Onion Planting

Onion sets were out at the local farm store, so I decided that it is a good time for me to start planting my onions.  The seeds I had started were doing very well until the resident feline took it upon herself to mow them all down for me.  Some of them are still alive, but they look pretty bad.  I may try to salvage them a little later in the season when they have had more time to recover.  In the mean time I got a few bags of red and yellow onion sets for the garden, so I would have something for the intended onion bed to grow.  I was hoping that this would be the year that I grew my own onions from seed, but my bad luck with onion seed continues.

The first step to planting the onion sets was to level out the bed with my garden rake.  I wanted the bed to be as level as possible to encourage even watering.  Next I laid out the pattern for my sets, spacing them about three to four inches apart.

The spacing isn't totally perfect, but they move when I dig them in, so there is still room for adjustments.  I fit eight rows into this three foot wide bed.  Planting them close together helps them to fight weeds better since they don't have a large growth habit.  After I dug them all in a couple inches, I laid out my irrigation drip lines over the bed.  I made sure that all the lines were dripping well and then covered the whole bed with a layer of leaf mulch.  I am going to try my best to keep all of my beds well mulched this year to conserve water and to reduce weed pressure.

To help keep the leaf mulch from blowing away, I hosed the whole thing down very well and allowed the drip line to moisten the mulch from beneath for awhile. Once the onions push up through the mulch, they will help hold it in place better.  Now it should only be a couple of weeks until they start poking out of the leaves.  Spring is officially here!