How to plant onions

[bills]

Wow Steve..you must be gardening on an old creek bed?
I bet your drainage is good though..lol

I can't get onions to grow anything like that, in the season I have, even if I plant onion starter bulbs. My Walla Walla's do well from seed onions, but the yellow and red are just not as big..

 

[digitS']

Glacial till, BillS.

I wonder what the Canadian Rockies would look like if every valley and canyon was filled with ice. So much ice, we are told, that it would dam the Clark's Fork River. But, that was the southern boundary for the huge ice cap grinding away the Rockies to the north.

Most of the snow to the south would melt each year. The water couldn't get past the ice and a large lake formed between the Montana mountain ranges. Year after year, more water would be trapped behind the ice dam and the lake would grow larger and deeper.

Then a summer would come that was a little warmer. Or, the pressure of the water just became too great. The dam would break and all those mountain rocks would be carried down, under hundreds of feet of water!

The rocks were left, waiting for me to stir them a little and plant something amongst them.

Steve

 

[Mel]

Long day onions grow well in this zone such as the sweet spanish or walla walla. A fellow gardener showed me how he started them from bulbs and the trick is after they get a good start pull the dirt away from around the bulb leaving little more than the roots covered. He grows massive walla walla and yellow spanish onions.

 

[JimWWhite]

Beautiful onion patch, Digits!!! I love the rocks. What's with that?

 

[buckabucka]

@Gardening with Rabbits
I find planting onions to be very tedious. I think I plant mine too deeply, because I can't stand when they are falling over, but I still get onions in the end.
This tool, which I inherited from my FIL, has saved my gardening life! You can kneel on it, then use the sturdy handles to pull/push yourself upright. You can also flip it over and sit on it like a bench. Working in that position helps stretch out your back, although I can work longer on my knees.
I think I'm going to seek out another kneeler like this, so DH and I stop fighting over it!

 

[so lucky]

When I retired, my co-workers gave me a bunch of gardening stuff. A bench like that was one of the gifts. I haven't utilized it very well. I think this year I will, as more and more joints give me troubles. My onions have been washed out of the ground, as Mel describes, but by heavy rain here. They look pretty good, many nearly totally exposed.

 

[digitS']

@JimWWhite , the soil in that garden must be 50% rocks. The little veggie garden isn't much different, the rocks are pea gravel there. Here at home, it's kinda half way between. These gardens are separated by miles.

An old farmer I once worked for said that the best soil here has the most rocks. I wonder how he would know if you can't get at it!

Sometime I should post a picture of the rockpile beside the big veggie garden. I have come up with an idea for use: box of rocks. The boxes could be like the milk crate I sit on planting onions and for any other excuse.

Steve

 

[JimWWhite]

Well, they seem to work. Dick Raymond said there should be rocks in the soil to provide aeration and drainage. I guess this goes a way to prove his point. Nice though.

 

[Gardening with Rabbits]

@Gardening with Rabbits
I find planting onions to be very tedious. I think I plant mine too deeply, because I can't stand when they are falling over, but I still get onions in the end.
This tool, which I inherited from my FIL, has saved my gardening life! You can kneel on it, then use the sturdy handles to pull/push yourself upright. You can also flip it over and sit on it like a bench. Working in that position helps stretch out your back, although I can work longer on my knees.
I think I'm going to seek out another kneeler like this, so DH and I stop fighting over it!
View attachment 2484

I think I have mine too deep for the same reason. Drives me nuts to see them falling over. I also can work a long time on my knees, but takes me 2 days to get over it anymore. I just get sore all over. I do need to look into something like that in the picture.

 

[catjac1975]

@Gardening with Rabbits
I find planting onions to be very tedious. I think I plant mine too deeply, because I can't stand when they are falling over, but I still get onions in the end.
This tool, which I inherited from my FIL, has saved my gardening life! You can kneel on it, then use the sturdy handles to pull/push yourself upright. You can also flip it over and sit on it like a bench. Working in that position helps stretch out your back, although I can work longer on my knees.
I think I'm going to seek out another kneeler like this, so DH and I stop fighting over it!
View attachment 2484

Be careful with that. I had 1 that broke within it's first use. They sent me another one and it lasted about a year. It was rated for 200 lbs and I weight 140. It became dangerous and I threw it aaa before I crashed and got hurt.