A week or so ago, I shared about the ramps growing around my property and how the boys were digging them up. As the rest of the spring foliage has begun to catch up, the leaves of the ramps have begun to wilt and disappear among the bursting greens brought on from the rains. They are still there but not as easily seen, and are somewhat less hardy as their stems sag to the ground and hide their previously conspicuous presence. 

We are still picking a handful to use in some of the soups we’ve been making, since apparently the spring has brought with it a few small waves of ailments. I never did hear of many cure-all soups that didn’t include onions. Even as the ramps wave goodbye, onions are still at the forefront of our brains as we’ve now passed the last frost date of spring. 

Yes, the time of frost risk is essentially behind us and we are running to the fields to transplant all the racks of vegetables that are being propagated in the house. That is, if it weren’t raining. But alas, the old man is snoring and it is indeed pouring.  The fields are so wet that even in my optimism, I thought I would get some work done in the greenhouse, but instead find myself waiting for the groundwater to subside from my raised beds  and fields alike. 

The one place I found that I didn’t have to wait on, however, is my corner field. It is slightly more elevated and has a shale base to it, which causes water to drain faster. This year I have my garlic planted there, and in the walkways between those rows, I had planned to interplant our onions. 

We have a variety called Patterson onions, which are a good storage onion and which we seeded in February; they should be ready by the end of summer. Now nearly three months along, the onions are tall and hardy, even after a haircut they received a few weeks back, and are ready for transplanting. So without overthinking it, we set out to get them in the ground. 

I ran the walk-behind tiller up the pathway between the garlic, and proceeded to strike a furrow along the center with the hoe. My wife and kids came along behind me and placed the plants in the furrow before coming back through and folding the bottoms in and standing the onions upright. 

It’s always a relief to get plants out of the house and into the field where they belong. It’s even more of a relief to be able to set and forget certain plants. Onions at this stage are largely self-sufficient; they only need to be fed some fertilizer and water along the way. 

As for weeds, we plan to tuck the onions in with extra straw from the garlic. How well will that work? I’m not sure, but I’m excited about the prospect of fewer weeds. In any case, Nature brought us onions in spring, now nurture will see to it that we have our primary supply for the fall. In either case, God’s hand directs it all and even controls the rain, which may yet make or break our season. The day after we planted our first round, it poured nearly an inch inside a half hour. Our onions still looked fine the day after that, however, and the ground where they stand wasn’t completely waterlogged.

The way out here we pray for the rain that brings life to our food, but also for the sunshine that warms and dries it. We do the work we need to in preparation for the seasons that we are given, and make contingencies to handle the cards we are dealt. One step at a time, one plant in the at a time, many layers to the work we put in and the onions we get out.