Inspirational Organic Gardening - Growing Onions in You Home Vegetable Garden

Organic Gardening - Growing Onions in You Home Vegetable Garden

One of the oldest know vegetables is the onion. It is commonly used in a variety of recipes in the kitchens around the world and can be purchased in many different way, from fresh, canned, chopped, dehydrated, frozen and even pickled.

Growing onions can be done from seed, transplants or sets. When choosing seed to start your onions, you will have a larger choice of what you can plant, but can take five months for the seedlings to mature enough to be transplanted and they are more susceptible to disease.

Transplants are onion plants that were started from seed that same season. They can be purchased at some local garden centers, depending on where you live and can be purchased from on line sources. They are usually sold in bunches. They have a shorter growing season than seeds do but can have the same problems like disease.

Sets are the most common way that onions are planted in the home garden and are sold at most local garden centers. They are no more than an immature bulb. These sets are started from seed by sowing the seeds tightly together to create a very thick, tight growing crop of seedlings. This results in a stunted plant growth that will produce a small bulb. These small bulbs is what is sold as sets to be planted the next growing season. When purchasing your sets, keep in mind that they should be about 1/2 inch in diameter and solid, soft small bulbs will not produce a good mature onion, even over size sets that are bigger than 1/2 inch usually wont do good.

When choosing the variety of onion you want to grow, there is one thing that needs to be considered. Onions have what is called day length requirements. Some need 13 to 16 hours of daylight and others only need 12 hours. Choose a variety that is best suitable for your area.

Onions will grow best in a raised garden bed with a good healthy soil structure and plenty of compost or composted manure mixed in and drains well. The soil should have a fairly neutral ph level of between 6 and7.When planting seeds the soil needs to be fluffy or very loose.

Sow seeds directly into the garden bed thickly and cover with a 1/2 inch of fine soil. If you mix radish seeds in the same area they will serve two purposes, deter root maggots and help mark the area where the onion seeds were planted. Once the seedlings start to grow you can start to thin them to about 1 inch apart and then in about a month thin them to 6 inches apart. When you thin them this second time you will want to pull back some of the soil around the bulb to expose the top and sides, this is a great way to induce the development of the bulb.

When planting transplants you want to space then 4 to 6 inches apart and about 2 inches deep.If you are planning on harvesting the onions young then you will want to use the closer 4 inch spacing.

Sets are the third method of planting onions. When purchasing sets you can figure that one pound is enough to plant a fifty foot row. Trench your rows out about 2 inches deep and place the sets with the stem end up. This is the one thing that you will need to watch for when planting. Once you have the sets in place cover with a good garden soil and maintain then with the same methods as transplants.

Time to get ready to harvest your onions is when you see the tops start to turn yellow. At this time you want to bend the greens over horizontally, this will stop the sap from flowing through the stem and put all the plants energy into the maturing bulb. A couple days after you do this you will see the tips starting to turn brown, it is time to pull the onion bulbs from the ground. Do this on a sunny day and lay the bulbs on the ground to dry. When laying the out cover the bulbs by laying the bulbs in a row and covering the next row with the greens . This will help to prevent sun scalding.

Inspirational Small Vegetable Garden Plans for a Home Garden

Small Vegetable Garden Plans For a Home Garden

Planting a small vegetable garden is almost as much fun as harvesting. Can't you just taste the plump juicy tomatoes and the sweet tasting cantaloupe? Before you grow the area's largest pumpkin or zesty collards, and are short on space and time, take a look at some creative small vegetable garden plans.

Square Foot Gardening--A Space Saving Plan

Intensive planting designs use every bit of garden space available. Square foot gardens (4 ft. by 4 ft.)are surprisingly productive. How many plants planted in each square foot is decided by the amount of room necessary for the specific crop planted to successfully produce a harvest.

For illustration, each single square in a square foot garden plan can contain 1-staked tomato, 4 bean plants, 1 pepper plant, or 50 radishes. Positioning of plants or seeds inside the square also depends on the crop selection. Where a single plant occupies a square, set the seed or transplant in the middle to allow room to grow in all directions.

Several plants may be planted in rows, smaller squares, or at random in small vegetable garden plans. For instance, fill a square with four bean plants, divide the area into smaller squares and plant one seed in the middle of each. A square can hold fifty radishes or twenty onions. The seeds can be scattered across the square or sown in small rows.

Harvest early by thinning out young plants for use as tender greens or roots, creating room for the rest to grow. Trellises add a third dimension to small vegetable garden plans. A trellis is useful to gardeners seeking to maximize space. Rather than allowing vine crops to sprawl across the garden, send plants such as cantaloupe, watermelon, and cucumbers growing skyward.

Cages also can be used to take advantage of vertical space and keep crops from sprawling over the ground. Many plants can be successfully grown in cages, including tomatoes, watermelons, and eggplants. In addition to space-saving planting techniques, gardeners have an additional resource: dwarf varieties and bush forms of plants that originally grew only as vines.

Be advised, while the dwarf varieties take up less garden room, the harvests are somewhat smaller than their full size relatives. Geometric planting patterns make maximum use of space in small vegetable garden plans. Gardeners use simple designs to fill wide beds with vegetables. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention.

Vegetable spacing for small plots

Beans are a sure producer and should be spaced four plants per square foot in small vegetable garden plans. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, peppers, and eggplant may need staking and space 1 plant each square ft. Cabbage and cauliflower produces a single head planted at one to a foot. Trellis or stake tomatoes at one plant per sq. ft. Make successive plantings of endive, kohlrabi, and lettuce, at four plants per square foot. Harvest individual leaves of kale and parsley spacing four plants per sq. feet.

A single stake will support floppy, low growing plants that might otherwise be injured by winds or abundant productions. A wire cage gives the best support for tall growing plants.

Don't think just because you have small vegetable garden plans that means not much of a harvest. Vegetable gardening even on a smaller scale can produce bumper crops. In fact, with vertical gardening, the sky is the limit!

There are many more great plans and ideas for all types of vegetable gardening, (including indoor gardening), available for free on my website.