Even though it's about three weeks late, conditions were right on May 15 to finally get my onion transplants into the ground. My onion transplants have been sitting in the Hoop House all raring to go, but the ground has been to wet to till, so I was glad to finally get a day to do some garden work! I have a interesting way that I have developed to plant onions, that by design is supposed to cut down on the weeds that always seem to come up in my onion rows. Onions are a shallow rooted plant, and it is very easy to damage their roots during cultivation.
The first thing that I do after determining where I want to plant onions, is to lay down a generous helping of ammonium sulfate, which gives onions a jolt of nitrogen which they love, and some sulfur, which helps lower my soil PH, which makes the nitrogen and other elements in the soil more available to the plants.
Then I till it into the row with my tiller, Aimee Mann.
I purchase some newsprint remnant rolls from my local newspaper. They only charge a couple of bucks for a roll, and a roll can go along way. This is much cheaper than buying paper mulch from the garden center. Garden center paper mulch is okay; it is a little thicker gauge, is wider, and a darker color for heat retention, but costs about fifteen bucks for a 3'X50' roll.
After I work forward with my front tine tiller, I pull it backwards along the row, which really pulverizes the dirt clods and mixes in the amonium sulfate really well. It also makes a perfect row which fits the paper quite nicely, and has ridges of dirt on each side that can be pushed down onto the paper edges which holds it to the ground. I do believe that pulling a front tine tiller backwards to be safe, but it sure is a workout! Pulling a tiller backwards for over fifty feet can be quite exhausting!
I run the roll of paper up and down the roll about three times to get a nice thick mulch layer.
This is the part where you pray for no gusts of wind to come up! The paper is quite brittle and tears easily.
After pushing the dirt ridges onto the paper edge, I'm ready to lay out my onions.
I simply cut a hole for my onion plant with a blade, and plant the onion into the ground. I try to keep the hole for the plant to a minimum.
As the onion plant grows, and as the bulb gets bigger, it simply expands the hole as needed, and makes a tight seal preventing weeds from getting a foothold around the plants. The paper is thick enough to prevent a lot of weeds, but is thin enough to let in air, water and nutrients.
Soon after I get the onions planted in the row, I will put over the paper lawn clipping or other mulch to help hold the paper down in the wind, to keep the onion roots cool and to keep the soil from drying out between watering. I did this for the first time last season and it really worked well. The paper for the most part will
disintegrate during the season, and what does not can be tilled into the soil, or just burned if that is legal in your area.
The onion varieties that I am growing this year are, Walla Walla, Utah Sweet Spanish, Candy and Copra. The first three are sweet onion types, and the latter being designed as a storage onion.
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