Why are many summer residents in no hurry to purchase onion sets in the retail network, but try to grow it on their own? Buying an onion in a store, there is no guarantee of its quality: it is not known where it was grown, how it was fed and how it was looked after. And everything is quite the opposite with planting material grown by your own hands and in your garden.
The process of growing onion sets is troublesome and requires a lot of patience. But for persistent gardeners, nothing is impossible. You just need to clearly follow all the recommendations for growing and care, and then there will be no problems.
Preparing a bed for onion sets
The selection and preparation of a land plot begins in the fall, when the harvest has already been harvested. Garden beds where cucumbers, cabbage or radishes were grown are well suited for onion sets. The site should be in a well-lit place.
It is necessary to add humus to the soil (when digging the beds), as well as several useful components. One square meter will need about half a bucket of humus, one hundred and fifty grams of ash, superphosphate and nitroammophoska - one tablespoon each.
For organic farmers, it is recommended to sow the area selected for onion sets with plants - siderates, for example, mustard. In the future, it will become a reliable protection against onion flies for young plants, and a source of nutrition for the soil. In this case, wood ash can be applied in the spring.
In late March - early April, a few days before planting onion seeds, the land plot must first be loosened well, then compacted a little, spilled with any solution with effective microorganisms and covered with a dense opaque film.
Dates of sowing seeds for onion sets
In early spring, planting is carried out in early April, in cold spring weather - at the end of April. It is generally best to plant the seeds earlier. Neither bulbs nor seedlings are afraid of frosts down to minus four degrees.
Preparing seeds for sowing
Purchased seeds do not require any preparation, since they have already undergone appropriate processing. But their seeds will need some procedures to increase the percentage of germination and further development. You can use one of the options:
1. Seeds of onion should be soaked in warm water for a day, but change the water several times.
2. Seed material is soaked in a pink solution of potassium permanganate for 24 or 48 hours, but replace it with a new one at least three times.
3. You can leave the seeds in a solution of potassium permanganate only for an hour, and for the next 18-20 hours soak them in a solution of 100 milliliters of water and two drops of Epin.
4. For 25 minutes, onion seeds are kept in water heated to 50 degrees, and then in cold (about three minutes). After that, as in the previous version, the seeds are soaked in a solution with "Epin".
5. First, it is necessary to soak the seeds for thirty minutes in hot water (up to 50 degrees), and then the same amount in aloe juice.
To speed up the emergence of seedlings, the seeds can be germinated.To do this, they need to be laid out between two pieces of damp cloth and kept in such conditions for forty-eight hours. Before sowing, germinated seeds need to be dried a little and lightly sprinkled with chalk powder.
Sowing methods of onion seeds
Sprouted seeds can be sown in dry soil, and for non-germinated seeds, a bed must be prepared. First, pour hot water over the entire area, then the grooves prepared for the onion directly, and only after that the seeds can be planted.
Seeds can be sown in rows. The row spacing is about 25-30 centimeters, the depth of the grooves is about two centimeters. It is good that there is a gap of one and a half centimeters between the seeds - this will save you from thinning out young crops in the future.
After planting, the grooves with seeds are covered with a layer of humus (about two centimeters) or loose earth and are slightly compacted. After that, watering and mulching are carried out. It would be ideal to cover the finished beds with transparent waterproof material on arches. This will help the seedlings grow quickly and maintain soil moisture. Remove the film immediately after the first shoots appear.
You can sow seeds in another way - with a ribbon. To do this, on the prepared land plot, it is necessary to make wide stripes, similar to ribbons. The distance between them is approximately 20 centimeters, and the width of each of them is approximately 10 centimeters. The seeds are not laid out, but scattered on the surface of each of the strips. There are about 10 grams of seeds per square meter.
This method of planting does not require thinning, since there is enough free space for each seed next to each other. After planting, everything is repeated according to the usual pattern: the seeds are covered with soil, compacted, watered and mulched.
Experienced gardeners recommend sowing seeds on a thin layer of sand, which can create and maintain the warm temperature needed for the onions.
Basic care for onion sets
Young shoots can appear as early as 7-8 days after planting. All types of onions grow green feathers at the initial stage of development. Therefore, watering should be done moderately. In a dry and hot summer, one or two waterings per week will be enough. And at the stage of bulb formation, watering vegetable plants is generally not recommended.
If unfavorable weather conditions develop at an important stage of bulb formation - torrential rain does not stop for several days, then you need to protect the plants from excessive moisture and decay with the help of protective covers. If there are arcs on the beds, then a plastic wrap is laid out on them, which will hide the plants from rain and protect the soil from unnecessary moisture.
The condition of the soil is of no small importance for growing onion sets. The beds must get rid of weeds in a timely manner. The mulching layer should be mandatory, as it will become a reliable protection not only for plants, but also for the soil.
Harvesting and storage of onion sets
The time for harvesting can be determined by the appearance of the onion sets. He is ready to harvest if his feathers begin to turn yellow, and the bulbs seem to lie on the beds. This usually occurs between late July and mid-August.
All bulbs must first be removed from the ground along with their feathers, and then laid out to dry under a cover that reliably protects against precipitation, and left there for two weeks. On clear sunny days, onions can be laid out directly in the sun on the beds - this will speed up the drying of the bulbous feathers. Dry tops are usually cut off, leaving small two-centimeter tails on the bulbs.
Onion sets can be stored in a cool basement or at home. Suitable storage containers are cardboard boxes or small bags made of natural fabric. When storing in a basement, a temperature is required - from 0 to 3 degrees Celsius, and in a living room - about 18 degrees. Under other temperature conditions, onions will spoil their sowing qualities.
Bulbs less than 1 centimeter in diameter are better stored in cool conditions, and larger ones in warm conditions.
