Blooming Onions

It has been so hot, I have had low motivation to do anything in the garden. Of course, this time of year, you have to pick zucchini daily or they grow too big. I've given up on the yellow squash. I keep wondering why I planted it! Any, there are plenty of tomatoes coming ripe. The Italian Heirloom have done the best, with consistently large fruits of about a pound each. We put some in freezer containers this past week. I'm not sure of the texture or the taste of these yet. We have to try cooking with them first.

One task I have been avoiding has been cleaning out the raised beds that had onions. This morning I finally decided to work until it was too hot to continue and clean out the bed where the yellow of Parma had grown. I clipped off all the blooms. They filled two plastic grocery bags. I'm going to have more seeds than I know what to do with. I guess I will send the ones I don't need to Seed Saver's Exchange. Many of the blooms are not yet ready to release seeds, so I put the blooms aside. However, seeds were dropping from some of the blooms. I got about third of a cup of onion seeds, which I cleaned up a bit by sifting them through a colander.


I presumed originally that the bulbs on the onions that had gone to bloom would be useless, but, as I picked them out of the bed, I realized that the bulbs on many were still rather large. So, I decided to process some.


I extracted the stalk from which the bloom grew from the middle of each and, for some, I chopped the onion up, for others, I cut them in quarters. I got about six quarts to freeze. Putting my work in the freezer, I realized that we still had frozen onions from last year that we haven't used. So, I stopped with six quarts and decided it was too much work. I think I have the best there was to offer anyway; the ones I didn't process were rather small.