I learned my lesson last year. Put them in this time and the next week it dipped in the teens. I lost half of them. I'm waiting until closer to march. I'll buy mine from Carmichael's or southwood. Whoever gets theirs first. LoL.

I usually plant my onions around mid-February, as soon as they arrive from Dixondale Farms, but I am in south-central OK and we warm up at least a couple of weeks earlier most years than you folks further north. I agree with what Mike said about losing onions to sub-freezing temperatures if you plant too early, so keep an eye on your forecast and be prepared to cover up your onions if sub-freezing temperatures are likely. The OSU-recommended planting dates for onions are February 15 - March 10, but you need to understand that the earliest date on the OSU-recommended spring planting dates is for folks in southeastern OK where it warms up first, and the latest dates are for folks in northwestern OK where it warms up last, and all the rest of us need to pick a date somewhere in the middle of that range, depending on where we live. Some years you'll get away with planting earlier because winter weather will be milder and the spring warm-up will start early, and other years you'll have to wait and hang on to your onions until the weather warms up and settles down. I will plant mine around February 12th-16th if the weather is warm and sub-freezing temperatures are not very likely, but will wait and plant them a week or two later than that if the nights are still cold enough to be a threat to the young onion plants.

I am growing a lot of different varieties this year. I already planted one bundle of Texas Supersweets (aka Texas 1015Y) early for use as green scallions and my order from Dixondale Farms includes around 9 different varieties. I plant short daylength, intermediate daylength and a couple of long daylength onion varieties so that we can harvest fresh onions from early- to mid-May through July. We use a lot of onions in canning, and I chop or slice and freeze the excess, saving enough for fresh eating but not so many that they will start to sprout and go bad before we use them up. I don't know if I can remember all the varieties I ordered from Dixondale, but feel fairly certain that I ordered these: Red River, Highlander, Candy, Superstar, Texas Early White, Texas 1015Y Supersweet, Texas Legend, Southern Belle Red and Red Torpedo Tropeo. Hmm. I toyed with the idea of ordering leeks and may have ordered one bunch of them as well.

The onion plants show up at stores down here in southcentral OK around or shortly after New Year's Day, but most experienced gardeners know that it still is too cold down here at night for extremely early onion plantings to survive, so wait several more weeks before buying and planting them. I haven't seen any onion plants in the ground down here yet and we do have a fair number of gardeners who live around us. Most folks down here put their plants in the ground no earlier than the 2nd week of February or maybe even the third, and that is if we have good weather. Others wait until the first week of March to ensure the sub-freezing temperatures are unlikely to get their plants. This has been a pretty warm winter overall compared to most years, so I think some folks down here in my area may be out planting onions this weekend, but that's just a guess on my part. Despite the warm weather overall, our night-time lows have been dropping 3-6 degrees lower than forecast on many nights, so I keep that sort of thing in mind when watching the forecast and deciding when to plant.

February 27th 2015 the high was 19 and the low was 15 with snow. It didn't get above freezing for 2 more days and then just barely. Also we had many lows throughout February below 20. I'm sure we still have a few days ahead that will be real cold. Southwood nursery is really good about not putting crops out too early for people to buy. They don't have there dixondale order yet because they know it still too early.

I bought my onion sets at Carmichael's on Friday. All of theirs were from Dixondale and they had about a dozen varieties, candies and otherwise. I'm betting this winter will remain mild. The 15 day forecast shows above-average temps for the Tulsa area, so I'm ready to risk an early start for my onion patch. Of course, I only bought 4 bunches for a total cost of $6, so I'm not exactly betting the farm.....

I have to go to Carmichaels. Got onions and potatoes there last year and was pleased.

Thanks for the the update on Carmichaels JD. I had called about 2 weeks ago and they didnt have them yet.

My gut feeling is that our weather will remain mild, and I want to be right about that.

I have heavy duty floating row covers that give my plants up to 10 degrees of cold weather protection so I can cover the plants if a cold snap comes along and ruins our thus-far-mild winter. We're in a low microclimate that often frosts and freezes surprisingly late, so I watch the temperatures like a hawk. It is a lot of work to cover and uncover beds of garden crops, though, so I'd rather not have to do it if I can avoid it.

