What's Next for Me

For the 2025 Season

Potato Onions from Seeds
January 2025 I will plant potato onion seeds again, making sure that I refrain from watering them too much this time around. Currently, I have seeds stored in a freezer from a fellow gardener in Oregon. I also have seeds from my gardens during the 2024 season: yellow, Red Dutch shallots and Nero shallots.

Planting in a Cow Pasture
I have given my sister some yellow potato onion bulbs to plant in her garden, and will compare them to my 2025 crop. Her land (and garden area) used to be a cow pasture, so it will be interesting to note any differences between mine and hers that will be planted in composted cow manure soil.

Experiments
There are two experiments that I ignored during 2024 - cutting the potato onion greens down to three inches, and fertilizing with urine - that I will try during the 2025 season. 

Tiny Potato Onion Bulbs
I will also document the planting of small/tiny yellow potato onion bulbs to see if they produce a single large bulb as the small Appalachian Mountain bulbs did during 2024.

What I'm Re-Planting:

• SESE yellow potato onion bulbs - 5th season

• Full Sky Farm Green Mountain - 2nd season

• Appalachian Mountain yellows - 2nd season

• Filaree Garlic Farm yellow potato onions - 2nd season

• Red Dutch shallots - 2nd season

• Nero shallots - 2nd season

Long-Term Storage of Seed Potatoes and Potato Onions in the Freezer
To be honest, the rainy 2024 season scared me a bit (many ground vegetables became mushy and unusable). I've heard of gardeners having total crop failure of some varieties, and I don't want to loose all of the genetic variations I've been cultivating. So, this fall I am going to vacuum seal a seed potato and a potato onion in pint mason jars, put them in the freezer over winter, then plant them next spring. If it works (they are viable and not mushy) and they propagate normally, I will permanently store one of each of my varieties of potatoes and onions in vacuum sealed jars in my freezer in case of some unforeseen gardening disaster.