A quick native American story about onions

I read this story when I was a young girl and always remember it when I look up into the night sky and see the Pleiades. They are one of my favorite star constellations.
My Onion Project
My mother always had green onions growing in our back yard since she used them all the time in her Japanese cooking. She would buy a bundle from the store, lop off the green parts to use and stick the bottoms in a glass of water until the roots started growing. Then she would plant them outside and have fresh green onions for most of the year. Once they would go to seed, she'd pull them up and start over again with a new bundle.
Planter Boxes Onion "Starts" ready to plant | They were easy to grow and so delicious that this year I planted 4 planter boxes. I planted two boxes with onion bulbs and two with fresh onion "starts". These look like baby green onions. I planted my onions in March and harvested in July. Regular watering and occasional fertilizer and that was it. They are ready to pull when the green tops start to turn brown and fall over. Its not a pretty sight but definitely an easy food to grow and since you can see the bulbs getting bigger and bigger, I think it would be a fun garden project for kids. Both the bulbs and the onion starts were successful and now since I have a bunch of onions all ready at the same time, I thought it would be fun to make an onion braid to hang. |
I cut a 4 foot piece of kitchen string, and at the halfway point of the string I tied the first three onions at the beginning of their stalks. Then I braided down adding an onion after each twist. Once it got heavy, I braided down an extra couple of inches and looped the kitchen string at the top so I could hang my onions off a hook. When I need an onion, all I have to do is snip one off the braid. |
Worth the effort? Yes!