Having said that, whenever my onions arrive, if there is nothing awful in our 10-day forecast, I'll plant them right away and take my chances. Once I start planting, I plan to be a planting machine to the extent that life allows. We've had fires every day this week which is an unfortunate trend. It never fails that about the time I'm ready to start planting, we start having to be gone to fires day after day and my planting plans often get delayed accordingly. I'm hoping the next couple of weeks will be quieter so I can plant now while the weather is nice.

Last year I had to work around a lot of rain and perpetually muddy raised beds, and our last really cold weather was around March 5th & 6th when we dropped to 13 degrees on the first night and either 18 or 19 on the second. After that, the cold was pretty much done with us. I hope we are as lucky this year. I never feel really safe from a late winter/early spring snow storm until after Easter has passed, but at least Easter is really early this year (March 27th). Our weather is all over the place down here in Love County, so we may have snow on Easter one year and might be in the 80s or 90s during Easter Week the next year. I just try to follow my intution about how seriously to take the prospect of late cold weather. This year, at the present time, I'm feeling like our warm and dry weather will continue. Of course, if that big dip in the jet stream that keeps carrying cold weather east of us shifts in our direction we'll all be out scrambling to protect whatever we have in the ground at that point.

After all that rain in December (and in 2015 as a whole), we've been pleasantly warm and dry and it will be fun for a change to get to plant onions into ground that isn't muddy.

It has been a really long time since I've lost a large number of onions to cold weather or to bolting, so my generally cautious approach pays off. Nothing is more frustrating than to carefully plant all those gazillions of little onions and to keep them weeded, watered and mulched and then have them all either freeze or start bolting because they were exposed to too much cold weather once they have reached a critical size. I'm not feeling really cautious this year. At this point, it seems more likely that my garden will burn up in a wild fire or blow away in strong winds than that it will freeze from some big late cold spell.

I went ahead and got one bed done with about 160. I am very pleased with Dixondale this year. Last year most of my onions were tiny and about 20 percent didn't make it. It was so wet and I had to hold them along time and they just struggled. This year the bundles and the bulb is a great size. At least as big as my little finger and some bigger. I have row cover that will cover 2 beds if I need it but I don't think I will. I ordered 7 bunches counting on 40 per bunch and there were closer to 100.

A few of them are bigger bulbs than what I harvested last year.

You will probably have more trouble with the larger onion plants that you will with the smaller ones. They tend to bolt much easier, and I normally pull out the big ones and plant them in a different place so I can use them as green onions. Just my experience.

Last year was not a good year for onions at my house.

Carol, If we get as much rain here this year as we got last year, I will be hysterical.....and not in a good way. (grin) I'm not feeling a strong rain vibe for winter. Except for cold nights, it doesn't even really feel like winter, Our forecast high for today is 73. What's not to love about that?

Maybe the rain will come in spring. On Moday, our dewpoint got down to 2.1 (the second lowest dewpoint I can remember ever seeing here) and our relative humidity was 12%, and the air was so dry that my skin felt like it was cracking and falling off my face.....and there was so much smoke in the air that it was hard to breathe. Of course we had fires....we've had them every day this week, with two yesterday instead of the standard one fire per afternoon for us. I'm starting to think winter is over and spring is here early, but it seems ridiculous to feel that way in early February or even in mid-February. Our soil temperatures are great for this time of the year, but they're not nearly warm enough for warm-season plants, so I'll be a good girl and only start planting cool-season ones. My asparagus is up and we are going to start harvesting it. I'm pretty sure this is the earliest we've ever harvested asparagus.

As soon as the cool morning air outdoors warms up a bit, I'm heading out to spend the whole day in the garden (or the whole day until the fire pagers go off....but maybe we'll get lucky and be fire-free today).

Kim, My experience with onion transplants is exactly the same as Carol's. The big onions will be much more prone to bolt than the small ones, especially when planted early. It only takes a week of cold temperatures lower than what they like to make onions bolt once they are actively growing. Any onion that has 3 to 5 leaves and is roughly the size of a No. 2 pencil or larger in diameter with those 3 to 5 leaves at the time of the cold weather (if the plants are actively growing) will be much more likely to bolt than the smaller ones. So, with onions, I space the small to medium plants properly spaced and expect to get big onions from them at the proper harvest time, and I withhold all the big ones while planting the regular sized ones. I then gather up the big "rejects" that already are larger than the diameter of a pencil and plant them about a half-inch apart in a row along the edge of the raised bed and harvest them regularly to use as green onions (scallions).

