Some people like onions very much, others take it calmly, but many dishes cannot do without this vegetable. Often it is used in folk medicine, and in landscape design it has found its place - the many forms and types of this plant allow you to grow it as a decorative culture in borders and flower beds, even plant it in rockeries.
Planting onions in the garden
Onion seeds are planted in the spring, a convenient time for this is the beginning of May, for the crop you need to choose a bed with warm soil - if the soil temperature drops to 12 degrees or less, the onions will begin to form arrows, not the bulb and feather. Most often, onions in the garden are obtained without any inventions, seeds are planted through the onions (the black season) for the first season, small bulbs are harvested in the autumn, they are planted again in the second year, and a full crop is harvested in the autumn. But it’s difficult to save winter sowing, it requires special humidity and temperature, for this reason it is sometimes planted in the winter.
Preparing the onion beds
Onion is a culture that loves sunlight very much, it grows well in sunny, open areas without excess moisture, the soil should be nutritious, with an acidity of about 6.4-7.9 pH. If the bed is soil with high acidity, then before planting onions you need to lime it.
The onion plot is prepared in advance - it is fertilized with rotted manure in the fall (fresh can not be, it will increase the growth of green mass, and commodity bulbs will not fully grow, they will not have time) or with peat compost. Wood ash, lime or dolomite flour is added to the acidic soil, depending on the level of acidity. Before sowing seeds, you only need to add 20 g of potassium chloride, 10 g of urea and 60 g of superphosphate to the bed, fertilizer with a rake mixed with soil. Onions grow best after - tomatoes, legumes, cabbage, in the beds where potatoes grew, and after cucumbers, carrots and garlic, onions can only be planted after 3-5 years have passed.
How to plant onions
There are 3 common ways to obtain marketable onions:
· In an annual culture by seed;
· In an annual culture in the seedling way;
· In a two-year culture, across the north.
To obtain marketable bulbs by sowing seeds in one year only in regions with a long summer period, this is how sweet and semi-sweet varieties of onions are grown. Before sowing, the seeds are stratified or kept for swelling for 24 hours in wet gauze. After that, they are sown in soil fertilized with mineral compounds and shed with copper sulphate, a solution for this is prepared by dissolving 1 tbsp of water in a bucket. a spoonful of the drug. After sowing, the garden is well watered and covered with a film. After the emergence of seedlings, the shelter is removed, thickened seedlings break through, leaving a space between plants of 2-3 cm, after which the crops are mulched with humus. Another thinning should be done after 3 weeks, leaving a space between seedlings of 6-8 cm.
With the help of seedlings, mainly sweet varieties are obtained. To do this, swollen or pre-stratified seeds, 2 months before transplanting seedlings to the beds, are sown in boxes 1 cm deep, between the rows leave a space of 4-5 cm. Seedlings of this crop are not capricious, but the roots need to be trimmed 1/3 before transplanting and leaves of seedlings.
In the middle lane and northern regions with a short summer, it is difficult to get full onions for the warm season, for this reason they grow onions for 2 years. First, a set of seeds is obtained from the seed, and for the second season, turnips are grown from the set. Sharp varieties grow so well. In the first decade of May of the following year, the obtained sevoc is planted in rows in rows of 30 cm, with gaps of 10 cm in a row, 4-5 cm deep. But the seed must be sorted out in advance, sorted by size and heated for a week in a sunny place, so the onion will not begin to form an arrow.
If you need to get fresh onion greens, then the seeds are planted denser - at intervals of 5-7 cm, after a while, after the onion has risen, you just need to break through the rows, leaving an 8-10 cm space between the bulbs.
Winter onion sowing
For planting at this time, a shallow set is best suited - it is also called a bucket, since it does not appear arrows. To obtain greenery in the spring, in the fall, a small amount of large planting is planted. Winter onions will give you many benefits:
· You do not need to store sevoc all winter - it dries quickly, under ordinary conditions;
· Onion fly, appearing in the spring, can no longer seriously damage the stronger onion;
· It’s easier to get an early harvest - the first products are ready in July;
· Onions ripen quickly, and you can still get something else in the vacated space.
Frost-resistant varieties are suitable for winter sowing - Stuttgarten, Strigunovsky, Danilovsky, Arzamassky. The requirements for the site are the same as when sowing in the spring, except for one thing - it is better to plant onions in the beds where snow melts faster and melt water does not linger. In the autumn, onions are planted from October 5-20, waiting for the first frosts. Before sowing, the seed is calibrated, sorted and heated, after which it is planted through 6-7 cm into pre-prepared grooves 5 cm deep. Between the individual rows leave a free space of 15 cm. Not earlier than the first frosts begin (otherwise the onions may close) the bed is covered with straw or spruce branches, the shelter is removed immediately after the snow has melted.
Plant care
Watering. Crops of onions need regular watering, after it you need to loosen the soil, the garden often needs to be weeded so that the weeds do not clog weak seedlings until they grow stronger.
You need to water this crop once a week, pouring about 5-10 liters of water per 1 m², but in a dry year you will need to water the plants almost every day, in rainy summers you need to severely limit watering so that the bulbs do not begin to rot from excess moisture. For this reason, it is better to simply monitor soil moisture so that crops do not suffer from waterlogging or drought. If there is not enough water, the feathers of the onion take on a bluish-white hue, and if there is a lot of water, then the greens become pale. In the middle of summer, you need to water the beds with onions less often, since the time of onion ripening comes.
Top dressing. When preparing the beds in the autumn period, the soil is fertilized, as described above, in the spring, and the soil is also fed. After that, if the leaves of the plants slowly develop, then fertilize the plants with a solution of urea or infusion of bird droppings, you can use mullein. After 2 weeks, if necessary, top-dressing is repeated, after the bulbs grow to a walnut, they are fed a third time.
Protection against diseases. Often, inexperienced gardeners do not know how to process beds with onions from diseases. Basically, preventive protection of the green mass from fungal diseases is required, after the feathers grow to a height of 15 cm, the treatment is carried out with a solution of copper sulfate - I dissolve 1 teaspoon of the substance in a bucket of water. To retain fluid on the leaves for longer, add 1 tbsp. To the solution. shredded laundry soap.
