roses on sale| lecture Sun on edible landscapes

tel: 512-280-1192 Friday, Nov 9, 2012

Nursery notes: Rose sale: 20% off drifts, antiques, knock-outs

and home-run roses (1 & 3 gal.) Apple trees (5 gal.) $29.99,

including Dorrsett, Fugi, Red & Yellow Delicious. Pear trees for

$29.99 (5 gal.) - Bartlett, Beauty, Methley, Morris and Santa Rosa.

Huge selection of fall annuals - pansies, snapdragons, dianthus,

violas, flowering kale and cabbage, and bluebonnets. Reg. 6 pk.

$3.29, jumbo 6 pk. $4.99, 4" pots $1.50 Macho Ferns, 7 gal, reg.

$49.99; on sale for $24.99. Fall bullbs are here. Onion sets will

arrive on Thursday.

Free Lecture this Sun at 2p.m. A New Approach to Edible

Landscapes, by Annie Welbes of Subsist To Resist. Annie works

to help and inspire others to incorporate herbs, vegetables, orchards,

native plants, drought management, and passive solar design into

their landscape. www.subsisttoresist.com Next Sun at 2 p.m. The

Joy of Terrariums, with Teresa Austin and Dwight Littleton.

Thank you so much to Mick Vann & Sap Apisaksri for your

amazing lecture on Thai cooking last Sunday. The hand out (with

recipes) is atttached to this newsletter.

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Central Texas Gardener (KLRU-TV): Learn how to design a

garden from scratch from Diana Kirby, and on tour, visit a couple

who turned a parking lot yard into their own little paradise. Sat.

noon, 4 p.m. or Sun. at 9 a.m. www.klru.

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TV channel YNN’s Donna Friedenreich recently visited the nursery

to interview owner Chris Winslow about growing veggies. Watch

for the segments this weekend.

Top 5 Onions for Central Texas

by Chris Winslow

For many of my friends, the arrival of November signals the start

of the deer and wild turkey season. For me, it’s onion planting time.

While Baker and Oliver hone their hunting skills over at the ranch

in Brackettville, I’m in my backyard planting this season’s crop.

I am often asked about ‘the key to success’ with onions, and I always

tell gardeners that they first have to know which variety is best

suited to the area where they live. Here in central Texas, we plant

short-day onions. These grow during the short days of winter and

are ready for harvest when the days become longer in the spring.

Short day onions mature in roughly 120 days, and you can plant

them from the middle of this month through late winter. The earlier

you plant them, the bigger they'll grow. My top five:

1. Texas 1015y “Super-Sweet” Probably the most popular onion

in Texas. The 1015 is globe-shaped, yellow, and can grow up to 6

inches in diameter. It’s so sweet that it can be eaten like an apple!

2. Texas Early White A new, sweet, white onion that just won

the 2012 “Green Thumb” award for its flavor, ease-of-growing,

and disease resistance. Matures in 105 days and is globe shaped.

Mature width: 5 inches.

3. Southern Belle Red A large, globe-shaped, sweet onion that

grows to 4" in diameter. It’s the sweetest of the red short day onions.

4. White Bermuda A flat, sweet, white onion that grows to 3 to

4 inches. It’s an excellent onion to harvest early for scallions. This

heirloom onion originated in the Canary Islands.

5. Creole Red A pungent, new red onion that is globe shaped and

reaches 3 to 4 inches across at maturity. A strong flavor that’s works

well for Cajun cooking.

These onions need a sunny garden location with loose, well drained

soil. Mixing lots of organic compost with our native soils is a must.

For fertilizer, they like a lot of phosphate to start. Organic bone meal

(0- 10-0) mixed into the soil before planting works well. As they start

to grow, add a higher nitrogen fertilizer as a top dress. Blood meal

(12-0-0) or Ladybug organic fertilizer (8-2-4) is very effective.

Plant your onions 1 inch deep and 4 to 6 inches apart. If you like to

harvest green onions early, plant them 2 inches apart and harvest every

other onion as they grow. Rows should be at least 8 inches apart so

that there are enough nutrients to go around. Onions like water, so

keep up with a regular watering schedule. (They will not grow in

dry soil.) If the leaves begin to yellow, that’s probably a sign of too

much water.

You can harvest your onions in the spring when the tops turn brown

and begin to fall over. This should be somewhere between mid-April

and mid –May.

Finally, onions are easy to store. My crop from May of this year is

still holding up well in the crisper. Take advantage of the season and

try your hand at being an onion gardener. I know that’s what I’ll be

doing! We'll have onions for our customers on Thursday, so please

drop by. Happy Gardening everyone!

Visit the website: www.itsaboutthyme.com