We got a fair to middling crop of onions last year. The short-day ones produced the best because they already were about "done" when the 2 feet of rain fell in May and I was able to harvest them and get them out of the extremely wet ground. The intermediate and long day types suffered through 2 feet of rain in May and over another foot of rain in June. All of them were two watered, many got rot, etc. The intermediates suffered the most, as the deluge hit them during their main growth period. The long days made out a little better by staying in the ground (well, except the ones that rotted) much longer and making better growth later in the season.

I hope we aren't too wet this year. Oddly, last year felt like El Nino to me with all those ridiculously high rainfall totals, and this winter, with an actual El Nino in place, doesn't feel that much like El Nino. It did in December, but not since then. I"m not complaining. I had my fill of stomping around in the mud in the garden all of last year.

All onions need in terms of rainfall in order to achieve their maximum size is about 21-24" of water during their active growth period. My onions normally don't get that, even if I irrigate, and that's why I get good onion crops---they stay dry enough to survive and I try to water them well enough to get them a decent size without them being too watery and diseased. Last year's rain during their active growth period was more than twice the amount needed and it kept them too wet throughout most all of their active growth period. We had so much rot and disease it wasn't funny, even though the onions were in raised beds that drain well. I likely won't grow onions again in those 2 raised beds for at least 3 years because of the disease issue, which is rare here.

I'd like an average year with average rainfall amounts. Of course, we rarely get that. We tend to either be much too wet or much too dry. I remember 2004 as an almost perfect year because it was boringly average. Maybe 2016 can be that way, but it is starting out insanely dry and warm. Dry and warm makes gardeners happy in winter, but if the trend holds on through spring and summer, the garden and the gardeners will become increasingly less happy.

Dawn

I separated the big ones and I am planting them in their own area so I will know which ones were the big ones. I am very pleased with my order this year. And I am going to keep the row cover handy.

Funny, I used to plant every single onion that came in the bunch. I couldn't stand to 'waste' a single one. Now I pretty much cull as I go and buy more if I don't feel like I have enough. On occasion, I will pot the tiny ones up and stick them in the greenhouse to use for replacements when the cutworms start in. Not a lot of success on that front. Seems they never catch up.

The oversized plants go in with the green onion patch. If they survive my pull two and leave one harvesting technique, then maybe some develop as intended. I don't track them, so I'm not sure.

I got mine today at Carmichael's in bixby. $1.59 a bunch. At that price you can afford to leave the big ones out.

I planted almost 400 so far and I plant every one they send. I did separate the big ones and there were 44 so far. I have a couple more bundles to go. There are a lot more than I expected in a bundle.

Do you think that the ones we order have more onions in a bundle than the ones sold in the stores? They seem different to me.

I have never seen Dixon dale in the stores. I have bought some at a local grocery and they did well but the last couple years they were sold out early

I see Dixondale in stores some years, but they never look as fresh as the ones I order which usually arrive 1 or 2 days after shipment. If I was only buying one or two bunches it might not be worth the money, but with the number I usually buy that shipping cost gets spread out and they don't cost so much. It is worth it to get fresh onions exactly when I want them.

I paid about 5 per bunch. I like getting them fresh like this too. And it saves me gas and time driving to go get them. The nearest place is 45 miles

The ones I bought just came from dixondale about a week ago. They are still well hydrated and fresh looking. It appears to me to be the same amount of plants. My guess until I can count would be about 60-75 plants.

My goodness, the nine day forecast from News 9 looks like April

about the same for us in Tulsa. Looks like warm season plants could go in next week. LOL.

My forecast for tonight is 18, but I can dream of Spring.

Oooh, that is too cold. Keep on dreaming. Spring is coming.

We're having highs in the 50s, 60s and 70s so I cannot complain, but nights still are in the 30s and 20s so it gets too cold at night still for me to get too far ahead of myself with planting.

This week there's been so much smoke in the air from all the fires that even if I am at home and in the garden, my eyes and lungs are irritated from all the smoke. That's fairly typical when it is this hot and dry in February.

The weather lately is reminding me, in a bad way, of January and February of 2011. I don't want anything that reminds me of 2011. Are we going to be bidding farewell to El Nino in a few months and saying hello to La Nina? It kinda looks that way, and I was hoping more for a neutral pattern than a La Nina. Hot and dry is not my favorite kind of growing season. Sure, it is great in the beginning because we get to plant early, but we often pay for it with excessive heat and drought in the summer months.

