Soilman: Knows his onions. Er, mostly
“That Soilman, he knows his onions.”
Unfortunately I didn’t overhear this, and in the wider sense it IS bollocks. If you want proof, consider my shitty leeks. Failures? You bet.
But insofar as we’re talking about onions, I do pride myself on having the knack of growing good ones. My ‘secret’: Lots of humus, not too much nitrogen and not too much water (ie don’t water them too much, even in hot weather. They like a bit of drought).
All academic, of course, when there’s downy mildew about; two years ago, my crop was all but destroyed by it.
Moral: Even when you know what you’re doing, you can still cock it right up.
glad to hear anyone can cock things up….doesn’t make me feel quite so inadequate!! My onions grew this year and that was enough for me seeing as I only had 1 last year…I don’t really get what all this bending the tops and stuff is about though…I just pull one up and eat it when I fancy it…tastes great to me!!!
July 21st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
Our onions have been okay so far. We overwintered loads on 235 and had spring planted sets on 201. The overwintered are enormous but too juicy to keep, while the ones on 201 look great so far (fingers crossed) but there’s still plenty of time for things to go wrong!
July 23rd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Ever the optimist! Ahhh but we wouldn’t have our Soilman any other way!
My Hercules onions are the bestest in the world EVERRRRRRRR. And that’s a fact, mostly because I ate some last night and made it so.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Must be a good year for onions, I’d lost all mine to white rot the last couple of years and threatened them if they didn’t perform this year I wasn’t going to give them space. Seems to have done the trick.
And could I put in a plug for people to sign the petition against the relicensing of aminopyralid. It goes to no.10 so with Gordon’s new found greeness you never know. (I’m not holding my breath but it’s better than doing nothing). More info on my blog.
July 26th, 2009 at 9:22 pm