multi-sowing onions - right or wrong here I go

[Mr_Yan]

A few years ago I jumped on the band wagon of using a soil block maker for my seed starting. This year I am combining it with the multi-sowing technique I've seen or read several major gardeners using.

Tonight, using my 4th grade daughter as some child labor, I seeded 4 or 5 seeds each in soil blocks. Total is 80 blocks each (at 4 seeds per block) of Red Ruby Onion, White Sweet Spanish Onion, and Yellow Sweet Spanish Onion.

To compound the experiment I have half of each planted in 2" blocks and half planted in 1.5" blocks.

Now that I write this down. That's a lot of onions.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Update on my multi sowing onion experiment. When planted I mixed up the white, yellow, and red onions in the raised bed.

These are two quick pics of the onions I have going in a raised bed.

There are onion bulbs in there over 3" in diameter. As you'd expect there are several smaller onions in that bed.

I have these mulched with chopped up ornamental grass that grew in the landscaping last year.

The greens are not flopped over yet so these are still growing.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

*0 all told, or eighty of each? When we were a family I used to reckon one onion for each day of the year, now it is just me and the missus I reckon about 250, but this year I missed out planting out my seedlings as I had dislocated my arm so just about 60 red ones. Home grown seem stronger and make you cry when you cut them which supermarket ones don't do anymore.

 

[Mr_Yan]

It was originaly 80 blocks of 4 seeds for each of the three varieties.

But then life happened and I am down to about 25 sets of the 4 seeds started. Mostly I had to do a bunch of travel for work this spring and left the kids to tending the seedlings then a rabbit ate the onion starts put in a raised bed on the first planting.

 

[headfullofbees]

I built 4 really good raised beds for garlic & onions at my allotments, then moved home!!
So I built 2x 12ftx6 ft raised beds here in my new home & have had an excellent crop of garlic, onions & shallots.
I didn't really know how well they'd do 100 miles farther north, so I budgeted for them being approx half the size they were.
As it turned out, they are just as good, just a little later (2-3 wks) than previously, so I now have twice the onions I need.
I was especially surprised by the over-wintered short-day onions, as I was led to believe they were marginal in my old home, 100 miles south.