Harvesting Onion Seed

The new thing I got to do today was harvest onion seed! As you know, the name of Patrick and Colleen's company is Stellar Seeds, so it makes sense that we would be harvesting some seed every once in a while. I am actually pretty lucky to get to witness this process, because it's pretty early in the season for this to happen. The farm apprentice, Graham, actually missed out on the first seed harvest of the year. He reads this blog, so he's going to be sad when he finds out!

After a rough morning of mowing and wheel hoeing, Patrick and I walked by the onions and he noticed that the seed pods were ready to be collected today. So after lunch, we all went out there with buckets and scissors to collect the pods. They showed me how to cup the pod with my hand so seeds don't fall to the ground when the plant is agitated. Also, I was instructed to take an extra 6 inches or so of stem along with the pod. This way, the few seeds at the bottom of the pod that are not completely ready can draw up some extra nutrients. This is supposed to increase your germination rates.

I have to say, as with many other plants, it's really interesting to see the seed-production phase of the onion's life cycle. Apparently this is fairly common for plants, but onions take two years to produce seed. That means that all of the young onions I've been weeding this week are actually not going to produce seed this year. Instead, they will be collected at the end of the year, put into cold storage, and planted again in the spring. Actually, Graham told me that each onion can be halved next year and then you'll get two seed producing plants out of a single onion.

Here are some flowering onion plants from a distance:



And the seed pods I collected:

Here's a row after harvesting. We'll get the rest next week after they mature a little more:


As for the rest of my day... it was mostly defined by the heat. I started an hour early today so that I could finish a bit early and avoid working during the hottest hours of the day. But it was still sweltering!

In the early evening, I met some new people. First, I met the family I'm going to help on Saturday. They have a tractor coming by to harvest/bale their hay, and then I'm going to help them with the haying process. I don't really know what I'll be doing exactly--moving it? Helping to load it onto a truck? Move it to a new field? Who knows, it will be an adventure!

Then at dinner, I met a nice couple that Patrick and Colleen invited over. I made a bit too much food yesterday, so they figured they'd have their friends over to help us get through it. One of their friends was from southern Illinois! That means that both Americans I've met while I've been here have been from Illinois. There was some pretty good conversation at dinner about climate change, factory farming, and similar issues. However, I didn't really participate much because I felt like I didn't know enough to participate, so it was better to listen and learn.

I'll leave you with another picture. This is where all of the tools and the tractor are stored: