Our allotment: 5th Feb 2022 - Planting onions and onion progress

We're now at the stage where our new allotment is in full swing. We have moved the shed, greenhouse, raised beds and are in the process of building our new polytunnel. Really, there's no better time to get some more onions in ready for next year. With a circa 100 day maturity they should be ready to harvest from May - Aug which will go nicely with our previous onions which should be ready to harvest from April - July!

Garden update

We planted two sets of white onions back on the 14th January 2022, it's been 22 days and we're starting to see sprouts! This is brilliant, as they are expected to germinate within 10 days; so success. We did notice that only a few had germinated, so there is still some uncertainty on the success rate on the sets but it's looking better than expected for an early January planting in the middle of the UK (It's cold here!)

Our garlic, which we planted on 21st November 2021 is doing exceptionally well, both the elephant and standard garlic!

We weren't so sure this was going to do so well in these planters at first, as they collected an awful lot of water during the wetter months so there was a slight concern about drowning the cloves, which in turn can make them rot. However, we made it through the worst of it and our garlic is doing swimmingly. We might even stick to planting them in planters in the future as it adds a lovely aesthetic to the garden and leaves more room for other crops that don't have such a long maturity period.

New method!

We have tried out a new method with these onions, rather than sticking to the normal 1.5" rows and 15" spacing we've gone for a 1.5" all the way around, measured out by our trusty muffin tray!

As you can see from the photos this is not exactly the normal process for planting onions, there is argument here that they will fight for the same nutrients and in turn will not produce as big a bulb as if they were spaced further apart. I'm not so sure that that is the case, we have very healthy soil and the onions will have lots of goodness to soak up; so we're giving it a go with the intention of getting more crop for the space available. We have a comparison with the bed next door, which was planted 3" apart for the rows and spacing to give ample room. Although I may well just end up putting some carrots in between!

We have also used a garden trellis, for getting spacing that's just perfect for interplanting in between. Our trellis is our go to method so we have done this done one bed, to compare to the new muffin tray method. Is spacing as important as you think? Let's find out!