Comparing our Onions

The guys were comparing onions and potatoes in this week's show, as Travis brought in three different types of onions. Red, yellow, and white, and they took a bite out of each! The red onion was the Red Creole onion that Hoss Tools carries, it was direct seeded into the ground, and it came up about a week before the other ones. The guys explained that they loved this type of onion on salads to give it some color.

The next onion they compared was the Savannah Sweet onion, which is a yellow one and has more of a sugary taste compared to the other two. After looking at the onion, Greg and Travis agreed that they thought it was a semi-round. The last one they tried had the most bite to it and would have been a perfect pairing with a chili dog, and that was the white onion.

Comparing our Potatoes

After Greg's joke on Travis's potato growing abilities last week, Travis brought a bucket full of his potatoes in. They have been all about comparing their onions and potatoes. Travis's Yukon Gold potatoes were some of the biggest ones he has ever grown! Travis explained that he didn't put any fertilizer on his potatoes this year, but it was all about the cover crop cocktail he mixed up. The cocktail consisted of Hairy Vetch, Radishes, and Austrian Winter Peas, that mix fed his soil in just the right way to give him a bountiful harvest.

Now that he has all these potatoes, they discussed how he was going to store them. If you go back to the video, you can see a shelf design Travis drew up that is perfect for storing and adding other layers too. You want to make sure that you are keeping your onions and potatoes in a cool, dark, and dry space as well as making sure they have plenty of room not to touch. If you have them too stacked on each other, that will cause them to rot.

Show and Tell Segment

If you are not a fan of good eating, you would not have enjoyed the first part of this week's show. Travis and Greg both brought in some great things to taste test, which even led to Travis being blindfolded and spoon-fed!! Greg made Travis try some of his pickled vegetables, including pickled squash. Greg also shouted out one of Mrs.Hoss's favorite Southern Living books and where she had gotten some of these recipes. The book was titled Little Jars Big Flavor. Pickling is a great resort to turn to when you have an abundance of harvest or want to save that taste for later.

Travis also brought in some of his Max Pack variety of cucumbers and talked about how awesome they were doing and their excellent disease resistance. The guys also announced some new varieties were hitting the website, including Dewlectable Melons, Halo Canary Melons, and Alexandria Squash. 

Viewer Questions Segment

Here at Hoss Tools, we focus a lot on vegetables well our first viewer question was centered around our thoughts towards fruit trees. Travis and Greg listed the many fruit trees they both have at their homesteads, including a Granny Smith Apple tree, lime and lemon trees, a muscadine vine, and many fig trees. Greg then talked about his PlumCot tree, which is a cross between a plum and an apricot that was developed at the UGA research station.

The next question we had a viewer ask about tips on Kohlrabi, Greg said that this was one of his favorite things to grow. He told her that it does not like the heat and does better in the cooler times of the year, he also said that Kohlrabi goes great in coleslaw as a substitute for cabbage.

One of the last questions had to do with raised beds/container gardens and what mixture you would use in them. Travis urged not to use only compost because you need something just a little bit denser to hold the water, but instead to fill it about two-thirds of the way with topsoil, then top it off with compost. Then Greg reminded him that if you don't have access to good topsoil, you could even use peat moss.