Four by four section of garden bed planted with onion seedlings.

The 4″ by 4″ section of bed, after planting

Last weekend, my dad, Noel, visited me in Austin, so I put him to work helping me in the garden.  It was mid-January; that meant onion planting time.

To start your own onion seedlings indoors, you should do so 8-10 weeks prior to planting.  In Austin, that would have meant sowing them in October.  Since I hadn’t done that we first went to the Natural Gardener, where I picked up Southern Belle red, Bermuda white, and Texas 1015 yellow seedlings.  All three varieties are sweet onions.  I’ll usually grow at least one storage variety as well, but limited myself to the above selection this year.

I already had a 4′ by 4′ section of raised bed ready for planting.  I only had to rake it to create a smooth planting surface.  We used our BioMarker plant markers to create a spacing pattern of 5″ offset rows. You could just measure as you plant, but having the markers in place made the planting easy.

A garden bed full of BioMarkers spaced in offset rows.

We used the BioMarkers to mark 5″ offset spacing.

Then, one by one I pulled out the markers and used the CobraHead to open up a hole an inch to an inch and a half deep and dropped in the onion seedling.

CobraHead tool making a hole; onion seedling dropped into hole.

Using the CobraHead to open up a hole, then dropping in the onion seedling.

Next, I firmed the soil around each onion seedling with my hands.

Two hands pressing the soil around an onion seedling.

Firming in the onion seedling.

Finally, I watered them in with a seaweed solution to stimulate root growth. I’ll continue giving them a seaweed watering every two weeks. The onions should be ready to harvest when the tops fall over, in Austin around May.

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