Planting onions: how and when to grow large

Onions are a vegetable crop that is grown by almost every gardener. This is due to the fact that onions are one of the most popular ingredients for cooking, a useful addition to the diet. This is why many summer residents ask the question: how to plant onions correctly so that there are large bulbs? To obtain a good harvest, planting onions must be carried out taking into account several rules: choosing a location, selecting planting material, and determining the optimal season.

Content

Preparing the soil for spring planting
Preparation of planting material
How to plant onions on turnips correctly?
Planting onions in July or spring
Sowing seeds
How to plant winter onions?
Caring for onions in open ground
Chinese way of growing bulbs

Preparing the soil for spring planting

Before you start planting a crop, you need to understand what kind of soil onions like. The first thing you should understand is that onion culture actively grows and develops in conditions of good light and warmth.

If the plant experiences a lack of light, the bulbs will not develop, and the planting will soon wither. Therefore, the best option for growing onions are central places in the garden, next to which trees do not grow or tall buildings are located.

Then you need to determine the type of soil; the soil is diagnosed using litmus paper. Onion likes sandy loam or sandy soil. In such conditions, the plant forms a healthy, powerful root system, and also ripens in a timely manner.

Next, you need to know how to prepare a bed for onions; the preparatory activities are as follows:

In the autumn, the bed is fertilized with rotted manure or ash. Such fertilizers contain a large amount of nutrients that help onions develop. The optimal amount of fertilizer per 1 square meter: 6 kilograms.
The entire ridge needs to be dug to a depth of 20 centimeters.
All debris and weeds are removed from the soil.
After the soil has been fertilized, it must be leveled with a rake and left in this condition until the onset of spring.

This soil preparation will allow you to get a healthy, large onion harvest. In the spring you need to dig up the soil again. This will allow nutrients to be evenly distributed in the soil.

Preparation of planting material

To get a good harvest, it is necessary to process the onions before planting. First of all, the bulbs are sorted.Only healthy bulbs with no damage on the surface can be used for planting.

Next, the preparation of planting material should be carried out using the instructions:

The selected seeds are distributed according to size. This is necessary for uniform growing of onions.
The planting material is left to dry at a temperature of 35 degrees for 3 days. If it is not possible to dry the onion in this way, it must be calcined in the oven at a temperature of 40 degrees. Oven processing time is 4 hours.
Then the seed is immersed in the osta stimulator for 8 hours.
The bulbs are removed from the fertilizer and immersed in a weak solution of potassium permanganate for 10 minutes.
The planting material is then rinsed and used for planting.

Such processing and soaking of onions before planting activates metabolic processes in the bulbs, improves their germination, and protects them from diseases.

How to plant onions on turnips correctly?

To get a healthy plant, a fully grown turnip, we plant the seedlings in the ground only when it warms up to 12 degrees. In most cases, in the spring, onions are planted on turnips in mid-April or early May. It is better to plant in cloudy weather conditions, and the street should be dry. Then holes are made in the bed according to the following principle:

there should be a distance of at least 15 centimeters between plants in a row;
the distance between rows should be 30 centimeters;
seedlings should be deepened into holes or grooves by 7–10 centimeters.

After planting the seeds, the soil should be watered. To do this you need to use distilled water. It is advisable that it be at room temperature.

If during planting the summer resident made a mistake and placed the bulbs close together, they need to be thinned out. Otherwise, during the growing season, plant crops will experience nutritional deficiencies. In this case, the growth of the bulbs will stop, and the root system will begin to intertwine. During this period, it will be difficult to thin out the plants.

Planting onions in July or spring

If a summer resident decides to plant a plant in July or spring, he needs to prepare the bed for onions in the fall. There are several differences between growing crops in spring or summer.

If a summer resident wants to grow onions from seed, sowing should be organized immediately after the soil warms up and the snow melts. Only with such planting will the onions have time to ripen. If a gardener has seedlings that were sown in late February, they need to be transplanted into the ground in mid-April. If a summer resident wants to plant turnips in the spring, he will need the recommendations listed above. In this case, seedlings are used as planting material.

