Growing onions through landscaping fabric

I thought that next year I would try growing my onions planted through the fabric that keeps weeds at bay. I thought that in the autumn I would prepare the bed with plenty of manure and leave it over the winter then in the spring turn it all in and tread down then cover the ground with fabric and plant the seedlings through that with a dibber and grow them on. Has anybody tried this method and will it work?

I watched a video of someone planting onion seedlings using a device that dibbed a hole and planted the seedling through a plastic sheet which covered an onion bed, I think this was commercial grower. That got me thinking I could do the same in my veg plot and save a load of time weeding. Its not really the hoeing that I don't like but sometimes you can damage a bulb with the hoe. I have a hand swan neck hoe I use for onions and it works fine but thought I would try this method to do away with the weeding.

Well looks like this could be a winner! I do not grow onions over winter even though we get a very good autumn I just plant out in the spring. I will start off my seeds about January and they will go out about mid march or beginning April. I actually planted seedlings out at the start of May one year and got amazing onions by mid September, they were an F1 variety.

This is what I did with my squash this year. Admittedly it was as this was my first year here and I had completely run out of the ability to dig any more by the time I got to them as I have been converting a lawn into a veg patch. I cheated shamelessly by just throwing down a load of rotted muck onto the lawn, covering it with fabric and then planting the squash through the fabric. Reconed if it didn't work I had lost nothing more than a couple of seedlings but they were brilliant! And this year it should be much easier to dig the sod over.

Is what I am going to do next year too as I gradually convert grass into veg bed.

Growing through a membrane worked well for my strawberries last year, it appeared to keep the bugs and weeds at bay and the fruit didn't rot when resting on top of the membrane - I am giving this another go for next year and I also planned to try it with onions and the brassica's.

Hi Timdunn
How big did you make the holes? Just big enough to plant and let the bulbs grow underneath or bigger to accommodate the full bulbs size when formed later? Like the idea of reuse from year to year.

I grew last years garlic and autumn onions through black fabric and it was a success. Weeding was down to almost nothing, just the odd thing to nip off that had poked up through the holes, and the outcome was good - garlic particularly. Some of the onions didn't do too well, but I think that's cos I left it too late planting and they didn't get going before the very cold weather hit.

I've now got some leeks growing the same way, as an experiment. If anything they look better than those growing the conventional way and I've had to weed those twice already. So that's looking like it will work too. Digging them up could be interesting.

Oh and ive also been growing my winter squash and courgettes through that stuff too. Works a treat. Very little weeding and less watering needed.

Thinking of growing my potatoes that way next year.