Amish secret to growing HUGE onions! It starts now..

[Music] welcome back to the homestead we are planting some onion transplants here these are some red onion transplants hello Maggie are you gonna help us to do it today and these are my favorite on you so if anybody wants to know I love red onion actually last year I just finished my last red onions from last year so and there they are my favorite they have my best flavor and I really really like them so we're gonna do those today it's pretty busy today around the homestead so we get a spritely guys along this evening while we got out in the garden we told you before that we like to plant when the moon's out where the sun's going down so that's what we're doing right now yeah these transplants I generally go about an inch deep in about three to four inches apart and I for me it works out very well I put them all around the perimeter of my beds so they're great companion plants with most anything now here's a little insert interesting note that I figured out over eight years doing these because every year I'm trying to get better and better at planning my onions I found that whenever I use the transplants because I'm gonna do both I do the bulbs and the transplants whenever I did these transplants these are the ones that last longer and they overwinter so they're very good they're much better at storage so it was just crazy I like I finally figured that out and it was all because of these are the ones that last longer as opposed also the white onions white onions will store a very very long time actually have quite a few white onions for last year still left over that I haven't used and they're still in great condition next yes now we're working on the onion sets or like a little bulb now the one thing with these is I always wanted when I was talking to Amish some of them would have the biggest onions and I wanted the biggest onions so the trick is to get your onions is to plant them early and to plant them not very deep so my soil is very it's very Lumi and it's easy it breaks apart so I'm just gonna get my bulb the little roots on the bottom and I just push it in there a little bit the tops exposed basically what's gonna happen I'm gonna water it and it's gonna root and then it's gonna give it time for that that bulb to get bigger if it's under the ground too much it won't grow that big and it works I finally got some nice sized onions and when you have them you can see the roots at the bottom here and then you could see this one's even starting to sprout at the top so be mindful on which way you put them in the dirt because you don't want to put them in upside down will lose that ball and you plant these really quick like jimmy-john but a couple minutes at the most [Music] another benefit of planting at night is that it it always seems to be a little bit cooler so even though the temperatures are mild right now it still feels really nice out yeah another important point about growing big onions is you get those in early like I was saying but you want to get them as soon as you can work the soy off as early as you can because that's really makes a huge huge difference and we're playing this right in the same bed that we planted all that arugula if you saw it in the last video it's what's for dinner [Laughter] now art imitators haters so this year I'm doing Kennebec potatoes oh that's fancy well we usually did kennebeck last year was the first year that I didn't do one we did the Yukon Gold now this is a white potato and it's a great tasting potato the Amish love it here and that's usually where I get it from and there it's a larger white potato it has a thinner skin and the cool thing about it it produces huge leap yields and they're easy to grow so like you talked about gardening for dummies or making or growing potatoes for dummies this is kind of an easy one to grow and it's really resistant to diseases and blight and the one thing that's awesome about them is they're great for cold storage so they last the winter very well so this is definitely a good one for us and Tom since we have our root cellar right and I'm putting them in these lower beds because it'll be easier for us to dig up so I'm really excited about my Kennebec today so we cut these potatoes a couple days ago and gave it some time to kind of scab over so there's some debate about that whether you need to do that we normally do and as you can see here these are called eyes see these little green things right here and so what another debate is that when you put these on the ground you want to have the highs pointing up and that's a little plant that'll come up yeah and we're gonna go about three inches deep and about a foot apart [Music] and again the trick is to have that Lumi soil so the looser the soil the bigger the potato can grow that's why when you're hilling it up all that loose soil is getting on top and that potato is just growing and growing a little bit opposite then the onions we talked about earlier because with the potatoes you want to keep the Sun off of them they have to be covered up all the time or they'll turn green and they could even get poisonous so now we're at another little bed for some more titers and I'm just kind of breaking up so the grounds nice and Lumi and loose so we can put up red Pontiac potatoes in so this is just a different variety of red potato just a little different flavor because we like variety you know variety is the spice of life it's also good to when your garden have variety because sometimes they get disease or they'll get attacked and a lot of times the bug or the disease is specific to that plant so if you try different varieties you might be able to still harvest something that you really like just a different type of it because it made it through for sure I always say this is like our gardening insurance you know I plant big different places and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't same things with the Pontiacs we cut them open to have eyes on them right now they do look a little bit different the other ones looked a little more or silver or dark kind of grey these are a little redder and a little wider on the skins here and then they have a little bit of thicker skin like I was saying the Kennebec the potatoes when you do eat them at the skin you can eat and those the kehna backs are really good for like anything french fries mashed potatoes stews I mean anything and these I just liked on these I like to eat them separately i roast um these are really good that way I guess some of that information might be in the cookbook while we were able to get in the onions and the potatoes yes thanks for hanging out with us it was lots of fun it kind of helped to go by a little quicker you know these aren't just the only potatoes that were planting we also will be putting in sweet potatoes pretty soon and I got the you know orange ones I mean I think do the garnet ones and then we'll do the Molokai potatoes because those are our absolute absolute favorite that I was saying my favorite onion is the red onion so you guys let us know what your favorite oh yeah cuz there's a chapter right on yes so we're gonna head inside well I'm gonna head inside she's gonna go check the water at the chicken house and we will see you guys tomorrow yeah yeah [Music] you you

Channel: OFF GRID with DOUG & STACY

Views: 370,785

Keywords: Off Grid with Doug and Stacy, Doug and Stacy, Doug, Stacy, Off Grid, off the grid, off the grid living, off the grid homes, off grid living, off grid cabin, off grid with Doug and Stacy, off grid solar power system, off grid house, off grid homestead, off grid solar, homestead, homesteading, homesteading for beginners, homesteading off the grid, natural food recipes, holistic health, holistic living

Id: wu0k85u9Y1o

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2019