The Worlds Most Expensive Vegetables - Part 1

One of the best things about living in the country and having an acre of land is no long being confined to a twelve by twelve plot of land (plus feeble attempts to extend this via container gardening.) Nope, I get to spread out and REAAAALLY spend some bucks! In preparation I've spent hours planning and scheming via www.smartgardener.com, reading up on various techniques, and doing my best to heed the many warnings not to go too big too soon. As there are hundreds of children who call this plot of land their home, all of whom will likely want to eat, that's going to be difficult.

For openers I'd like to buy some $28 onions. Well, that's not exactly fair. For $28 I'll hopefully get 180 red, white and yellow onions plus a smattering of green onions. How so?

$10 - 2 boards
$5 - 2.5 onion sets
$1 - .75 cu ft manure
$12 - 10 plastic bags of garden dirt

I had to buy dirt because my soil connection said that his stock is currently either frozen or heavily invested in mud. I'm leaving out the cost of a handful of screws and the cardboard lining the bottom. Cardboard? Oh yeah... it's the secret ingredient! Because onions can go in early (2-4 weeks before Last Frost Date, according to my research) it will be the first to go in. I've been itching to get this expense, er, garden started but it's been cold. One day in very late March it actually flurried and had snow layered on the ground. Fortunately it all melted by the afternoon and the next day I had a frame built and filled and I was pushing wee onions into the dirt. Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for eye watering goodness.

LESSON LEARNED: You can buy those bags of tiny onions at Walmart or Meijers, $1.99 for 80, but they're small and tend to rot if not planted within a week or so. However if you go to Rural King they have open bins where you can pick and choose the size and exact number of tiny onions that you need for about half the price. Now if only there was a Rural King close enough where I didn't have to spend $5 in gas to save $3 in onions.