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Monday, 16 June 2008

postheadericon Onion update

Well most of my onions have gone to pot to be honest for a variety of reason, mainly due to the weather and i might struggle to make a decent set up this year. Next year i really need to think about planting all my onions inside in a well ventilated structure. The few I have planted inside are looking pretty decent, I just hope i can get enough of them.

The main problems i have had this year are the onions going double necked, being as i had no re-selected seed from last years crop and couldnt buy any due to the rains we had destroying crops, I suspect the shop crap is to blame.

5 comments:

Internet Guru said...

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Anonymous said...

Hi,my big onions are starting to do the same this year,never happened before.
Do you know what causes them to start growing another set of shoots,'cos I'm at a loss ?

Dan.

Veg4Show said...

Hi Dan, yes i noticed from your site that "your biggest onion so far" has gone double and i was a bit worried for you.

This can be any number things:

Bad seed
Check in growth
Over watered in the bed
Pot bound as seedlings drying out
To much Artificial lights (you don't use this tho)
The bed itself

Id suggest you get your soil tested for next year as I'm doing. Onions really don't like it to rich. All my beds this year are newly made so i kinda knew it would take some time for it to settle down for onions.

I imagine my problem is a combination of things.

Bad seed: Normally i use my own seed from re-selected onions but i had non last year to grow on due to the weather. I bought from the garden center, probably a load of rubbish as most seed producers grow outside and with all the rains we had who knows what we bought.

Heavy rain after dry spell.
Newly prepared beds.

Unlike split onions caused from lack of water at the edges of the bed, a double neck onion can be a number of things. From past experience it always happened to me when growing on newly fertilized ground, or if the onions were fed.

Well good luck to you, i hope you have a few that come good.

Anonymous said...

Cheers for that comprehensive answer Liam.
I can only say that it must have been the cold weather in April or duff seed thats been the problem as I have them growing in 3 different locations and even some outside and they all seem to have a few that are doing it.
I've grown a few big onions for the last 10 years and this is the 1st time it's ever happened to me.

Well I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Cheers.

Veg4Show said...

I'm growing in two locations, one inside and one outside and i can honestly say i only have 6 onions that are not double necked from 60. Normally i'd just remove them as they wont store or be any good for showing but I might was well leave them and eat them straight away.

Very strange, maybe towards the end of the season more people will have this problem and we can narrow it down as to why.

I can say I've had this problem a few times in the allotment but never on my show onions.

Kinda annoying as my onions are pretty massive now for this time of year yet wont be a bit of good.

Will replant with cauliflower soon.