I am happy to have the warm days but grateful for the cold nights because they generally keep the fruit trees from becoming delirously overwrought by the heat and blooming too early. We've got strawberry plants in bloom and forming berries and it seems awfully early for that.

Our ground is slowly warming up more and more, but still too cold for warm-season plants. At the rate it is warming, some tomato plants may go into the ground early, but certainly not this early. Our soil temperatures are in the upper 40s in general although they hit the 50s for part of each warm, sunny day. They don't stay that warm 24/7 yet.

My Dixondale order arrived today. The tracking info said it would arrive next Tuesday, but the USPS managed to get it here today. I am thrilled. Maybe I can plant them tomorrow if it doesn't rain. Even if it does rain, it shouldn't rain enough to be more than a minor nuisance.

The bundles of onions are huge. I haven't counted how many per bundle there are, but it looks like a lot. I'll count them as I sort them out to plant. I have 9 bundles so planting is going to be wonderful fun. The onion plants are a wide range of sizes from big to small, so I'll do my usual sorting by size and then planting. They are fresh and green and really haven't even wilted, and look better than the ones I saw in stores last weekend and this weekend (though the ones I saw aren't Dixondale as far as I could tell, so it isn't a direct comparison).

I got mine planted today. My 1015 bundle had right about 80. I planted 60 for big onions and the rest for greens. My red candy had about 60 plants.

We use so many onions through the year and I'm not sure I ordered enough--but I'm still a newbie, so I suppose that's okay. I am quite excited about placing my first Dixondale onion order (supposed to ship on the 22nd). I've read so many good things about their onions.

I did grow onions last year for the first time, but it was so wet. I planted them mid-March and there was still snow on the ground just the week before. I planted them in mud really. The onions I purchased were from a local store, but I think they were Dixondale--not for sure though. They were okay--small and some didn't make it--it just rained so much as you all know. This year is different. I'm trying to get their spot ready. Some weeds/grass came up after I pulled them last year, so I'm cleaning that stuff out. Many leaves fell on the area and I've just been crunching them up and mixing them into the soil by hand as I pull the dead weeds. Is that okay? Their spot is about 30 feet long and 2 feet wide. Is that enough space to plant two rows of about 60 each? I did purchase some of their "special" fertilizer--you're supposed to make a trench between the rows and put the fertilizer there. Never done that--new to me as well.

Also, I had no clue what onions to by other than short day varieties. I chose Red Creole and Texas Legend. Any thoughts on those two?

The local grocer had dixondale onions. I'm not sure what daylength they are. I'm guessing if the manager is smart enough to buy dixondale, they'll be appropriate day lengths. They had all colors, too.

OK I found my list of what I am growing. They were 2 samplers

short day

red creole

TX early white

1015,

Intermediate day

Candy

Red candy apple

Superstar

And TX legend

That should be enough to dehydrate store and eat for 2 plus sharing

When I unpacked my order yesterday afternoon, I found I had purchased Red Marbole Cippollini instead or Red Tropeo, but other than that I had remembered the ones I purchased correctly except I left off Red Candy Apple. In one way it is quite daunting to sit and look at all those bundles of onions and realize I have to plant all of them, but then the weather looks gorgeous for us for the rest of the week, so I will get out there and plant them and have fun doing it. I'm not sure if I'll do it today. Our fire pagers went off at 3: 21 a.m. this morning and I am seriously sleep-deprived and feeling lazy because of it. It never fails that when I have plans to spend the whole day in the garden, somehow a fire interferes with my plans.

Hazel, Both the varieties you purchased will do great here. As long as I plant in February or earliest March, I get great harvest from all three types---short day, intermediate day and long day, although the only 2 long-day types I've grown are Highlander and Red River. Both of them are sort of considered either very early long day types or very late intermediate day types, though they are officially listed as long day types in the Dixondale catalog. We can grow an amazing array of onion varieties here in our part of the country, which allows us a lot of leeway.

