One of the great things about being a mentor is that you are mentored, meaning you have to learn more in order to teach.

Yirim asked me an interesting question: "Can we grow Pearl Onions?"  and, frankly, I have never tried to grow them so I didn't know.

The answer, I thought, was pretty interesting.  Pearl onions can be grown by doing a bad job of growing bulb onions.

For example, if you plant your Walla Walla onions about 1 inch apart (instead of a foot or so), they won't get enough nutrition to become big onions. But the plants don't give up and die.  They simply do the best they can and produce whatever bulb they are capable of.  If you get the timing right and get them close enough, you will get some small bulbs — i.e. Pearl onions.

So sometimes doing the wrong thing is the right thing!