planting in black mulch

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rowlandwells

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planting in black mulch
« on: July 31, 2021, 09:12 »
i was visiting a fiend of ours his allotment is some fifteen miles away and  every time i see him i always comment on his allotment because he always seems to grow good veg

so was not surprised to see lovely quite large bulb onions and shallots he grew from seed now we have always grew our onions from sets same for shallots but we did try growing some onions from seed this season as well as sets and although our onions grown from seed have turned out to a medium size so we tried  onions from seed  on my daughters  allotment near my fiends  the onions sowed on her plot have done very much than ours but the again there allotments is very good ground black soil as ours is much heavier ground to garden

so I'm going to try growing all our onion crops from seed including shallot seed next season my friend grows a variety called santero [kings] and the shallot variety matador [kings] and I'm interested in santero as its said to be resistant to downy mildew as we do suffer from mildew on our allotments and we need to pull our onion crops  before the mildew sets in or loos them

I've had some good advise from my friend how to achieve the best results  growing onions from seed so only time will tell if I've got it rite  :lol:


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Kleftiwallah

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Re: onions
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2021, 10:12 »
Good morning rowlandwells,  we have the dreaded onion white rot in our garden so no onions here for some years yet.

I did grow some spectacular onions with seedlings/ seeds from this chap.   https://medwynsofanglesey.co.uk/product/large-exhibition-onion-own-re-selection/
why not give them a go and see how large you can get them to grow.  If I remeber they were very tasty as well.   :)  Cheers,  Tony.
I may be growing OLD, but I refuse to grow UP !

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rowlandwells

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Re: onions
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2021, 09:40 »
good morning Tony as you see i have gone for santero and hopefully they will produce some good onions mildew free i have also gone with an overwinter onion the variety Kosma white bulbing onion said to have a sweet taste that we will be sowing around the third week in August

and on the question of growing onions i know soil prep is essential but the one thing that i can't beat  is the weed growth round the onions you can weed round the onions at an early stage but when there growing bigger its a job weeding not to damage the crop so you could do more harm than good by weeding  ?

i suspect the commercial growers us a pre- emerge spray to combat weed growth so the cleaner the ground is an advantage I would say having said that i am thinking about a trial using breathable plastic ground cover putting the plants through the sheeting thus eliminating weed growth  it would be interesting if anyone on 
this site has gone with that method and  if it works to produce a better onions as there not in competition with the weeds using this method i would say





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mumofstig

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Re: onions
« Reply #3 on: August 01, 2021, 10:26 »
I always grow my onions through holes in black plastic weed control fabric (Yuzet) and it keeps between the rows clear, but the weeds still seem to grow close to the bulbs  ::) Then they can be a beggar to remove if you don't catch them while they're  small. As a last resort I use scissors and cut the weed tops off at soil level, that seems to stop most of them in their tracks...
(Except for the year that I planted on a bed that was riddled with bindweed that I didn't know about :ohmy:)

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rowlandwells

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planting in black mulch
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2021, 17:42 »
I've been thinking about planting my onion plants in black mulch next season although we harvested a fair crop of bulb onions yesterday the onions are having to complete with weeds

I've  tried this method before with little succus but that was planting through thick black plastic sheeting but  as the black mulch is much thinner it maybe better for planting and I  made the holes in the plastic  sheeting to big and as sets just didn't come through the plastic and weeds emerged instead of onions so I ended up removing the plastic sheeting as a bad job for the sets to grow  :mad:

so a smaller cut in the mulch so it could be better what I'm not sure about is as onion plants when the onion plant  grows will the bulb it produces grow through the mulch or under the mulch?

I've looked for  some info on youtube about planting in black mulch but its a bit vague and doesn't really explain to much its more for the commercial grower so any info on this topic would be much appreciated as i would really like to try growing onions in black mulch as well as my brassicas and if it works its going to save quite a lot of work removing nets of the brassicas



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jambop

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Re: planting in black mulch
« Reply #5 on: August 04, 2021, 20:18 »

This year I grew my onions as usual from seed BUT I used the Charles Dowding multi sown method and I am not at all disappointed with the results. I sowed Bedfordshire champions and Sturon about four seeds per 4cm module and when they were ready to transplant put them about 20 cm apart on my raised beds and they have produced onions that vary in size from about 6cm in diameter up to 10cm which in my opinion is the perfect size range for kitchen onions . I would say the BC are on the whole a better onion than the Sturon in terms of size . Next year I intend growing an F1 variety because they will always give a more consistent product but will grow BC again it did so well. I had very few weed problems because of the no dig method the ground is covered with a fresh layer of compost prior to planting this suppresses the weeks to a great extent I recommend the method to anybody thinking about going no dig.

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rowlandwells

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Re: planting in black mulch
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2021, 08:06 »
further to this topic I have been looking at some gardeners that have used the black mulch method and it seems to work with no weeds more slug control definitely worth doing for me next season because this year has been rife with weeds and slugs on our plot this season



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