Onions & Leeks

I just sowed our first onions and leeks. As with so many great gardening traditions (e.g. planting peas on President’s Day, planting chocolate on Valentine’s Day, or planting hot dogs on the Fourth of July), I figured it would help to start the year's first seeds on a holiday: Martin Luther King Jr. Day. As with all great gardening traditions, I got a late start.

At this point, I am sure that you may be asking yourself something like, “Isn’t mid-January a little early to start vegetable seeds?” or maybe “Why am I reading this blog?”

Well, for now please let me attempt to elucidate a few of the wonderful properties of the onion. It should be noted that, the more unique characteristics a plant has, the higher its rating on the "SUFCo Plant Fantastic Index".
That being said, there are many things that make the humble onion a subject worth exploration: First, we should note that the seeds should be kept in the freezer. These seeds have a shorter shelf life than many other vegetable seeds and will likely only be viable for a year if left in your normal seed storage facility (a dark, dry place with zero gravity and free of drastic temperature fluctuations).

Second, onions can now keep the distinct honor of being the earliest sown seed (at least here in the PNW). For this same reason, many home gardeners are apt to grow their onions from sets rather than seeds. It is obviously difficult to get them sown early enough and to have the space and energy to do so.
There are, however, a few advantages to growing from seed.
One, lower cost: seeds are much less expensive than sets or young plants.
Two, the plants will be less likely to bolt: when grown as a set, the onion has already lived for one season and is thus being grown as a biennial, which means its evolutionary programming will tell it to send up a seed stalk ASAP effectively stopping bulb growth.
Three, you have something besides groundhogs to cheer for during February.
So...we sow our onions and leeks in late January, set under a grow light until early spring and get into the ground as soon as we can.

Because onions and leeks take so long to mature, and they are always necessary, we like to plant as many Alliums as we can:
Chives,
Garlic Chives,
Scallions (which are really just non-bulbed onions),
Green Onions (which are really just onions with very tiny bulbs),
Shallots (which are really just onions with slighty larger bulbs)
Leeks,
Sweet White Onions and,
Yellow Storage Onions.
Also an Allium, but requiring its own personal blog, chauffeur, and penthouse apartment: Garlic.

The last fantastic feature that I will mention is “Allium Day-Length Sensitivity”. Different species and varieties have unique light requirements, but bulb growth in most Alliums is triggered by a change in day length. Some types will not start bulbing until days exceed 12 hours, or 13 or 14 or...These differences make certain types more or less suitable to your region. You would want to grow different varieties in Panama (near the equator) than in Alaska (near a moose). Such distinctions are irrelevant to non-bulbing types (leeks, scallions, etc.).
Mostly, I just think that onions are continuously consumed but rarely considered.
In conclusion, at least I now have something to check up on every morning (besides the weather report).

Another Word on Seeds

I am not expert on this and I don’t want to belabor the subject, so I will try to make this brief. While putting together this year’s seed order, I ended up doing quite a bit of poking around on the web. It seems to me that there is a lot of both confusion and disagreement about seeds (and everything else in the world). Especially when it Industrial Agriculture starts looking for backdoors into the organic/sustainable food system. Specifically, no one seems sure what is going on, but there are rampant rumors that Monsanto owns just about every seed company in the known universe. Here is the short story of what is going on.

Once upon a time there was a relatively large seed company called Seminis. Seminis collected and breed a whole lot of seed varieties (esp. hybrids) and most every small seed company out there bought some of their varieties from Seminis. A few years ago, Monsanto bought Seminis. This sent the industry into chaos and nobody was quite sure what to do. Some seed companies vowed to eliminate all Seminis varieties from their catalog with the disclaimer that it might take a few years to find alternate sources (ex. Fedco). Other companies are still hemming and hawing about the right thing to do (ex. Johnny’s Selected Seeds). That being said, Monsanto doesn’t own Territorial, Fedco, Johnny’s, etc…but some of them might still have Seminis varieties in their catalog. Here is a really in depth article about the whole shebang: shebang

Also, M and M/Mars does in fact own Seeds of Change, which inexplicably started using plastic pouches for their seeds (with the claim that this is the most environmental option). I am not sure what the future holds for all of this, another reason to start seed collecting I suppose.

