How to grow a rich harvest from onion sets: secrets of preparation and planting

Properly grown homegrown onions are usually juicier and sweeter than store-bought ones. And a large part of the success depends on the correct germination of the onion sets, the quality of which determines the future harvest.

OBOZ.UA asked what experienced gardeners advise those who want to avoid making mistakes when working with seedlings. And here's what they suggest doing.

Choose the right place for the garden

To grow big and juicy, onions need a lot of sunlight. Therefore, you should plant the seedlings in the soil in a sunny or only slightly shaded area. The moisture in the soil should not stagnate either, as it will quickly rot the onions. Ideally, the soil should be loose, neutral in acidity. Acidic soil should be treated in advance with lime, chalk, or dolomite flour. It should also be well loosened before sowing the onions.

Prepare the sets

Proper treatment will protect the onions from diseases and harden them to unfavorable germination conditions. Preparation should begin with sorting through the seedlings - anything rotten, wilted, or damaged will have to be thrown away. The selected bulbs are then soaked in a solution of 1 tablespoon of salt per 1 liter of water. They should spend 3-4 hours in this solution, after which the bulbs are washed, dried, and transferred to a strong solution of potassium permanganate for disinfection. In addition to fungi, potassium permanganate also destroys eggs of onion flies, mites, thrips, etc. Specialized preparations can also be used for disinfection.

3-5 days before planting, the onion seedlings need to be warmed up so that they wake up and start growing more actively. To do this, the bulbs are placed in a single layer in a cardboard box and placed near a heat source - a battery, heater, etc. It is optimal for the temperature to be 35-40 degrees for the seed. As a last resort, it can be poured with hot water (60-70 degrees) for 2 minutes, and then with cold water for the same amount of time, and finally dried.

Plant it correctly

The time to put the seedling in the ground comes when the soil warms up at least 10 cm deep and the weather is consistently warm. Cold weather at the time of planting will cause the onions to stretch into an arrow. Usually, a good time to sow onions is in late April or early May.

The bulbs are placed in shallow furrows with a 15-20 cm spacing between them. A little wood ash can be added to each of them, and in dry weather they should be well spilled with water. The seed is inserted into the ground with the roots down and the sharp end up with a distance of 6-10 cm between the fruits. Then they are covered with a layer of soil about 2 cm.

How to fertilize onions after planting

If you are growing a vegetable for a feather, it needs to be fertilized with nitrogen. To do this, 2 weeks after planting, the bed should be treated with nitrate or complex fertilizers with a high nitrogen content.

For the bulb itself to develop well, potassium-phosphorus fertilizers are applied 15-20 days after the first feeding. And when the fruit reaches a size of 4 cm, you will need to add phosphorus again - it will allow you to increase the maximum weight of the onion.

It is also important to treat the bed from onion flies. For this, special preparations that can be bought at agricultural stores are best suited. There are no effective home remedies for it.

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