Red Wethersfield onions, last year. The tomatoes ended up not very healthy, and seemed to get blight near the end, but the onions… they just disappeared. The seedlings I transplanted around the perimeter seemed to be doing well at first, and then they were gone. Not dug up. Just died away. So I definitely had plans for amending this bed, and we were most definitely not going to be planting tomatoes in it, again.

Imagine my surprise – and probably hers! – when I looked today and saw this.

All along the perimeter, Red Wethersfield onions are growing! There are so many crab grass rhizomes in there, my daughter has basically been digging them up and transplanting them.

I am totally amazed. Onions I thought had died off, with no evidence of them to be seen when that bed was harvested and the diseased looking tomato plants pulled for burning, had been there, all along, and survived the winter!

We started more Red Wethersfield onion seeds this year, too. I was going to give them one more try before giving up on them, at least for a few years. Now, it looks like we’re going to have plenty!

The bed is only about a quarter finished; it took my daughter a lot longer then usual, since she was both weeding and transplanting all the onions she was finding. Even through the crab grass growing around the edges, I can see more little onion bulbs pushing their way through!

Onions are biannual. Which means that these onions, if left alone, will go to seed, which we should be able to save.

What an awesome surprise!

The Re-Farmer