This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.
onions
Darren 64
Posts: 5
in Fruit & veg
Hiya,its my first year on the allotment and I'm wandering if I've planted my onion sets too deep,they have been in the ground nearly two months and the leaves are about 1foot long now but the bulbs are still underground,I scraped the soil from around some of them and and the bulbs haven't started to swell,will they eventually push themselves out of the ground or should I scrape the soil from around them all?
0
Posts
my guess is that they are producing top growth and root growth. They sound healthy enough to me, so be patient, it's still only May.
I always put my sets in proud of the ground, is that wrong then?
Yours sound just like mine, and they did really well last year.
Thanks
Oh thanks scroggin., had a mini panic then. Since we've been in this house and I've done them in raised beds they are getting to dry and bolting so I thought maybe that's why.
Ordinary summer onions just make leaves and roots till midsummer. Then, when the days start getting shorter (only a month now
) they start sending food down from the leaves to store in the leaf bases, and the bulb starts to swell. So you needn't expect to see bulbs forming for a week or five yet. The longer they have to make leaves, the bigger the bulbs they can make, I suspect, so starting them early pays.
I don't think planting them an inch deeper makes much difference in the long run. If there's much showing, the birds pull 'em out anyway.
My overwintered Red Electric, on the other hand, are making bulbs now, so they must have a different system.