Life patience, enjoying the process & growing cipolla onions
Grow cipolla onions, you won’t be sorry. Our first batch of cipolla onions are here! It took a while but it was worth the wait.
Gardening is often a test of patience in both playing in the dirt and navigating life. Weeding, sowing seeds, trimming, clipping, pulling, building plots, aching backs and harvesting a little bit everyday is like a life metaphor. It seems as if each garden task tests tests our patience and endurance for everything outside the walls of our home farm.
Take for instance, these cipolla onions we sowed last year in November 2010. These gorgeous Southern Italian long red onions would be new to our garden and before the seeds were sowed, we were already planning recipes. But maybe we were too anxious, and every few weeks we’d head out to the garden to check on their progress, salivating at the thought of caramelized cipolla onions, pickled cipolla onions and many more recipes to come.
Growing Cipolla Onions
But for the longest time, the seeds didn’t sprout. While the other onion seeds were in full bulb glory, these cipolla onions didn’t even break the earth. After about 3 months, we almost gave up on the plot and came close to sowing lettuce seeds in their place.
Patience is a virtue in life, and when it comes to gardening, the same principle applies. Sometimes we get so anxious to yank out something that doesn’t fruit or flower when we want it to. It’s often easy to do that and give up because it’s easier to head out to the nursery and buy a new plant or in our case, sow different seeds.
Then we always remind ourselves that the process is what really matters more, not the end product. The process of gardening, practicing patience and the daily task of nurturing a plant to full fruition is what really matters.
The same principle applies to life, to always remember to enjoy the process.
So, we continued to clean this cipolla onion plot of weeds even when there were no signs of cipolla onion. Why? Because the principle of patience and just enjoying the whole process of gardening became the priority again.
Finally, after about 4 months of staring at bare dirt, these onions seeds started to sprout. We squealed and hoorayed not because we we were going to finally get some gorgeous cipolla onions from the garden, but because we reminded ourselves of why we love gardening so much.
The process of watching, waiting and nurturing this cipolla onion plot was worth the 9 months of wait. No farmers market onions could have been fresher nor satisfying to us.
Playing in the dirt reinforced our life patience and reminded us of always to enjoy the process, which is what really matters.
Thank you Cipolla onions,
diane and todd
More Easy Recipes:
- baked sweet onion dip
- fresh dried onion dip from homemade spices
- oven baked onion dip with roasted tomatoes on top
- cold French onion dip
You might try soaking the seeds overnight next try. This usually makes them sprout way faster. You can do this with most seeds. Love your blog and your photos. Very inspiring. I dream that I could have blog so beautiful. What to call it though, I have a Cambodian husband and I’m from California..hmmm
I was looking for motivating words that described patience and found the best ones in your post.
Thank you for sharing such wonderful thoughts!
Nand
Where did you find the seeds?
Hi Maggie,
These particular seeds we found in the ferry building in San Francisco, although since then we’ve noticed them in a few of our good local nurseries.
T & D
OMG! Now I am really pinning away! The Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market! St Benoit yogurt, that amazing dried fruit! I planned a vacation to the area around maximizing the number of days I could go to that market. Can you please tell me if RauRam is different from Thai basil. Trying to locate the seed but not having a lot of luck. Absolutely love your blog!
Hi Maggie,
Rau Ram is completely different from Thai Basil. Musky, a touch spicy in the way arugula is spicy. I don’t know of any other herb which has a similar taste. I wish we had a seed source for you. We will start ours from the cuttings we buy in the Vietnamese markets. It loves water and roots very easily. If you can find any in your local markets that may be an option for you. Good luck!
T & D
I always find such great inspiration on your blog T and D!!! This message could not be more timely! You are right – gardening is indeed a metaphor for life – it is the journey and not the final destination that matters!!
Those onions are a wonderful reminder that everything worth having is worth waiting for!!
Beautiful photos of some lovely produce!
Gardening is a test of patience, but it always pays off in some way or another. It can be frustrating – I’ve had 2 years where all of my tomato crops have died due to disease. But you just have to pick yourself up and keep trying.
One should say that “Cipolla” is simply the Italian word for “Onion”.
The actual name of the thing is “Cipolla di Tropea” – “Tropea Onion”.
Tropea itself is a city: http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropea
Thanks for the clarification!
Beautiful post & the prettiest onions I have ever seen! 🙂
This is the perfect little onion to grow amongst top-up growing veggies. I always plant several varieties of small onions around my peppers, tomatoes, and beans. I plant using the square foot gardening method, so I just distribute seeds or bulbs in a square around other veggies.
interesting variety–how does it taste, compared to other red onions? (or other varieties of cipolla, for that matter?)
Absolutely gorgeous color. i love nature!
I love the color of those onions! I can’t wait to put some in a pot myself.
I’m so glad I saw the comment above about growing them in pots. That would work for me. My knees touch grass and I start itching all over! I do lots and lots of pots.
Lovely. Growth requires care and patience. In life, in gardening. I never thought Cipolla onions could look so beautiful. Obviously, they are. As is this post.