Getting the Onions in the Ground

During the first week of January, a package arrived at our door that I had been expecting.  Late last year I ordered 3 bundles of onion sets from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, TX.  This is my third year planting onions from them and I highly recommend them.  I ordered the Short Day Sampler which contains Red Creole Onions, White Onions, and Texas 1015 Sweet Onions.  They came in a box with instructions to take them out of the box and put them in a cool, dry place until time to plant.

The cost is reasonable and you can order online.

They send instructions on planting and care in the box, but they also email you a wealth of information to help you grow the best onions possible. 

They advise to plant pretty quickly because the earlier you plant them - the bigger they get, but the wet conditions we've had prohibited that from happening.  This past weekend was the first semi-dry time between storms, so I figured I had better get them in the ground.  A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how we were using "metal mulch" to crowd out weeds.  In the photo below I pulled aside two rows of tin to expose soil to start planting.  You can see the area to the right has tons of winter grass, proving the tin to be successful in keeping out weeds and providing soil ready for planting.

Planting onions is easy!  You simply separate each individual bulb, poke a hole with your finger, insert the onion set and cover.  You don't want to plant any deeper than 1 inch or the onion won't bulb properly.

You want to plant the onions 4 inches apart to give them room to expand.  As soon as the onions show growth, I'll mulch all around the onions with hay to discourage weed pressure that would crowd out the onions.

I was able to enlist Russ' help to plant.  I simply made a trench about an inch deep and poured some organic garden soil.  This wasn't really necessary, but the garden itself was still very wet.  Planting directly into the garden would have been planting directly in mud and not a good idea.

When all was said and done, we had five rows of onions planted.  They take about 110 days to mature. 

As I mentioned we planted 3 bunches of onions this year.  Last year we planted 2 bunches.  A bunch contains between 50 and 75 plants.  After we harvested last year's crop, we stored them indoors in an old milk crate and were able to keep them for 6 months!  We were very pleased with their production, taste, and storage.  Hopefully we'll have another bumper crop this year!