How to plant onions correctly: the most common mistakes gardeners make

To grow good, large onions or juicy green onions for salads, you need to know a few nuances. Onion planting rules include carefully selecting the seed and preparing it before planting. Air temperature and soil moisture are also crucial. Gardeners often overlook these factors and make mistakes, resulting in a poor-quality harvest.

Incorrect preparation of seed onions

Purchased bulbs should be sorted through, and any wrinkled or slightly rotten ones should be discarded without hesitation. The remaining whole, dry, undamaged bulbs with shiny, smooth skins should be reserved for planting.

Next, warm the bulbs a little, especially if they're store-bought and the storage temperature is unknown. A few hours at 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) will be enough to initiate the growth process. Just before planting, soak the bulbs in a weak potassium permanganate solution for 20-30 minutes. Now the bulbs are completely ready for planting.

Unprepared garden bed

The second mistake gardeners make is planting bulbs in an unprepared bed. To get large onions, the bed needs to be prepared in the fall. To do this, select a site based on crop rotation, soil composition, and location. To ensure a high-quality harvest, consider the following:

1. The bed should not be in a lowland, because increased soil moisture will lead to rotting of the bulbs and the appearance of onion flies.
2. In the fall, you need to add rotted manure, dig it up, and in the spring, simply level and slightly loosen the bed.
3. Consider crop rotation: don't plant onions in the same spot for more than two years in a row. This crop grows well after cabbage, nightshades, and cucumbers. It's not recommended to plant them after carrots and legumes.
4. In the spring, the bed should be moist, loose, and rich in humus. Planting carrots next to each other benefits both plants, repelling pests.

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Failure to comply with planting dates and temperature conditions

This is the third mistake that can ruin the harvest. Although onions are frost-hardy, they don't like stress. They shouldn't be planted in cold soil that hasn't warmed up to 15 degrees Celsius, otherwise they will bolt. The best time to plant them in southern regions is late April to early May, in the middle zone it's the first ten days of May, and in northern regions, it's best to plant them in late spring.

Plant the seeds in cloudy, dry weather. The bulbs are buried in the soil up to their shoulders and covered with ash and soil. This allows the bulbs to root well and enhances the soil's nutritional and protective properties.

Incorrect landing order

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Planting bulbs too densely can be another mistake. Crowded plantings lead to root entanglement and a lack of nutrients. Plant bulbs in rows no closer than 10 cm apart. The distance between rows should be 20-25 cm.

An exception might be planting for both bulbs and green shoots simultaneously. In this case, the bulblets are planted densely. When green shoots emerge, the green shoots are removed by the roots, thus thinning the plantings to form the bulbs.

All these tips will help you avoid mistakes when growing onions and get a great harvest. Before planting, you can soak the onion sets in Fitosporin, a salt solution (one teaspoon per liter of water), or a combination of ash, potassium permanganate, and salt. This will improve growing conditions. Birch tar also works well, repelling pests (one teaspoon per liter of water). Soak for 15 minutes. This solution is useful for watering the onions during the growing season.