Starting Onions

I started some onions from seed today.  I used some of the peat pots instead of the soil blocks.  Soil blocks aren’t ideal just because of the way onions grow and how many we’d like to grow.  Each of the pots here have 20-30 seeds in them and will be pulled apart for planting when it’s time.

We haven’t gotten very large bulbs the last few years, and since we eat a lot of them I’d really like to solve the problem.  I originally tried starting from seeds without much luck, and the last couple years I grew from sets.  Unfortunately I picked the largest sets to start with thinking they had the most stored energy and would make the largest bulbs, but the opposite is true because the biggest sets go to flower instead of making bulbs.

I also read that onions were light feeders and did not need especially good soil, but other things I’ve read since say that to get good-sized bulbs they do need good soil.  We did get plenty of green onions in the poorer soil.  I tried inter-planting them with other crops previously, but this time I will give them their own space and make sure they stay well-watered.

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