Planting Onion Sets: What to Watch Out For

what's going on guys Kevin from epic gardening here and today inside this bag we have onion sets three different types I picked them up at a random nursery and let me show you got a white one we have a red one and we have a yellow one and so here's the thing planting onion sets versus onions from seed in the garden sometimes doesn't work out quite the way you want you would think hey this is a baby onion why don't I just plant this in the ground and it's going to produce a nice big onion bulb well that might happen and it also might not so the reason why onions are a two year lifecycle plant the first year typically what they'll do is they'll grow they'll produce a small bulb die back and then they'll go through a cold snap during that winter period and then the next year they'll produce a flowering stock get pollinated produce seeds and a life cycle will continue so that stands to reason if we have onions in this format what does it actually mean it means that they're typically already a year old and so there's a risk of them bolting which is basically just going to flower going to seed instead of forming a nice big bulb now there are some seeds excuse me set varieties that you can buy that have been heat treated in a way that basically guarantees they'll bulb up instead of bolt up but I don't know if these ones are those varieties so I'm gonna plant them now you might say why would you plant these if you're not sure if they're going to become a bulb well they actually are wonderful wonderful green onion producers so the very worst case scenario I'm gonna have a huge amount of green onions that I can use and to me that's still a win so we're gonna take it out to the front yard we'll talk about planting depth density all that sort of stuff before we go out into the front yard here's our onion set right here and what's important is to plant at the correct direction now you probably know this it's probably self-explanatory when we're taking a look at this onion but there's the root system down here aka the bottom in relation to how it grows how its oriented in the earth and then there's the top and you always want to be planting bottom down otherwise your onion is probably not even going to come but if it does it's gonna have this wonky sort of loop and that's just making it do a whole lot of extra effort that there's no reason for it to do so always bottom down top up or pointy side up area with the roots side down as far as onion spacing if you want to give your sets at least the opportunity to develop into a full bulb you'll want at least four inches apart and so I'm just gonna lay these out as I would plant them and I'm trying to get as efficient as possible with my space taking care not to go way too close to this because then they'll hit up against the edge here and we'll rotate the varieties just for fun you can also do a bit of a diamond style arrangement so you can go like this where you have about four inches away like this or you can go straight up squares if you'd like but I find that waste it's a bit more space so I am gonna lay it out a bit more in a diamond desk pattern so I'm gonna go like this and like this and on and on we go now you can't just press them into the soil if you wish just boom Bop them in I really like just for the sheer pleasure of it using this diddler it's from Johnny seeds but I mean it's just a stick you can just lean into the ground so I like to just do it boom plop it right in there just so that tip is barely peeking out of the soil and we're in so I'm gonna go ahead and plant the rest of these bad boys and we're off to the races well I had an epic time-lapse prepared but as soon as I finished planting it totally failed so I'm just gonna show to Rittenhouse alright guys here we are all planted in looking nice and geometrically spaced I tried as best as I could to vary the types as well although I don't think it's going to matter that much to be honest with you but that's pretty much it what I'm gonna do now is cover with some sort of little top coat mulch just to provide some cover and then water it in and we're good to go guys so our last little step here is to put on just a little bit of top coat it's just a composted mulch and all I'm gonna do is just cover maybe a half inch or so just to top this off and to provide it with a little bit of water retention a little bit of protection from the elements just you know it's just a classic mulch so let's go ahead and do that thanks for watching guys really hope you enjoyed the video leave comments down below and tell me what you want to see on the next video I'll see you guys later good luck in the garden keep going keep it up later [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Epic Gardening

Views: 266,631

Keywords: epic gardening, urban gardening, sowing onions, starting onions, how to sow onions, onion sets, onion bunches, how to plant onion sets, how to plant onions, onions, how to plant onion bulbs, how to grow onions, growing onions, how to grow onion, planting onions, onion plant, onion, white onion, planting onion sets, how to regrow onions, green onions, red onion, rusted garden, garden answer

Id: l_idZyZryfo

Length: 4min 58sec (298 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 14 2018