Planting Onions in Early January 2022

My onion sets I purchased arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago.  I've been too busy with work to get them in the ground.  I am studying to pass the State Licensing Exam for Insurance Adjusters.  It's a big test (150 questions with 160 minutes to take it).  I'm taking it Monday after studying for over a month.  I need a 70% score to pass.  This has taken up a lot of my time and so I haven't been as diligent in getting things done that I normally do.

Time to do something about that!  Tuesday afternoon, I got some baling twine (so useful), a hoe, a rake, and determination and headed out to plant roughly 250 onions.  As described in a previous post, they are short-day onions and I got Red Creole, Texas White, 1015 Sweet, and Yellow Granex.  They will do fine for about 3 weeks without planting, but I needed to get them in the ground!

Onions are planted four inches apart and one inch deep.  You don't want to plant them any deeper or they won't bulb.  I forgot one essential tool in planting onions - the rolling seat you see on the right below.  It was my grandmother (Bumby's) gardening seat.  It sure comes in handy and saves the old back!

Once you get one row planted, you mark off 6 inches from the onions and dig a trench four inches deep and four inches wide and sprinkle 1/2 cup of organic fertilizer and then cover.

Then you mark off 6 inches from your fertilizer trench and plant another row of onions.

Once I got all the onions planted, I watered them in.  Onions are a hardy crop, but they require lots of water and lots of weeding.  They don't like competition from weeds for their nutrients.  I'll mulch around them to accomplish this once they show some good growth.

It took me two hours to finish, but at the end, I had four rows of onions.  Hopefully, we will have a good crop again in 2022.  2021 was a record year for us with onions and we're trying to repeat it.  The cows look on approvingly at the onion planting.  Below you can see from left to right: (Elsie, Clarabelle, Rosie, and LuLu sitting)

We'll post and show progress on the onions throughout the growing season.  If you're ever interested, we get our onion plants from Dixondale Farms.  Check them out on the Internet.  They are a good outfit and I highly recommend them.  I'm looking at picking up some seed potatoes from the feed store tomorrow and will cut them so they'll scab over.  Once that's done, we'll get them in the ground.

Onions... Worth Their Weight in Gold

I heard a story about a man who heard that there was a country that did not have onions!  Can you believe that?  The citizens of this land never got the opportunity to enjoy this savory bulb that enhances every dish and provides great flavor to any meal.  The man loaded a sack full of onions and departed for the Onion-less land.

Upon arrival he visited with the king and showed him his great cargo.  He even prepared a meal for the people of the kingdom. Of course the people loved them!  They were so appreciative for his introducing them to onions, they paid him with GOLD equivalent to the weight of the sack of onions.  When the man got home, he boasted about his good fortune. 

An entrepreneur soon headed to the land with a sack full of garlic.  If they didn't have onions, they didn't have garlic.  What is better than garlic for flavor?  What could be more valuable than gold.  The man was sure that he would be paid in DIAMONDS!  He arrived, introduced the king and commoners to garlic and naturally, they were impressed.  They were so grateful for this discovery they did pay him.  What could be more valuable than gold?  Why, onions, of course.  The man headed back home with a sack full of onions.

I love onions and we like to plant them in our garden.  The first week of January, I received my onion sets in the mail.  Oh, Happy Day!

I always order from Dixondale Farms their Short Day Sampler.  This year I ordered 3 bundles.  Each bundle contains about 70 onion starts consisting of 1015 Texas Supersweet, White, and Red Creole Onions.  I don't know if this box is worth its weight in gold, but the contents are indeed valuable to me.

I pulled up rows, made a 4 inch trench in the middle and filled it with composted chicken litter.  then on either side of the trench, I planted the onion sets 4 inched apart from each other.  It is important to plant them only 1 inch deep.  If you plant them too deep, you risk them not bulbing and then you only have green onions - which is not a bad thing, but you want your onions to bulb.

I sat on my blessed assurance and rolled and planted until the box was empty.  218 onions in the ground when all was said and done!

One week later, temps dipped to the upper teens.  I hope my onions are okay.  I think they are.

They better be.  I only intend on crying over these onions after I harvest them and begin to cut them up.