Lets start with the autumn planted onions that should be producing a bounty any day soon. Should be but they won't - we'll be lucky to harvest a handful. The photo below is of one of the rare clumps of those that deigned to grow.
As you can see the sets were planted through weed control fabric but I don't think this caused any problem. After the sets were planted the weather just wasn't conducive to plant growth.
The garlic planted in the same bed has, on the surface, fared better and is growing well. Early Purple Wight is producing scapes which I know some people harvest. Do you?
Apparently I need to wait until the leaves start to yellow before harvesting when I hope the bulbs will be of a better size that those grown in a trough in the greenhouse. I think we left them inside for too long and sort of ignored them as there was too much else going on. I think next year all my garlic faith will be placed in direct planting outdoors.
We planted our onions and shallots in two batches - well I suppose three really. The first two lots were started in modules and planted out - again through weed control fabric. The first lot are doing well and a few weeks ago had a few annual weeds removed from the planting 'trenches'. Shallots are growing along the outer edges and onions in the centre rows.
The second lot of sets probably had to hang around a bit too long in modules as the poor weather meant their intended bed was delayed in being prepared.
These are just beginning to pick up and start growing with the shallots producing stronger growth than the onions. The red onion variety has a few failed plantings. It does seem that red onions are more tricky to grow than the yellow varieties. The white varieties seem the most temperamental and this year we have given those a miss. These were weeded last week for the first time. Again mostly annual weeds such as chickweed and creeping speedwell.
We had lots of sets left over and so these were just planted almost touching in a shallow trench and are now growing well in spite of being planted well after the ones started in modules. We've only used the weed control fabric for the lettuces in this bed.
They look to be growing thicker but bare in mind that the sets are very close together. This method has worked in the past to produce useful small size onions. In fact last year these stored much better than the ones that grew to 'full' size.
What I am hoping is that the weed control fabric will cut down on the time needed for weeding and so in areas that are uncovered I can catch the weeds whilst they are small.
