Sunday, May 29, 2011

Onion bed is finally planted

A project that started last fall with Egyptian Walking Onions is finally complete.  I have been dieing to plant something but between the rain and cold weather haven't even gotten a garden ready to plant except the one raised bed for onions.

 The Valencia onions plants from seed.
 They needed a haircut before getting planted
 Haircut produced 1.25 ounces of onion tops for salad
 Back row is the Egyptian Walking onions planted last fall
 50 Sweet Spanish onion sets planted 0n 5/12.  They all came up.
 56 Valencia Onion plants planted
Balance of the area was filled with 80 white onion sets
Love the planting jig.  Made quick work of all of the planting.

4 comments:

  1. How nice! Onions are one thing we use A LOT of and I still cannot grasp the knack for growing them :/ I have never heard of the Egyptian Walking Onion! It's peeked my curiousity. I will have to go google it.

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  2. I am still learning on the onions. I have always grown set for scallions but that is about it. Last year for the first time I started Candy Onions from seed and they did pretty well but only got about a big as a golf ball but I didn't cut the tops when I put them in the ground.

    I have done a lot of reading and it seems onions need a shallow watering often, the soil has to be kept loose and weed free and they do like a rather rich soil.

    I was fascinated by the Egyptian onions last year so planted them last fall. I will harvest the small bulblets that form on the top of the stem for pearl onions for cooking.

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  3. I'm still learning on onions too. I could never get good sized bulbs at my last house, but the plants have started to take of here. I'm hoping. Maybe they just hated my clay soil.

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  4. Daphne, what surprised me in all my reading about growing onions when starting from plants it is important to cut the tops back to about 6" before planting. This is suppose to force the root/bulb to grow when planted rather than the tops.

    After posting an article on a chat line regarding the planting of onions one of the members had ordered onion plants and they came with the tops cut off so I did that this year. Will see what happens.

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