How deep for onions?

Hi All,

I have started "carving" beds for this years onion and shallot planting. Not to ask too stupid a question, but how deep should I make the beds? Would 10" be enough? (It has to accommodate all kinds of vegetable scraps at the bottom.)

And since I will be putting vegetable scraps at the bottom, how long should I wait before planing the bulbs? Can I do it the same day?

Many thanks,

-T

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T
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i am not sure what you are planting...

seeds, bulbs (also called sets aka small onions or small shallots), or actively growing plants?

songbird

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songbird

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T

T wrote: ...

linked right in there...

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songbird

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songbird

I missed that!

"... depth of at least 8 in., preferably 12 in."

I am about 8 inches down. The rocks have become pretty big and take about 20 minutes of work to extract.

I tell myself I will only have to do this once. The other part of me says, but you will continue to expand and have to do this over and over and over. I am reminded of farms I have seen with rock walls made from rocks they dug out. I must have taken them years!

-T

Reply to
T

Well, why do it, then? Follow your neighbor's lead and grow in raised beds. It's easy to start small using containers and to scale the garden to match ones experience, skill level and resources.

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Anonymous

Hi Derald,

To answer your question, it is because this endless recession has hit me so hard that I can not afford it. I can barely buy food for the family. Manual labor: I have in good supply.

And if I don't push the envelope, I will never learn anything. This group has good teachers.

After doing it this way, I agree with Songbird's assessment on raised beds. So, it was a blessing in disguise.

As for small containers, my manual labor substitute is to "carve" out holes (I call them ground pots) and beds in my rocks/dirt (I would not call it soil). Ground pots are cheap and they don't blow over. They also have good drainage. And, I am not prepping places I don't use.

I pile the bottom full of weeds and vegetable table scraps. Then I mix in my high Ph dirt with organic fertilizer and peat moss (a form of vegi table scraps plus a few 100,000 years).

So, far, it is working marvelously. I got decent peppers and egg plant this year. The zukes are still a bit slow on producing, but I hae so many that I have been freezing about have what I cook up now for about three weeks.

As I said, this group has good teachers.

-T

Hopefully, the recession's back will be broken here in a few months with the coming change of power in our government.

Reply to
T

about half

Reply to
T

T wrote: ...

8 is probably plenty (i don't ever see onion roots going down that far when i pull ours). maybe that extra depth is for the garlic...

yes, remember, to start with, all was molten rock, without wind/water and plate techtonics we'd not be here.

use the rocks to make wind blocks. your plants won't have to struggle so hard and the area will hold more moisture longer.

all of our rocks were brought here by trucks and cars (and once in a while a cement mixer as they can chute crushed limestone nicely :) ).

there may be rocks down deeper but they are covered by layers of coal, salt, sand, clay, etc. the glaciers left a few here or there.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Thank you! I think 12" might kill me.

My garlic never goes below about 4"

or the moon for that matter.

plate techtonics is the great recycler.

We have glacier retreats near by. I always love to see huge out of place boulders in fields that don't seem like they belong.

Reply to
T

T wrote: ...

since i didn't answer this part and haven't seen it addressed elsewheres...

when you use veggie scraps it depends upon what type they are as to how far and how much time you would give it.

the wetter and more fungi or other questionable things going on the further away and more time you want to put them from your bulbs. how much stuff you putting down there? an inch or less?

because i worm compost the veggie scraps here they can be planted right into directly (worm poo is dominated by bacterial species which will die off as the worm poo ages -- similar to how human poo bacteria will also die off as the poo ages, but i would never plant human food directly into human poo).

so given that information and further thoughts i generally only isolate things that are going to actively ferment and rot (green stuff, fruit scraps, spoiling meats, fungi laden stuff) from the plants and seeds by about four to six inches of dirt. as the stuff rots the dirt settles, so i also leave some extra up top to compensate for that.

oh, meat stuff i would bury deeper so that the critters/flies don't smell it or dig it up.

this all reminds me, i have a bucket of tomato trimmings to bury. :)

songbird

Reply to
songbird

Hi Songbird,

I chop it up with a shovel. It comes out to about

1 to 3 inches loose packed when I am done. Then I cover it up with dirt mixed with peat. (I don't have leftover extra dirt, as at least half of the dirt is rocks.)

The vegi scraps consist of avocado skins and seeds (which I whack with the back of my ax), jicama skins, tomato rinds, failed zuke fruit, lettuce trimmings, parsley stalks, garlic wrappers, ends of carrots, ends of cucumbers, purslane stems, bolted purslane (whole plant), pepper ends, melon rinds, and so and and so forth. Plus any weed that was foolish enough to invade my garden (not dandelions as I am afraid they will sprout). I keep a bag I fill with vegi scraps as I cook.

And, I plant about 4" above the scraps. The idea is that when the root get long enough to reach the scraps, they will be broken down.

The one time I have to dig up one of my holes to make it deeper, I only found one onion skin that had not decomposed. The rest had vanished. The hole was about two weeks old.

I really do not know what the effect of a new plant would be sitting on top of a bunch of vegi scraps. I would like to not wait so long that nutrients get washed away before the plants above it can take advantage.

But then again, I do not know what I am doing.

-T

Reply to
T

T wrote: ...

leave the dandelions out on the surface. in your climate they'll dry out soon enough, then they can be buried.

yeah. probably ok as long as it doesn't overheat or the gases or liquids from fermenting don't mess up germination or get a fungi going too close to the surface (before the seeds can sprout).

melon rinds go really quick. in the worm buckets here they're gone within three days most of the time. other items persist longer (carrot ends or potato pieces can persist for quite some time if the ground is cool and damp) pretty much any root crop if it isn't cooked, frozen, dried or ground up may persist a while until the fungi or other soil critters break it down a bit. worms may nibble a little at some things, but generally they don't eat live plant material (some worm species will drag leaves/grasses into their burrows, but it is primarily food for the bacteria in their gut).

there is a huge amount of energy in food scraps for other animals/bacteria/fungi. even after it is fermented or digested by something else, what remains can often fuel another few rounds of various creatures/etc finishing up.

when you look at what happens when plants photosynthesize and what the various chemical compounds are created and all that energy gets stored in one way or another. even the hard to digest stuff like cellulose has a lot of potential energy/chemical compounds useful to a fungi...

songbird

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songbird

T wrote: ...

send me a working e-mail address.

songbird

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songbird

jvosygkdslc

(at)

gmail

(dot)

com

Reply to
T

Thank you!

My main concern was for my onion and shallot beds. The nights are in the 40's F now and the days in the 70 to 80's F, I do not know how much heat I will be creating in the beds. I am racing to make sure I am ready when my order of bulbs arrives. I won't back fill until they do.

I also am including tomatillo wrappers too. They have FINALLY started to ripen. (I shake the bushes and pick up whatever falls off.) We eat them like cherry tomatoes.

Reply to
T

T wrote: ...

not enough to worry about with that level of green materials.

they'll get there right about when something else comes up. or that is how it seemed to go when i had stuff coming. :)

i haven't had one plain ever, sometime i should try some and see if i react to them too...

t.y. for e-mail addr.

songbird

Reply to
songbird

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