If you don’t have the time or the desire to start your onions from seed then onion sets are the perfect solution, virtually guaranteeing you a successful crop.
The last few days I’ve been grabbing a little bit of time here and there to try and get as many of my seeds as possible into the ground. The weather has been great and I’m at home due to the impact the travel ban has had on my business. It is however month end and end of quarter one, meaning I have had to spend some time in the office to deal with invoicing and getting my VAT return calculated and submitted. The call of the garden has seen me doing around half a day in the office each day followed by the afternoon outside.
I prefer to grow my onions from seed if possible but with so much else to do in Smithy Brook this year in trying to catch up from a couple of years off, I decided to opt for onion sets. These baby onions, harvested shortly after germination then dried and stored are the simplest way to grow onions.
Using my four plot crop rotation system, onions go into plot two with other root vegetables.
I bought fifty each of red and white onions. After preparing my seed bed to a fine tilth I created a seed drill by pushing a piece of steel pipe I keep especially for the job into the ground. I simply lay it on the line I want to use then lightly stand on it. You don’t really need to take out a seed drill for onion sets you could just push them straight into the ground, but, using this technique allows me to sow my onions in a perfectly straight line which pleases my slightly OCD personality. The onion sets are then simply pushed into the ground (pointy end up) at 100mm spacing. I push them in so the tip is just showing then rake a little soil back over the rows so they are just covered. Leave 300mm between rows. I got two rows of each out of my bag’s of fifty sets. As they grow I will harvest alternate onions when they get to around 75mm diameter, taking them as I need them and leaving more room for the remaining ones to reach full size.
Following planting I gave them a good water. They should start germinating in around a week to ten days when I shall expect to see a perfectly straight line of little green shoots. It is always worth while keeping an eye on them for the first week or two until they have put down some root as curious birds will often tug them out of the ground to see if they are worth eating. They will never be eaten but just left lying on the surface. Just pop any you see back into the ground.
