Onion: Secrets Of Care In August

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

If everything goes well in the garden, then in August there is a massive harvest of onions. Harvesting time is easy to tell by when the feather turns yellow and the leaves of the vegetable begin to lie down. But what if the weeks go by and the bulbs still don't want to ripen?

Dry dressing and dry irrigation

The reasons why onions remain green when traditional harvesting time is right can vary. Someone can get in the way of the weather, others got not very successful planting material, and someone else is new to this business and does not know all the intricacies of cultivating and harvesting a vegetable.

In order for the bulbs to ripen, you need to stop watering and feeding the beds in time. When in the middle of summer nature endowed with damp weather for a long time, fertilizers can be applied dry. And 3-4 weeks before harvesting, you need to loosen the row spacing - this technique is also called dry irrigation.

Secrets of seasoned gardeners

When it is beyond our strength to overcome the circumstances, and by the established time the neck of the vegetable remains thick, and the bulb itself has not painted its scales in the characteristic color of the variety, you need to use tricks that will speed up this process. To do this, a week before the day of the proposed harvest, you need to cut the roots of the plant in the soil at a depth of about 5 cm from the bottom of the bulb with the help of a well-sharpened shovel. If everything is done correctly, then after 4-5 days the feather will turn yellow and dry. At the same time, the onion's shirt will take on a characteristic shade.

Another method to speed up the onion ripening process is to shake off the soil from the vegetable sitting in the garden. This method has another positive effect - it helps to form a larger onion, as well as to give a noticeably more attractive presentation of the vegetable due to the formation of the correct rounded shape.

Preparing onions for storage

Harvesting onions should be done on a dry, sunny day. Specimens collected in rainy weather are more likely to suffer from cervical rot. But when there is no other way out, then such bulbs need to be warmed up before storing them.

If the weather permits, the onions are left to ripen on the site for another week. During this time, all those nutrients that have been deposited and preserved in the leaves are transferred to the bulb. That is why, during the growing season, it is not advised to cut off the green feather from those plantings from which they plan to harvest large juicy turnip onions.

When the weather forecast warns of rainy weather, you should not leave the onion outside in the open air. In this case, the crop is sent to ripening indoors. It is necessary that it be dry there, and there should be a possibility of airing. The onions dried in this way must be cut off so that the neck remains no more than 4 cm. Storing onions in braids in a warm kitchen is a very beautiful way, but, unfortunately, not the most effective. So the onion dries up and loses much weight. It is better to store the crop in a refrigerator or cool cellar.

Features of storing seedlings and onions for seeds

Some gardeners do not realize that the reason for the early throwing out of the arrow when growing turnip onions from seedlings is improper storage of planting material. A bad choice would be to keep the seedlings at + 5 … + 15 ° C. He needs to arrange either warm storage (+ 18 … + 25 ° С), or cold storage - in a refrigerator or boxes in the snow (+ 1 … + 3 ° С).

The mother bulbs, which are intended for obtaining seeds, must be kept at an air temperature within the range of + 2 … + 5 ° C. But a month before disembarkation, they will need to be awakened from winter storage. To do this, they are moved to heat, maintaining the temperature at + 15 … + 20 ° C.