Jenny - Couldn't Help Myself

I couldn't stop myself from buying a few tulip and hyacinth bulbs yesterday while out shopping. I'm going to put them into twin half barrels that flank my front door. I love changing up the flowers in there each season. For the now though, they're hanging out in the sunroom. I also picked up onion bulbs for our veg garden. Pickins got very scraggly very fast at the stores, and I don't want to deal with that again. Texas Super Sweets (natch) and some red onions also. The reds betrayed me last year. Let's see if I can do better this season.
Onions by the way are probably the easiest thing to grow around here. They're even easier than tomoatoes. They seem to do just fine in our black gumbo soil, though to be honest, I mix mine pretty liberally with garden soil just to play it safe. You stick them in the ground, keep them decently watered, and pull them up when the tops start dying and flopping over, preferably before that stupid flower comes shooting up from the middle. Really the trickier part is curing them. I cut the stalks off (to make them easier to handle) and stick them in a sunny windowsill until the top looks nice and dry. Once I'm sure they're dry, into a dark drawer they go until I'm ready to cook them. I've kept home grown onions for MONTHS in this way. It's pretty foolproof, though I've lost a few to rot storing them before they were cured properly. So just be sure your onions are nicely dried out before storing them away, and you should be fine.