Many summer residents, in order to get a richer harvest, plant sets twice. It is worth considering that only in southern climates is it possible to grow onions in July. July planting can be carried out only if the summer season ends in mid or late September.

Having planted onions in the summer, it is necessary to harvest at the end of August, so only early ripening varieties of the crop should be used for planting. The July vegetable is planted in a similar way.

Sowing seeds

In most cases, turnip vegetables are grown within 2 years. This type of cultivation is typical for sowing a plant using seeds. From the sown nigella seeds, onion sets grow, which are used to grow turnips the following year.The temperature and pattern of planting and sowing seeds is determined using the following instructions:

First, the seeds are soaked in warm water. This procedure is necessary in order to select healthy seeds and discard empty ones.
After 24 hours, the water is drained. Only the seed that has fallen to the bottom is taken from the bowl.
The selected seeds are placed in gauze, wrapped and placed in a dark place.
After the seeds have dried, they are treated with a solution of potassium permanganate.
After disinfection, the material is dried and used for sowing.

Preparing the soil for sowing is carried out according to the above instructions. Then the summer resident can start sowing:

in open ground conditions, grooves are made, the depth of which is 2–4 centimeters;
There is a distance of 10–30 centimeters between the rows.
the furrows are watered with hot water to disinfect the soil;
seeds are sown at a distance of 1–3 centimeters from each other;
then the ridges are watered again using water at room temperature;
The beds are covered with film.

After seedlings appear on the soil surface, the film can be removed.

How to plant winter onions?

For planting before winter, it is necessary to use small-sized sets. Planting material grown in spring should be planted 3–4 weeks before the soil freezes. It is better to plant onions when the ambient temperature drops to 5 degrees.

Planting a winter variety is carried out taking into account the instructions:

Furrows 3–4 centimeters deep are formed on the ridge.
The furrows are located at a distance of 10–15 centimeters from each other.
The seedlings are planted in furrows at a distance of 3–10 centimeters from each other.The distance is determined by the expected dimensions of the turnip: the larger the variety forms the turnip, the longer the distance between the sets should be.
The furrows are sprinkled with earth and covered with mulch. Dry leaves, humus, spruce branches, tops, sawdust, and pine needles are used as mulch.

After spring comes and the snow melts, it is necessary to remove the mulch. This will allow the soil to warm up faster. Then the soil is loosened and the plants are fed with chicken droppings diluted in water. When the leaves appear, it is necessary to apply a second feeding. The best option for this is the drug Plantafol.

Onion harvest begins when the leaves fall to the ground and the scales of the bulb acquire a color characteristic of the variety. The onion is dug out very carefully and left to dry in a ventilated area. After the bulbs have dried, they can be stored.

Caring for onions in open ground

When growing a plant, it is necessary not only to treat the onions before planting, but also to provide other necessary care. To get a good onion harvest, you must follow a few simple rules:

Watering the plantings is required once a week;
Only settled water should be used for irrigation;
in dry weather, watering is carried out twice a week;
after watering or rain, the soil must be carefully loosened;
all emerging weeds must be removed in a timely manner;
Copper sulfate can be used as a means to prevent fungal and viral diseases of onions;
in July, the number of waterings must be reduced in order for the turnips to fully ripen.

After the first shoots appear, the plants should be thinned out if necessary.

Chinese way of growing bulbs

In addition to the traditional growing method, there is also a Chinese one. The Chinese invented growing large onions from planting material by forming ridges rather than ridges. The ridges are formed so that they rise above the ground by 15–20 centimeters, with a distance of at least 30 centimeters between them. Instructions for planting onions the Chinese way:

The prepared seedlings are immersed in the ridges 2–3 centimeters deep, sprinkled with earth, and compacted a little.
The ridge is watered.
Then the soil is loosened.

It is better to plant onions in the Chinese way early in the morning to protect them from sunlight. This method of planting allows you to grow a rich harvest of large, fully ripe and formed bulbs.