Saturday, February 20, 2016

getting ready to plant onions and celeriac

Yeah! It's time to begin planting indoors. This weekend I'll clean some of my old planting pots and trays and get out the seed packets and potting soil. So fun to get my hands into soil again.

I used to plant onion sets instead of seeds, but onions grow bigger and are less disease prone from seed. It's a stress on the plant to hold it as a little bulb then get it growing again. its really easy to grow onions from seed. Only two tricks, get the right variety for your area - in the north, grow long day onions. I like Pontiac, White Wing and Red Wing from Johnny's Seeds, but there are many long day varieties. The other trick is to start them early, 11 weeks before your last frost. Count bhack from your frost date, or download my calendar app.

Onion seedlings like to grow fairly dense. Scatter the seeds about a half inch apart in a small tray, like a saved lettuce container. I'll use smaller pots so I can grow fewer amounts of more varieties. And I like to have some small pots to give away. you can still fit a lot of onion seedlings in a small pot.

1 comment:

kathy said...

I keep searching, but can't find my celeriac seeds. A good excuse to go look at seeds at Russel's Garden Center! What fun. I'll get some more flower seeds too.