Red Creole is a strongly-flavored, more pungent onion, and the advantage to growing it is that it will easily store for 6-7 months most years, and sometimes for 8 months or more if properly cured. Texas Legend is a sweeter onion, and sweet onions do not store for as long as the more pungent varieties, but it produces huge onions if given enough water and fertilizer. Most years, Texas Legend can be stored for only about half as long as Red Creole, but its flavor is superb. Remember that if you get a huge harvest and feel certain y'all cannot eat them all before they start sprouting, you can chop them or slice them and freeze them. I freeze them in 1/2 and 1 cup quantities that I can use in cooking.

You should be able to get all the onions into that bed in two rows unless your bundles are greatly overpacked like mine are. I like Dixondale's fertilizer. I've used it properly by trenching it as they direct, and I've broadcast it over the entire bed and rototilled it into the ground deeply. I've had great yields either way. I tend to plant in solid blocks not rows, with the onions 4-6" apart in all directions. I don't wait for all of them to mature at once. I start putting some of them and using them when they are about half-grown. As long as the leaves you crunched up by hand broke up into small pieces they should be fine. If you have big pieces, say anything bigger than a quarter, they may be slow to break down, but that's not the end of the world. If the crumbled leaves appear to be tying up nitrogen as they break down in the soil after the onions are planted (you could tell because the onions might be exhibiting slow growth or poor color), you always can topdress with something that contains nitrogen and water it in to compensate for any nitrogen tied up by the decomposing leaves.

I'm going to go pull one random bundle of the shelf and count the onions. Then I'll come back and tell y'all how many are in it. Some years the Dixondale-by-mail bundles are about the size of the bundles of onions (not Dixondale) in the stores, but other times they are significantly larger. These year they look significantly larger. And the answer to how many onions are in one bundle is.....

110. That is how many onions are in my bundle of Southern Belle Red and I'm not even sure it is the largest bundle. Now I want to go count another one....

The Intermediate Day Length bundle has 29 Red Candy Apple, 53 Candy and 44 Superstar for a bundle total of 126.

Carol, I never see Dixondale in stores here. All the stores down here seem to have either Brown's Omaha or Bonnie (and, increasingly, it is just Bonnie everywhere). So, I have no local Dixondale's to compare to the ones I get in the mail. However, back when I bought the Dixondale bundles in Texas long ago, they tended to have 65-80 onions per bundle and about 8 years out of 10, the bundles I get in the mail are overpacked by comparison. I'd but them locally if they have them locally, but no one does, so I order online every year. When buying locally, if someone buys them the first week they are in the store, they likely are getting onions about as fresh as the ones we get in the mail. I refuse to buy onions that have set outdoors in garden centers for weeks on end though. The first day I saw onions at Atwood's I bought a bundle of 1015Y to plant for green onions for fresh use, and they still were green when I bought them. I don't buy them once they are all dried out and pitiful looking. I noticed this morning at Wal-Mart that they have sold tons of onions recently, and the ones left all look pretty sad and dry.

I have 7 bundles but 9 varieties because one bundle is the Intermediate day length sampler. If the weather halfway cooperates, we'll have oodles and oodles of onions. Anything will be better than last year when the onions were too wet for too long, and their quality suffered accordingly.

I carefully read this thread last night and went online to order from Dixondale's. I only got the short day sampler because I wasn't sure how much time I'd have over the next couple of weeks and I'm still a newbie to veggie gardening. I'll see how it goes and then, maybe, order the other sampler. As always, I am so appreciative of the information I glean from you guys!

So I got my onions in the ground....well about halfway. I bought 6 bundles and that was WAY more then I needed. So I am started to plant onions in all the empty spaces I can find. I only have texas 1015 in the ground at the moment. But I have bundles of yellow granex and yellow candy that I'll be planting somewhere.

For the tulsa area, Carmicheals in bixby has dixondale

I saw Dixondale at Marcum's in south OKC yesterday while I was looking at columnar trees.

Did anyone else order from dixondale have the tracking number coming from Memphis tenn? Why would a company in texas have onions shipping from Memphis?

Are they coming FedEx? My guess is dixondale has a distribution center there since its also the main FedEx hub. Just a guess.

Dixondale ships around 800 million onions a year and they generally use USPS Priority Mail for small orders and UPS and FEDEX for large orders, so I expect they do use Memphis as a major shipping hub. Way, way back in the day (they've been in business for 113 years), they shipped their boxes of onions on train cars, until their farming community lost their local train service in the 1950s, effectively killing their mail order business. Then, by the 1980s they had resumed mail order and were shipping by truck. Now the products ultimately arrive at our homes via USPS, UPS or FEDEX. I am amazed at how many onions they raise and ship annually.

