Field and Garden: Recent warm weather boosts growth of some crops

Several of us were visiting about the weather last week, when the man next to me said, “The onion forecast predicts we’ll have a wet July.”

Thinking that I hadn’t heard clearly, I asked the man to repeat the name of the forecast.

“The onion forecast,” he said before spelling it out. “O-n-i-o-n.” The man then explained to me how he used an onion and salt on New Year’s Eve to forecast the weather of...