My weekend on the WizStead

Planted 200+ onions

I bought

• a bag of 100 mixed white, yellow and red bulbs at Walmart.
• From an Amish green house:
  • a bundle of about 50 Candy Red onions
    
    image source
    • Here's the web site of the farm they came from.
      It says these are short day onions.
  • about 50 "large sweet" white onion bulbs
    • I spaced these at 6 inches. All others were 4".

Wide Row Planting
You have options how to plant your onions:

• Long rows
  • It takes about 25 foot row to plant 100 onions.
    Rows spaced about 18"
    For 200 that would be 37.5 square feet.
• Wide rows
  • It only takes about 6 square feet (2' x 3') to plant 100 onions.
    12.5 square feet for 200.
    Saving 25 square feet over "traditional" row planting...
    In other words, you only use 1/3 the space for the same amount of plants.
    Or you could plant 3 times the produce in the same amount of space.
    • This what I opted for.
      My row is 3' wide. I could reach all the way across from one side.
      If you are short, you may want only 2'wide wide-rows...

Planting depth
I read anywhere from 1/2" to 2 inches.
I shot for about 1/2 - 1" on top of the bulb part.
Depending on the size of the bulb was how deep I made the trench.

Companion Planting
Good with beets, cabbage family, carrots, lettuce, parsnips, peppers, potatoes, spinach, strawberries, tomatoes

• So pIanted a row between my cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower from last week.
  a row of onion, 2 cabbage, a row of onion ... ... broccoli... cauliflower... a row of onion.
  This is in a 3' wide raised bed.
• I planted the rest at the end of my potato bed...

Not good with beans or peas

Crop rotation
Next year this would be a good place to plant cabbage family plants.

How'd the rest of the weekend go?
crappy!!! haha

I made one path up by the machine shed with my rider.
Was mowing along the fence back toward the barn.
And found that jack handle that's been missing all those years. BANG!!!
Got off to look and it had completely broke the 3 mounts of the spindle...
DANGIT!!! 😒 Time to order a new spindle.

OK, no problem. I have a craftsman self-propelled bagger I like to use.
1 pull, it almost started and the rope stayed out.
Had to work on that a bit to get it working at least kinda.
Pull... run a couple of seconds. Repeat Repeat Repeat.
Take off air filter. Try a bit of ether.
Pull... run as long as you kept spraying squirts of ether.
Take carb off. Hmm I must not have drained the gas from the bowl.
It smelled like varnish.
Sprayed it with carb cleaner off and on all day.
Tried it again that evening. It still only runs with ether...
DANGIT!!! 😒 Time to get some carb cleaner to soak the carb in.

No problem. I'll use my old push mower (not self propelled, no bag), but it runs like a champ.
Well, that is, it runs like a champ until the whole carb/gas tank comes loose.
No problem. Easy fix to tighten it all back up.
Cool. Mow Mow Mow
I found that 6' piece of copper wire which wrapped around the shaft a bit and BANG!!!
broke a wheel.
DANGIT!!! 😒 Time to get a new wheel...

No problem. I'll do some weed eating with my big Stihl trimmer.
Oh yeah. Tearing up those weeds.
Until I see a piece fly off the head.
Huh! Would you look at that!
It broke that one piece of that gizmo that holds the spool in the head.
DANGIT!!! 😒 Time to order that part...
Forgot to take a pic...

No problem. I'll dig out my lil electric weed whacker.
OOPS It won't spin. Hmmm Head barely turns by hand. Must be a bit rusty.
No problem. I have WD40! squirt squirt. Yup now it works...
Oh cool. This is working great.
Got all the way down the fence to out by the big hunk of concrete that used to be Grandpa's porch.
vrrrrnnn I think that's how you spell the noise it makes when it runs out of string and speeds way up.
No problem. I've got plenty of string...
Restring. Whackawhackawhacka I think that's how you spell the normal noise it makes when trimming weeds.
thwack thwack rrrr rr r r ... r I think that's how you spell the noise when for some reason the string comes way out and wraps around the shaft so it hardly will run.
No problem. I have a set of dikes and clip that extra string off.
Whackawhackawhacka thwack thwack rrrr rr r r ... r
Hmm... Take the spool off and the little gizmo that holds the spool, but magically unholds the spool to let a bit of line out when it needs it... That gizmo was broke.
DANGIT!!! 😒 Time to toss this in the trash, cuz it wouldn't be worth repairing.

So now I am down to my lil electric push mower with bagger...

Oh well. I had had enough mowing and did some planting.
Planted

• an azalea out front (variety 'Karen')
  Missouri Botanical Garden calls it a Rhododendron. ???
  • It likes filtered sun or part shade, so I planted it here where it won't get direct sunlight.
    2-4' tall, 3-5' wide
    • Spring pink to violet flowers.
      Brilliant burgundy fall leaves.
      Attracts hummingbirds and butterflies, so planted by the front bird and hummingbird feeders.
      
      We have golden finches.
      ... and hummingbirds...
      
      Supposedly evergreen. That's kinda cool.
• a rose bush by the other shrubs
  • Where it will get full sun.
• And the purple smoke tree out in the back.
  • Never having grown this before, I put it with my shrub hedge row, in case I didn't like it.

Out of time. The weekend is done...
Oh well, I got a lot planted
and successfully broke some stuff 😎
so I can practice my DIY repair skills in the next few days... 😜

But we did have a cool sunset!

How was your weekend?

Unless noted, all pics are by @WizarDave

Who I am @WizarDave	The KEY to Life!