Some folks plan their gardens with extreme care. They record copious notes about even the tiniest of garden events, every day of the year. They test their soils and amend as necessary to suit the plants they intend to plant here or there. They have lots of compost, mulch, soil and the like delivered well ahead of time. You get the idea.
I am not one of those folks.
red onions on their way
I go out to my garden to play.
I take no notes at all. I make only cursory plans ahead of time, and these often change on a whim-du-jour. I then lose the plans so I have no idea what I have planted and where. I figure I’ll know what is where when it pokes its nose out of the ground. Now and then I go online to find out important info. This year’s search included (and may have been limited to) finding out what plants like to be next to onions. Turns out, not very many. This complicates my garden layout because I plant a lot of onions. Yellow, white, red, garlic and shallots this year.
Why so many onions you might ask.
My goal is to be able to sustain myself all year round, not just during the growing season. The trick to this for me has been to grow foods that I find myself buying often, and onions is one of those. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, cabbage, carrots and winter squash are a few others. Then I had to figure out how to store them for the winter. I did very well this past year! In fact, I still have one shallot, oodles of garlic, and a few servings of sweet potatoes. I finished off my potatoes, parsnips and cabbage sometime in April. I am coming to the end of my frozen stash, but still have green beans, ratatouille, and loads of frozen fruits for muffins.
And
Here is my last onion!
You might be thinking that I have acres and acres to grow this stuff on. Surprise! Here is where all that magic happens:
That’s right. If I can do it, you can too. Enough said.
This spring’s big surprise is a rutabaga, a yellow turnip to some of you. I didn’t manage to get all of my fall crops harvested before the ground froze solid last fall. This rutabaga managed not only to survive the winter, but also now looks like it will be the largest one I have ever harvested (I tried to scrape some of the soil away so that you could see the developing root). I’ll plant them again kinda late this fall, and simply plan on harvesting them the following spring, which, if this year is anything like the last, would be right about the time I run out of the previous season’s root veggies.
This is my entry to Hive Garden Community's for May 2026. But wait! The challenge has not been posted! Which makes this a garden post for just because.
images are all mine