Over Wintering Onions

With the wife needing a couple of days bed rest I decided that I would not dig up the spuds today on plot 1A but went about the task of planting over wintering onion sets into vending machine cups in the back garden.

Whist away last week I bought two 50 packs of onion sets from Wilko at £2 each. One Japanese onions and the other Red Onions. No real description on the pack identifying which particular Red Onion variety they are mind you.

Keith donated the remains of his bag of Radar Onions from Thompson & Morgan as he has filled his bed up already.

Last year I managed to sow from seed but this year only a handful of the 75 seed I planted have germinated, for some reason I have had a really bad year for growing all onions from seed even new seed.

last year the onions left in the greenhouse as spares did so much better and looked so much healthier than those that were in the ground and at least 12  - 15% had been attacked by slugs and snail. So my cunning plan this year is to grow these in vending machine cups that stand in modules and plant them on Plot 23B early spring as they start to regrow and hopefully they have a reasonable root system in place by then.

I also intend over the winter to make a Onion Weed Membrane 2.4 x 1.2m sheet so that I can minimise the amount of weeding that will be required. The back of the Wilko packs suggest 150mm centres so 1200 / 150 = 8 and 2400/ 150 = 16 spaces so that's 7 x 15 holes = 105 planting holes in the sheet.

The top of the vending machine cups are 75mm diameter and the bulb planter is about that so I need to measure and check, so I'm guessing 75 - I00mm dia holes will be needed which hopefully will fill up with onion and not to many weeds.

The photo above is as far as I got with the compost I had over, so a swift visit to B&Q resulted in the purchase of two 75 litre packs of verve Tub and Basket compost that says it feeds for 4 months which with the onions going dormant for a short time should be enough with a comfrey feed as they start to kick back into action next year.

As it's the end of the season they are knocking them out at two packs for £10. This size is much more convenient to lift and store away, if I had more room I would have bought another couple. Umm another reason to sort out the sheds when I get an opportunity.

End of the day one Japanese onion was bad and I had an extra Red so in the grow house we have

  49 Japanese Onions that's 3 and a half trays

  51 Red Onions that's another 3 and a half trays 

  45 Radar Onions that's 3 trays

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145 Onions

So that's 10 trays of over Wintering onions in total, looks like I will need two weed membrane sheets and I can put Spring Onions in the remainder of the second sheet.