Planting Onion Bulbs: A Complete Guide From Start To Finish

good afternoon everybody it's sunday november 1st and it's another pleasant afternoon here on the southeastern coast of north carolina and today i'm going to teach you everything there is to know about planting onion sets onions are one of the most common things that we use in the kitchen they seem to be the base for practically every food that we eat but they are actually surprisingly expensive in the grocery store what is not expensive are onion sets to plant this whole bag here i got for 95 cents at the store and as you can see that is a lot of onions for only 95 cents onions are biennials which means they have a two-year life cycle from the time they germinate to when they mature and produce seed of their own when onion seed is planted the first thing they are going to do is form roots and top growth this is the first stage of the onion after nice top growth is formed the onion will begin the bulbing process this is the second stage of the onion after the bulbing process is complete it will go to flour and reseed itself completing the life cycle we want to harvest our onions after the second stage but before the third these onion sets that i'm planting have begun the bulbing stage so these are halfway through their two-year life cycle they're actually little onions that were dug up that are probably roughly about a year old when you plant onion sets like this you're trying to catch the onion right in the beginning of that bulbing stage because of this timing and variety selection is everything when it comes to planting onions there are three types of onions long day intermediate day and short day because onions bulb in the summer it is the length of daylight that the onion receives that determines when they begin to bulb in the northern hemisphere the further north you live the greater difference in day length between winter and summer higher latitudes have long summer days and short winter days while lower latitudes have less of a difference in daylight duration between the seasons if you live along the equator there is no difference between day length duration from winter to summer if you live in a low latitude and you plant a long day onion variety the onions will fail to bulb because they'll be looking for very long durations of daylight in the summer that won't occur in a low latitude so make sure you choose the onion type suitable to your location now let's discuss timing when you plant onion sets they need enough time to establish a lot of green growth before they can bulb nicely because onion bulbing is triggered by long durations in daylight you want to plant your onions as early as possible to give them as much time as possible to grow roots and green growth here in the south we virtually never see temperatures below 20 degrees fahrenheit so we want to plant our onion bulbs in november when day length is short this will give our onions ample time to establish in ground and develop nice green top growth this is very important because if we wait too long to plant our onions they will bolt and go to seed too early in the spring when the days start getting hot and planting them early like this protects them from bolting for those of you in higher latitudes that frequently see temperatures fall below 20 degrees fahrenheit you are going to want to wait until the threat of those severe freezes pass before you go ahead and plant your onion sets however you still want to get them in the ground as early as possible to take advantage of the cool season so they don't bolt on you for many of you that will be late winter now we need to talk about how to orient our onions this will be obvious to many of you but this is the correct orientation of the onion these little hairs right down here are the roots and that is what needs to contact the soil the onion bulb will sit just like this and we will only cover the onion bulb with enough soil to be just about at that high and the tops will slightly poke out of the soil when you plant your onions you want to plant them in very loose and loamy soil they need a very light mix in order to grow the roots so what i did was i simply took a rake and i raked over the top of my raised bed and that loosened the top few inches you need to really be able to kind of just easily dig your hand down there and reach your soil and pick it up no problem the lighter and fluffier the better for your onions when planting your onions you want to make sure that you plant them at least four inches apart that way the onions will have enough room to grow a nice big healthy bulb and you also want to make sure that you're four to six inches apart from the edges of your beds because you don't want the onion to have to try and swell and compete with the sides of the bed because the onion will lose so the very first thing we are going to do is we are simply going to take our onions and we are going to lay them out and space them at least four inches apart it's better to go a little bit wider than it is to go a little closer now that the onion sets are all placed we are going to take our fingers and we are going to gently press them halfway down into the soil this the reason why we only covered our onions halfway is because onions are very heavy feeders and i want to cover them the rest of the way with cow manure compost and organic slow release fertilizer so here you can see a bag of cow manure compost i simply bought off the shelf of a big box store and then right here i have a simple organic slow release 356 fertilizer that's three percent nitrogen five percent phosphorous and six percent potassium you don't have to worry about these numbers as long as they are close to five five five so just get something like a three five six a four four four five five five make sure that the numbers are close together and that it is a slow release organic type fertilizer so what we're going to do is we're going to take our slow release organic fertilizer and with a gloved hand simply sprinkle it on top of the rose and that will slowly feed our onion sets as the slow release fertilizer is decomposing over the course of the winter we are probably going to want to reapply this every roughly 30 days or so as the onion sets grow and the last thing that we're going to do is we're going to apply our cow manure compost we're going to use this bag of compost to be the back fill around the onions and get them to their final planting depth so we're just going to lightly place that around each onion so the top of the onion is still exposed but the bulb is completely covered now that the compost is down i'm going to cover the onions with a thin layer of natural mulch and this is going to do two things it is going to promote even moisture retention because the soil is going to have to stay lightly moist for the onions to take root and grow healthily and the other thing it's going to do is it is going to insulate the onions in case we get some type of freeze so that will help add an additional layer of frost and freeze protection to the onions and in order to do this i'm going to use this bag of natural shredded hardwood bark mulch that i purchased from a big box garden store but you can use any kind of natural mulch in your garden you can use pine bark nuggets you can use hay or straw or grass clippings provided that they're relatively weed free you can use shredded leaves you can use cypress or cedar mulch just whatever you do don't use the dyed mulch because the dyed mulch is mostly shredded old pallets and throwaway wood that they add chemical dyes to so don't use anything dyed but as long as it is a natural mulch you are good to go and i'm only going to put about an inch down or so until the green tops break the surface and then i will probably add another inch later and now that our mulch has been applied we are going to water our onion sets in deeply so now all we need to do is come back and check every few days to ensure that our soil is not drying out and if things are starting to dry out we're going to want to come back and water because we need to keep the area lightly moist in order for the onion roots to take hold and within a couple of weeks i expect to start to see little green tops of my onions start to break the mulch layer everyone thank you so much for watching today's video if you found it helpful please hit that like button and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you're curious about any of the products i use in my garden in general everything that i use is linked in my amazon storefront in the video description even if you don't purchase anything directly from our storefront if you use the link to begin your amazon shopping we do get a small piece of the pie and it doesn't cost you anything extra so if you could use our links before you go shopping on amazon it really helps us keep making these videos again thank you all so much for watching and i hope to see all of you again on the next video dale do you want to go for a walk you want to go for a walk are you sure oh oh you want to go for a walk okay buddy we're going to go for a walk okay oh we're going to go for a walk we're gonna have so much fun on our walk okay all right we're gonna go for a walk

Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 251,999

Keywords: onion bulbs, onion sets, growing onions, planting onions, planting onion bulbs, planting onion sets, how to plant onion bulbs, how to plant onion sets, how to grow onions, planting onion bulbs in the fall, planting onion bulbs in winter, planting onion bulbs in spring, onion growing tips, tips on growing onions, onion varieties, short day onions, long day onions, intermediate day onions, onion, onions, complete guide, grow onions, garden, gardening, the millennial gardener

Id: kJMwkUYtN9A

Length: 10min 30sec (630 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020