How to grow and grow onions?

1. Cultivate and grow onions in good soil

To grow and hope to have large onions in your vegetable garden, you must of course have good soil and good gardening soil.

So what kind of soil to grow onions?

• A fertile and well worked land (a land dug with care).
• A moist and light soil, but very well drained.
• If the soil is clayey, it will be necessary to cultivate on mounds.
• Add compost or manure before planting the onions.

2. When to plant onions in the garden?

The best time to plant and grow onions is different from region to region depending on climate and temperature of course.

So do we plant onions in the spring or in the fall?

• In spring: If you live in a region where winter temperatures are below -5°C -10°C then you have to wait until spring before sowing onions in the ground.
• In autumn: If you live in a warmer region then you can plant the onions in the fall to harvest them in the spring.

Plant onions in April to harvest them in the fall and plant onions in October to harvest them next spring.

3. Planting onion seedlings or bulblets?

You will also have to make a choice between planting seedlings or planting bulbils (onion bulb).

Personally I recommend that you plant seed bulbs or onion plants that have been started indoors.

4 to 6 weeks gained thanks to the bulbils!

If you choose to plant bulbils (onions) you will be able to harvest large onions much faster than with seedlings. You gain about 4 to 6 weeks by planting bulbils.

To cultivate beautiful and large onions, you must of course plant them well and arrange them well in the vegetable garden. Here’s how:

1. Dig lines about 3 cm deep spaced 30 cm apart.
2. Plant and space the bulbs 10 cm apart in the rows.
3. Always direct the onion germ upwards.

Have you chosen seedlings?

For onion seedlings, they should be planted at a depth of 1 cm and at a distance of 3 cm from each other. As soon as the onion seedling reaches 5-6 mm in diameter, it should be transplanted at the same distances as the bulbs.

5. Maintenance and weeding of the vegetable garden

As with all garden vegetables, proper care and weeding of onion plants is important.

Here are some tips for properly maintaining your onion crop:

• Regularly weed the weeds in the vegetable garden to prevent them from invading the entire vegetable garden (one weeding every week).
• Spread mulch around the onion plants, but watch out for humidity.
• Heat-resistant, but onion plants should still be well watered, especially in dry weather.
• Fertilize the soil during the onion growth period (1 time is enough).

6. A tip for having big onions

A super effective trick to have big onions in the vegetable garden this summer is to bend the stems of the plants.

Indeed, as soon as the stems are large enough you can bend them to direct all the energy and the growth towards the bulbs of the onion.

Another trick to fatten onions is to remove some soil from around the bulbs to help them fatten more easily.

7. Grow onions with what other vegetables?

To promote the growth of onions, but also to ward off certain diseases and pests, it is important to make a good association of vegetables in the vegetable garden.

Here are onion-friendly vegetables:

• the carrot
• the tomato
• beet
• the lettuce
• the cucumber

Carrot and onion in the vegetable garden are to be preferred! Here are our tips on growing carrots: Trick to grow carrots.