These are coming via post office. It just seems like the extra long way around.

Every year, I look at ordering from Dixondale, but my tightwad tendencies win out, every time. I need to quit that!

Fortunately we have 2 or 3 places that carry them around Shawnee.

This morning, I decided I needed a few more to go with what I already have planted. Atwoods had zero, so I went to my old standby in another part of town.

Outside, they had three of the worst looking bunches of 1015s, I've ever seen. Plenty of Granex and some Red Sweets, but I already have Granex planted and I'm not familiar with the others, so I went inside.

A lady walked in behind with one of the bunches I had just looked at and placed them on the counter. When sales person came back up front, I asked if they had any more onions in the back. The lady about half sarcastically replied, there's plenty more out front. After very nicely explaining that I wouldn't waste my time planting them in my garden, she got even more sarcastic.

In the mean time the lady with the nappy looking bunch of onions starts asking me about her's. I pointed out the quarter sized bulbs, the roots on over half were completely gone, and the fact that there wasn't a total of 12 in the bunch, I would even bother to plant.

Fortunately a truck had pulled in with a delivery from Dixondale. My new friend, the sarcastic sales lady explained that if I could wait till they unloaded if I wanted too. I just smiled and said, I'll wait.

Ended up buying 5 bunches of the best looking onions, I purchased in years. Large fresh green and 95% pencil sized.

And had an interesting time answering questions from the other customer, who was just stopping by to pick up one bunch to plant for her 91 yr old grandmother who still wants to feel like she was gardening.

You guys are brave!!! The weather has got me stopped dead in my tracks. All I can think of is how hot and dry this summer will be. We drowned in December and then the rain went away. Where is El Niño? Maybe on vacation? Will it return in late spring and have another May 2015, heaven forbid!!!!

i just hate to plant a lot and then water continuiosly or watch it die. I just am so tired of second guessing our weather. It's been 2 yrs since all our trees vowed away and I am still hesitant to plant any.

i know I need to make a planting decision but I will proceed with caution.

With soil temps and the extended forecasts being what they are, I'm feeling pretty good about getting onions in the ground.

I think more than a few of us have concerns about a hot dry summer, but isn't even more reason to capitalize on an early warming trend? Now, 3 weeks from now when I'm in full blown panic mode, scratching and scrambling to cover and protect the few things I'm brave enough to plant, I'll be wishing I had waited!

One thing, I am doing a little different on onions is, most years I plant my entire crop in about a week. This year, I planted about 300 white granex, along with most of my green onion set crop, around the end of January. I picked up and started planting my 1015s today. Should finish them tomorrow, if the knees and the back don't give out. If I can come up with some Candies, I'll grab a few bunches and stick them in the ground over the next couple of weeks.

Not sure there is anything to be gained by staggering or spreading my planting out, but it sure is easier on the body!

It's likely, I'll put a few potatoes in the ground between now and the first. That along with greenhouse tasks, it should curb my need to seed for a while.

okoutdoorsman, I'm glad you were there when the new shipment came in. A member of Garden Web who used to post as "Gone Fishin'", and whose name was Bill, got me to try mail ordering Dixondale after I moved from TX to OK and couldn't find the Dixondales anywhere here. He told me I'd be happy with the quality and he was right. We lost him several years ago, but I carry the Dixondale torch for him, because he was so right about them, and I am always happy to spread the word about the Dixondale quality. He enriched his onion beds with stable cleanings from his daughter's horse barn, and he always had absolutely the largest, most gorgeous onions. Mine have never, not even in their best year, ever looked as good as his did, but I keep trying to grow onions that look only half as big and half as happy as his.

I got my onions planted today, and every bundle was overpacked except for one. Mine were a wide range of sizes in every bundle but one (which had enough but not too many), but since they were so overpacked, I had plenty of normal-sized ones to plant for bulbing onions, and then I planted the oversized ones close together to harvest and use as scallions.

