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.
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.
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.
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.
Where did you get the onion seed? I tried seeds last year and the onions did not do well. Perhaps wrong type.
I really do like the cobra tools I received around Christmas. The little that I have used them already I wonder where have they been all my life? Looks like it will become the go to garden tool.
Geoff bought live plants at the Natural Gardener, a well known garden center in Austin. Starting onion from seed is a little trickier, but not hard. Usually any seed purchased from a reliable seed vendor will be good, but onion seed does not last long and by the time its three years old it will have lost a lot of its germination power. We have several posts about starting onions and there is a lot of information online.
Thanks for the good words!
thanks for the reply. I bought for the first time sets from Dixondale Farms, a little pricey but great sets. I will see if I can buy some seed from an outlet for next year.
We plant onions in long rows, using a trowel to make the row first then laying th onions along the row a hand span apart. It’s simple to the come along and cover the whole row up with a swift movement of the trowel. The onions stand straight by day 3