Beautiful Day!

[Westi]

Had one or two flakes down here but although chilly & looking a bit like the Michelin man I cleared the flower plot & had the biggest bonfire with the hedgerow cuttings from the last couple of weeks. Lots of nice wood ash for the onions.

My broadbeans look lost; stems rotted & had a quiet giggle at my patheitc celeraic & curly Kale (my Nero looks really good despite weeks of harvesting)! My garlic looks good - about 10 cms but a little nipped at the edges by the frost but my onions are sulking about 2 - 3 cms on some but lots have rotted!

Here we go again - another topsy turvey season ahead!!

Westi

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks to both of you for the encouraging comments about my onion and garlic, i'm not normally pessimistic but I started to make plans for that patch already.

Don't really know why i'm concerned, all the flowering alliums and other bulbs I planted in the autumn are doing fine. Daffs are up and flowering.

In hindsight, it was the planting instruction that worried me. For the onion and garlic the instruction was to just press them in with their heads sowing, I did push them in slightly deeper but nowhere as deep as the flowering alliums and other bulbs.

In the case of the onion and garlic some appear to have lifted themselves so I had to push them back, Frost-heave ? We haven't had much frost at-all even though water troughs have frozen.

Failure to me means loss of effort and for me what is sometimes quite difficult work rather than the loss of produce though I was getting childishly-excited at the prospect of my own onions and garlic.

[oldherbaceous]

Afternoon Richard, i must admit i have often read about "pressing the sets in", the problem with doing that is, unless the soil is very soft and light, the pushing down compresses the soil beneath, making it very difficult for the roots to get established. This can often then be seen in the sets not getting going, or yellowing of the leaves where there is not enough root to sustain the top growth.

I always use a narrow trowel just to make a small hole.

[Ricard with an H]

Oh-dear.

I was torn between the instruction on the packaging and other advise.

When I planted flowering alliums and all other flowering bulbs I dug-out a narrow trench so they went in at four to six inches deep. They all look healthy.

As you suggest, some of mine are yellowing and pathetic and whilst others appear better none of the onion/garlic looks as healthy as the flowering allium and bulbs.

I had hoped that by the age of 70 I would have a comfortable life free from learning via mistakes, any ideas about shuffling the ailing bulbs down or should I leave them to nature. How about covering them with last years potting compost ?

[oldherbaceous]

Afternoon Richard, firstly, we all can do things that don't work out right every-year, so i wouldn't worry too much about that.

With your garlic and onions, i suppose it depends on a few things.

How many are you talking about?
And how compact the soil is under them?

If it was just a few, and they hadn't started to make any root, i would lift the bad ones, loosen the soil and replant them.

If the soil was not that hard, i would topdress the garlic with about 1 inch of compost, and just try and fork very lightly between the onions.

[Ricard with an H]

I have just lifted three of the ones that look pathetic, they have all thrown-out nice healthy looking white roots though sideways more than downward.

The soil isn't compacted, in-fact, before I planted I had introduced a lot of sand and home composted material together with fish-blood and bone.

The soil is clay-like and stony but much improved since last year, I can quite easily push a finger all the way into the soil. It's moist but not wet.

I'm a little more confident now though I am going to take your advise on the top-dressing as an extra-precaution.

[Ricard with an H]

This photo was taken on 18th December and whilst much more growth has occurred in the centre of the bed the onion or garlic at the edges is about the same.

Problem-is, I don't remember which are garlic rows. Maybe it's onion in the middle.

In case you wondered, the canes are there to stop my little dog walking over everything, they work.

[oldherbaceous]

Evening Richard, i must say your soil is in far better condition that mine at the moment, all the rain we have had has really knocked the air out of it, so after seeing your photo, i don't think it is compaction. If they have good roots coming out of them, then i would leave well alone, and not replant any.

If you topdress, don't actually cover the onion sets as they dislike being planted much below the surface of the soil, or they will suffer from something called thick neck.

The garlic will not mind being a couple of inches down, though.

The onions should have a more rounder leaf then the garlic, if that helps.

Now where's your torch.

[Geoff]

Seems a strange way to plant Garlic to me. I would bury it like your ornamental Alliums. I planted my Garlic at about the same time 2011 and 2012, nothing appeared until the Spring in 2012 but this year they have been up for ages. I agree covering them or somehow getting them in deeper will help, plenty of time yet for them to do something. Never made much of over Winter Onion sets, always lost too many. Now only use seedling ones in a cloche all winter.

[FelixLeiter]

Planting depth is important for garlic. It needs to be planted to at least twice as deep as the cloves are long. If they're pressed into the surface, as is usually recommended for onions (which I don't do: I take out a drill) then they will be too shallow and they will "blow" — that is, they do not properly form a nice tight tunic. Blown garlic does not store well.

To tell them apart once they're up: garlic has a flat leaf; onion leaves are cylindrical, hollow within.

I've never quite seen the advantage of autumn-planted onions. Losses are nearly always heavy, resulting in a gappy row by the next spring, which is space wasted.

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks to you all for your help.

If anything I would have been happy to loose some onion, good garlic isn't easy to buy this far west.

I have done a lot of work on the soil and even though it will always contain lots of stones it isn't getting compacted. When went amongst the rows with a pointed hoe two days ago there was a very thin crust of rain amalgamated top-soil but other than that it was nice and loose thanks to all that sand and organic material I introduced.

I'm just wondering if I dare sow carrot in-between the rows of onion and garlic where there is space and when the soil warms a little. I have left a good six inches in-between rows and presumably the onion/garlic will harvest before the carrot gets too big. It'll be a squeeze, won't it ?

This cold weather is even getting through my long-johns though i'm not complaining because the soil is so dry. In fact the soil has drained so well that the farmer has started working in the adjacent fields that usually have barley. Sadly, the set-asside payments have come to an end which will probably have a huge effect on the healthy skylark population in those fields.

The sound of tractors in the fields together with lambs and raising skylark on the dog-walks, all the sounds of spring-come-early. I wish.

[FelixLeiter]

It'll be a squeeze, won't it ?

Yes, too much of one. Apart from the competition for water and nutriment, there will be a battle for light.

[Ricard with an H]

OK, thanks, i'll give that a miss.

From the description given it's the onion that isn't doing well and the garlic is comparatively racing ahead. That'll do me, if the onion looks like a waste of space at a convenient time i'll pull them and sow carrot alongside the garlic.

I made some mistakes and had some fun with carrot last year but young carrot straight out of the ground and onto the plate brought back fond memories from my childhood. If carrot fly don't get them and the slugs don't get them my lovely little dog snacks on fresh-pulled carrot.

You're such a helpful and friendly lot and even though I do read a lot from allotment books there is sometimes varying opinion and differing ways of doing things. I think it was Alan who was concerned about the amount of cow-poo I dug into the soil last year, together with the sand the soil is very nice and crumbly this year so presumably a soil test might be a good idea just in case I over-did the poo.

[FelixLeiter]

so presumably a soil test might be a good idea just in case I over-did the poo.

It's always wise to keep an eye on the pH. Sand + Manure = Acidity, more often than not, which is easy to correct with a bit of lime.

[Geoff]

Lovely day yesterday. Dug and composted the Potato bed. Decided to let it dry a day before smashing it up and sheeting it over; might have been a mistake, froze well again last night. Also managed to cut down the Autumn Bliss Raspberries and feed and hoe all the rest of the soft fruit. Think I'll pot up the Dahlia tubers while the frost clears this morning. Beautifully sunny again.