I thought I had ordered 7 bundles, of which one was a sampler with 3 varieties in it, so I expected 9 varieties total. Instead, I had ordered 8 bundles, so ended up with 10 varieties total. I do love having a wide variety and purchased mostly sweet onions (since they do better in our climate) but got a couple of the more pungent varieties as well. I ended up with 834 onions in the ground, representing these varieties: Texas Early White, TX 1015Y Supersweet, Highlander, Red Marble Cipollini, Red River, the Intermediate Day Sampler (Candy, Red Candy Apple, Superstar), Southern Belle Red, and Texas Legend.

stockergal, I totally understand your reservations about the weather. We have had so little actual winter weather and the early warm-up reminds me, in a most disconcerting way, of 2011...and we all know how awful that spring and summer were.

This morning my DH sent me a text message warning me to watch out for copperheads because he had run over one. I reminded him that snakes have been out here for several weeks, which makes my skin crawl. Most years, I don't really have to worry about venomous snakes until at least April. Having them out in February feels like a bad omen.

I have been loving the warm weather. How often do I get to plant onions when it isn't raining and it isn't cold? Practically never. In my heart, I want to believe winter is over, but there's that voice in my head reminding me that often when we have a warm February, we get slapped down by a return of the cold weather around Easter, so I am being cautious with what I put into the ground....meaning, only cool-season plants so far. I also am going ahead and putting hoops up over each bed as I plant it (my neighbors can see how far along I am as they drive by simply by counting how many beds have hoops, and one neighbor says when the hoops go up, it is his reminder to get busy planting). That way, if the jet stream shifts and decides to bring the cold weather to us instead of sending it east of us, I can quickly throw the frost blankets over the hoops.

The purchased tomato plants I have in containers are growing like gangbusters in the abnormally warm February temperatures. It is tempting to put them in the ground....my soil is already warm enough in my raised beds, but I am waiting a while. How long? I don't know. I've never put tomatoes in the ground this early, but if ever there was a year when that seems possible, it is this year. Maybe I'll do it by the end of the week, if next week's exended forecast looks warm enough at night.

I am likely to push the limits and plant warm-season crops as early as possible this year, but not until the soil and air temperatures at our place are in the right range for each. If this is going to be a hot, dry summer with the return of La Nina after El Nino fades away, then earlier plantings will get to fruit and mature before the insane heat sets in....or before drought returns. Sometimes it is hard to know what to do because our weather can change on a dime.

Based on our warm temperatures, snakes being out, bees busy buzzing around, the return of the Purple Martins, and our forecast looking ridiculously warm, Tim and I agreed today that Winter is Over at Our House.....not saying it is over at anyone else's house, but we think it has ended here. And. We. Could. Be. 100%. Wrong. About. That.

Dawn

With all of the casinos around the state, it gives an outlet for those that potentially have gambling issues. I think for some, our gardens provide that outlet! Some plant by charts, some by moon phase and then some of us by pure gut feeling. No matter which method is used, there will always be risk of failure. But the chance of a positive outcome is what prods us to keep 'gambling'! I love it!!

Besides planting the rest of the onions I have on hand, I plan on forming more hoops. I gave the rest of what I didn't have in use to my brother, who was visiting from Colorado. Hopefully they will work to extend his short growing season by a few weeks. With 90 days or less of frost free days, it's an uphill battle for most things that aren't in one of two greenhouses.

What gardening he has done has been in Oklahoma and it's been tough getting him to understand, he needs to pick varieties that are better suited to his climate. Where we lean toward hot weather tolerant plants, he needs cold weather tolerant. At least he's finally getting a better understanding about soil amendments when it comes to shale based soil.

Dawn, I am curious about your row covers. Do you hem them, or attach to lumber, pipe or other? Since this is my first year to get serious about using them, I'm trying to decide on how to secure them on the hoops.

Bruce, I lay them over the hoops first. Hopefully I'm doing it when the wind is low. Then I have several different methods of securing them to the ground. Sometimes I use U-shaped landscape fabric staples. I bought 1000 of them a few years ago and have been using them ever since. They will hold the fabric down tightly to the ground in most weather conditions. If we are having very strong wind, like we often do in March or April, I might lay lengths of rebar or green t-posts on top of the ground, right along the edge of the raised bed so that the row cover is held tight between the rebar or fence pole and the boards that border the raised beds. There's been a few times we've had wind gusting 50 mph and over accompanying very cold weather and I've actually used zip ties or binder clips to hold the row cover securely in place. In a pinch, I've used 20 oz. bottles of water as weights to hold them down. I've used garden tools, pieces of lumber, paving stones, etc. Whatever it takes.

