Don't Cry For Me

The onions are in and up, and they’re doing fine. This year we will have three kinds of onions – a red, a yellow storage and a sweet onion. The red onion is Mars, the yellow is Olympic, and the sweet is a variety called Walla Walla.

When I select an onion variety, I want one that will grow well in this climate; that’s my first standard. There are some great onions that grow in the south that we just can’t grow here. Generally we have the onions out by mid to late July here.

If you plant later or wait longer, that can give some of the pest insects time to build up a good population and start to cause damage. By the pest identification handbooks, pests can strike at any time of the season depending on the insect, the crop, the weather, its lifecycle, and how many generations will appear over the course of the season, but my information is local and specific to the farms I have managed.

The only time I have ever actually observed onion maggots on an allium family crop (onions, leeks, garlic) is in late summer. In general, late summer is the worst time of the season for pest damage because pests have had the entire spring and summer to build up their populations. By starting in the greenhouse and planting as early as possible, we greatly reduce the likelihood that this pest (and many others) will cause problems. What you observe on your farm or in your garden is always better information than that contained in the pest guides. Pests never seem to have read the same books, or talked to an extension agent, before doing what they do.

A pest guide is analogous to a color picture; it is an approximation of reality, but never as accurate or as interesting as the real thing. A pest guide can't account for all the variability in the environment. Living things, flora and fauna alike, will always surprise you. Hence, the joy of farming.

Some wise person once said it takes five years to learn how to farm a piece of land well: each farm is unique.