[Benandbill]

... yesterday at 5 pm, I went to water my onions.  Yes, watering at this time of year!!  I'm desperate for them to succeed, but it looks like we've had a bit of frost overnight so I hope I haven't harmed there.

You should've seen me snooping round with a watering can hoping nobody spotted me  .  I put a layer of groworganic on my compost as well though which is supposed to warm it a bit and help it rot down.  I also measured a couple of beds so I can build small wooden boundaries from the path.

[DD.]

There's absoutely no need to water at this time of year, unless you're in a desert! There's plenty of moisture in the soil. You're more likely to encourage them to rot.

Onions are shallow enough rooted anyway and making too much moisture available near the surface will not encourage them to put down deeper roots for when there is less moitsure available. You should only water them in dry weather.

[Gandan57]

You`re not too far from me Bandb, didn`t you have the rain that we had yesterday morning?

[Ma and Pa Snip]

Ours are in raised beds and the top few inches of soil is dry and crumbly. The combination of wind and sun soon dries the top 6 inches of soil in our beds out.

I haven't watered the onions in the raised bed but the shallots which are in higher tubs were bone dry so just given them a sprinkling.  Both onions and shallots were overwintered.

[Benandbill]

I'm inclined to agree with you DD.  I shall be carefull not to water unless totally dry.

We had a v/sunny day y'day, I've fed them with Groworganic and fish blood and bone recently and it's all still sitting atop the soil not looking much like it's doing anything.  Part of me thought watering would help mix it all in a bit.

Not done shallots yet.  Maybe I should've as they're more frost hardy..

Thanks all for your replies.

[Kleftiwallah]

Be careful when watering, you don't want too much water to enter the onions between the layers and start a to rot.    Cheers,   Tony.