Dawn

That sounds like my plan whatever is handy. My son looking at a pile of tresses says when you get a chance will you through that stuff. I said for what. So we can get this trash cleaned up.

Uh that is my good stuff pile! You would think he would know that already

For my raised beds, I use PVC to form the "hoops" and the frost cover goes over that (Ordered several years ago from Gardeners supply and it's like year 4, still usable). DH works in the rebar business, so long strips of that anchors our covers. They tuck in nicely between the hoops and the cement blocks of the bed. 50+ mph winds have never uprooted those anchors. I realize I have easy access, but this rebar can also be found at a reasonable price at most box stores in the concrete construction departments. Or hollah at me!

Kim, That does sound just like a man, but your son is young and he will learn that gardeners have a wide array of good stuff stashed away to use when needed. I've used row covers for so long that my men finally understand that what they see as scrap piecs of two by fours, I see as weights for the row covers. Rebar is sacred around here and so are extra t-posts. If Tim is home and sees me carrying row covers down to the garden on a windy day, he starts gathering up all the good stuff I can use to weigh it down. He knows the drill pretty well by now.

Paula, I do love rebar and use it for many things in the garden. It also makes great stakes for tomato cages. Sometimes when I need gardening supplies, I don't go to the Garden Center while we are at Lowe's....I go to the building materials part. Think about it......metal t-posts, zip ties, wooden grade stakes, PVC pipe, EMT pipe, and even the black rectangular concrete mixing tubs (I drill holes in the bottoms and grow lettuce and other greens in them). Oh, and Industrial Sharpies! A couple of years ago something in the ink formula of the Garden Marking pens must have changed and I noticed that the writing on labels doesn't hold up in rain and sun like it once did, so I switched to Industrial Sharpies which work even better. The only place I've found them (other than ordering online) is at Lowe's or Home Depot. Sometimes when we go to Lowe's or Home Depot for gardening supplies, we don't even make it to the garden center itself until I've filled up the cart with whatever I needed in the way of supplies.

I like to make my supply runs early in the year and stock up on anything that I need more of because it seems easier to me to have everything stashed away in the barn for when I need it than to have to make a quick run to the store, since stores are few and far away down here.

Dawn

I bought a paint marker at walmart to try after someone said they didn't fade. Don't know how they compare price wise. I use industrial markers, but some faded, I think I didn't get enough ink on them to begin with, you know, getting tired and dirty hands...

I'm thinking do about a 1" hem down the long edges of my row cover and then possibly some stake tabs. I can then slide 1/2" EMT in and create a rigid frame of sorts. The tabs would let me use tent stakes, which I have a ton of, to secure it. I also thought about feeding rope or parachute cord in the hem and creating a drawstring affect. Again, the tabs would give a means to secure it.

Paula, if you are interested in EMT hoops, I might be willing to trade for rebar. I have a bunch from my father in laws garden, when he finely had to quit, but I am constantly finding ways to use it.

Fortunately I have a decent stash of EMT in 1/2", 3/4" and 1". Helps to have connections with a manager in the electric department at our local Locke Supply. When they need to clean out their damaged goods area, guess who gets to haul it out of there? Works out really well, since minor kinks and bends disappear when I bend it around the form.

ID stakes are on my list to work on. Sharpie labeled ice cream sticks aren't cutting it. Since my peppers and tomatoes go in with a gal can to help protect the young transplants, I could paint them a light color and then just use a marker to ID. The problem would be in years I have to remove the cans for whatever reason. Excess heat buildup was a bit of an issue, last year, so the cans came off of a lot of my plants. Then there's the time and expense of painting a couple of hundred cans!

this is made from tulle with old sheets sewn around the outside in a channel. I put 1 x 2s in the channels. This was August, so I really had no wind issues. The wood was heavy enough to hold the fabric down to keep bugs out. It was awkward to work in the bed. I ended up watering through the fabric and managed to poke a couple of holes not paying attention to where the wand was. Actual row cover is tougher, but you still will want to plan how you will access for weeding and harvest. Some way to hold up your tubing while you work. That is a pool noodle split lengthwise at the top to keep the wooden brace from tearing the fabric.

I bought Dixondale onions at the Stillwater Mill Saturday. They have a good selection and were $1.50 per bunch