winter onions

[lottie lou]

I have done a very silly thing.  I thought I had read somewhere that winter onion sets should be planted with 1" of soil covering, which I did yesterday.  Now I realise I read the article wrong, or the wrong article - do I have to go back to dig them up and replant or can I just leave them and hope they grow properly.

[lottie lou]

[manicscousers]

my neice asked if she could plant mine, I told her to plant them, just covered, she used a bulb planter  :o
the onions, and the garlic she did the same with are now coming up really well  ;D

[Robert_Brenchley]

I dib small holes, dropthem in, and cover with loads of mulch. they grow fine. Don't let it worry you, it may not be conventional, but it works.

[saddad]

and probably means you don't have to keep re setting them as the birds have pulled them up!  ;D

[kt.]

They will work their way up.  May just take an extra week or two thats all.

[lottie lou]

thanks a lot, you have really cheered me up.  Now can continue concentrating of that overgrown patch I call my allotment.  don't know where those darned weeds etc come from.

[KathrynH]

I always just cover mine and they seem to do better that way so you may have done yourself a favour without realising! As to the weeds, I've been battling with them for more than 10 years now so can't help you with that one I'm afraid!

[adeymoo]

I thought I would as a new lottie owner in January put the effort into removing weeds. I removed the turf from my lottie where the bed were to go, turned them over to dry out the roots of the weeds and as I double dug my beds I put the turf with dry dead roots at the bottom (450 - 600mm down) and gradually put the soil in the bed with occasional raking to catch loose root bits and large stones.

Result was virtually no perennial weeds in my beds all year but I found that couch grass had spread its roots from the grassed paths into the beds ready to pounced. To combat this I am putting in edging to the beds with plastic DPC sheet stapled to the bottom to give 400mm depth of protection. If you have seen couch grass roots growing through potatoes you may consider this a pointless exercise but all you can do is experiment. I have seen the neighbouring lottie owner on all fours, day after day trying to clear couch grass by hand with the result that it grows back and he seems to have no time to actually grow anything. That is not what I call a fun day on the lottie.

[Robert_Brenchley]

Couch was a major problem for me at first, but the roots are sufficiently strng to make it feasible to get them out in one piece with a bit of patience. Ground elder is far harder to get rid of. If it's in the path you need to dig that out.