As for SUFCo, we are going to stop buying seeds from any company that continues to carry Seminis seeds (it should be noted that I have a very large grudge against Monsanto) and I don't see us buying organic seeds from a candy company either. Here are a few organizations that I believe are trying to do the right thing :
Fedco
High Mowing Seeds
Seed Savers Exchange
Victory Seeds
among others...here is a long list from ATTRA http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/altseed_db_results.php?Class=3&resultpage=1&SearchBtn=Go

Seed Ordering

It is the first of the year. This means I am finishing our seed order. Due to our variety choices, the seeds are coming from a few different companies. While choosing seeds can be considered a great way to pass chilly winter days, it can also be considered the scourge of my existence. There are a lot of factors to consider; herein I will attempt to describe one of the inherent difficulties. I will spend the next few minutes nerding out about the differences in seed types because I think it is confusing, hopefully this is a useful thing to talk about…

Hybrid seeds v. Open-pollinated: Generally speaking, most commonly grown vegetable plants have been breed over generations (just like poodles and pot-bellied pigs) to have the traits we find most desirable. For example, plants are bred to taste better, produce more fruits, or show disease resistance. More recently, breeders have begun producing hybrid (F-1) seed that is derived by cross breeding two distinct “pure” genetic lines (more similar to labradoodles and cockapoos). These pure lines have been bred for generations to exhibit one spectacular trait: one of the lines may produce high yields while the other produces a resistance to a common plant disease. The crossing of the two lines creates a plant with both high yields and a resistance to the disease. This has obvious benefits, but it also has certain downsides. The principle case against F-1 hybrid seeds is that they will not “breed true”. This means collected seeds from the plants will not produce a plant similar to their parent. Often these second generation seeds produce plants with little or no vigor. In essence, this means the grower is required to purchase new seed each year.

As an aside, it should be mentioned that hybrids are very different than Genetically Modified plants. GM plants are another story entirely and their creation involves direct manipulation of the plant genes (more similar to Frankendoodles). Genetic engineers can directly insert genes that come from bacteria or animals (Bt corn:) to increase a plant’s vigor. I should mention that we don’t use any GM seeds whatsoever. This will probably have to be discussed later with scientists on hand.

Open-pollinated seeds are those which are able to breed true and produce plants similar to their parents, thus allowing seed saving. It should be noted that cross-pollination between varieties would change the genetic makeup of open-pollinated seeds, leading to changes in subsequent generations. For example, growing Dill’s Atlantic Giant pumpkin and New England Pie Pumpkin in the same garden could lead to a medium sized pumpkin that tastes like tires.
Heirloom plants are simply old-time, open-pollinated varieties. I don’t believe there is a consensus how old a variety must be before it can be considered an heirloom. It is often cited as somewhere between 10,000 and 50 years ago. Heirloom varieties are often considered better tasting than new varieties or hybrids. Keeping heirlooms viable means protecting the bio-diversity of our food crops. If you don’t think this is important, read about the Irish Potato Famine Heirloom varieties are becoming more available. The more people growing these seeds, the better chance of their continued survival (www.seedsaversexchange.org/)

When possible, we chose open-pollinated seeds so the option of seed collecting remains open. Seed collecting is a beautiful thing: it closes the loop on the growth cycle, cuts costs and further connects you to your garden. Starting seeds that I have collected is unequivocally one of my favorite things to do. Some people have very strong feelings against hybrid seed (and dependence on seed companies), many of their sentiments I can share, but there are times that we choose this seed over open-pollinated varieties. Such a situation may arise if we have had terrible trouble with a crop in the past. For example, peppers. Peppers have a difficult time ripening in the cool nights of the pacific northwest. If a hybrid is available that ripens better in cool weather, our options seem to be: stop growing peppers, continue growing peppers that produce no peppers, or try a hybrid. I do think that we should be growing plants that naturally thrive in our local climate, but…these things are complicated. At this point, we have selected open-pollinated (esp. heirloom) varieties when possible, and chosen hybrid seed on selected crops when our past experiences taunted us into submission. Maybe I will have more to say about exactly what we selected this year once the order is totally finished...