Onions in a raised bed?

[TomatoNut95]

Hello! How do you grow onions in a raised bed successfully? I've NEVER had good luck! The greens stay puny and then die! Sometimes I think my backyard is jinxed. Nothing I grow back there grows to normal size. Stays runty.

[rainbowgardener]

If nothing you plant grows well, you need to figure out what the issue is -- most likely some problem with your soil. Have you had soil tests done? Another possibility, probably with whatever the soil issue is, could be water. If you water with tap (hose) water and your water is either very alkaline (pH 8 or more) or very acid (pH 5 or less), you will have problems.

I put onions and/or garlic in almost all my raised beds, help keep pests away from whatever else is in there. They do great. I plant them in the fall and am harvesting now. Garlic heads are three inches across.

If your soil is a problem, raised beds would help with that, but they would have to be at least 8-10 inches tall and filled with good, rich soil. And you would have to be sure the natural ground is loosened up, before you add the soil to fill the beds. If the native soil is hardened up, your raised bed would turn into a bathtub and drown everything.

[TomatoNut95]

I have different store-bought soils within my garden, topsoil, Miracle-Gro and Sta-Green garden soils, peat moss and store-bought humus and manure. As for water, I use only rainwater now since having being able to collect it in several buckets, and one big barrel.

[rainbowgardener]

It sounds good, but depends on the details. Commercial "topsoil" can be almost anything. Check your bags of "garden soil" carefully. Sometimes what they call garden soil is meant to be filler. It will say on the bags "do not use for" [basically growing things]. Since you are having problems with everything, I would still get soil tests done. And check the pH of your rainwater. Rain water is nice, but there is such a thing as acid rain....

[TomatoNut95]

I use Scotts brand topsoil. This fall I plan to do an overhaul on my garden. Remove most of the existing soil and replace with organic soil. I learned elsewhere how truly chemically synthetic Miracle-Gro is, and that I should search for soils marked with OMRI. How can I test the ph of my rainwater, please?

[TomatoNut95]

Another factor I must deal with is the pine trees block the morning sun off my garden. I cannot move my garden elsewhere or critters would get it or it would get flooded. I live on a slope, and there is a line where a small river will form during long, heavy rains.

[Gary350]

Don't worry about shade most plants do good with 6 hrs of sun especially if you have hot summer weather 90+ degrees. My garden is in a donut circle of trees now that sun is high in the sky my garden gets sun from 8am to 3 pm.

Do an experiment, mix 50% of your yard soil with 50% or your factory made soil you buy in a bag. Plant something in it to see how it does. Tomatoes are easy to grow and they need very little nitrogen.

Buy a 99¢ package of PH paper on Ebay test your soil & water for PH.

[Gary350]

I have no clue why I mentioned tomatoes in the above post. Talking about onions, I have to plant in a hill to keep my onions out of the swamp we have lots of rain almost every day Nov to May. I planted 3 rows of onion sets 4" apart in a 40 ft row = 298 plants. Put lots of nitrogen and potassium in the soil before you plant bulbs. Raised bed only needs to be 4" high so roots can get down into the real soil for moisture, onions love water. Push bulbs down about 3/4 inch deep. Feed plants every week with nitrogen and potassium. Wood ash makes excellent onion fertilizer. Onions need lots of nitrogen AND potassium if you want BIG onions. NPK 46-0-60 is good fertilizer for onions plus water. Onions will grow tall, when they have 10 to 14 leaves knock the leaves over so they are bent 90 degrees plants will stop growing tops then start grown bulbs.

[TomatoNut95]

Hey, that's fine you mentioning tomatoes! I love to hear anybody's advice on tomatoes! I've learned that tomatoes don't need so much nitrogen, so I bought some bloom booster fertilize. I'm going to go in Tractor Supply sometime and grab up all kinds of fertilize: bone meal, blood meal and other organic stuff I've seen for my garden renovation this fall.

Ok, I planted my onion sets in the row where I added leaf mulch, and if I remember correctly, Scotts Humus and Manure. If I water/fertilize with Miracle Gro, will that help?

[Gary350]

Hey, that's fine you mentioning tomatoes! I love to hear anybody's advice on tomatoes! I've learned that tomatoes don't need so much nitrogen, so I bought some bloom booster fertilize. I'm going to go in Tractor Supply sometime and grab up all kinds of fertilize: bone meal, blood meal and other organic stuff I've seen for my garden renovation this fall.

Ok, I planted my onion sets in the row where I added leaf mulch, and if I remember correctly, Scotts Humus and Manure. If I water/fertilize with Miracle Gro, will that help?

Your right tomatoes need almost NO nitrogen. If you give tomatoes nitrogen you get large plants with few tomatoes. Best fertilizer for tomatoes is wood ash, it has lime for BER plus Potassium that is what makes lots of fruit. Let your plants tell you what they need. If leaves are dark green they need no nitrogen. If leaves are pale green they need a little bit of nitrogen. If leaves are slightly yellow they need more nitrogen. If leaves are very yellow plants are starving for nitrogen. Not likely you will every see tomatoes starving for nitrogen. Tomatoes are easy to grow. I get 2 times more tomatoes using cages instead of letting them grow across the ground. You should be able to get 30 to 40 lbs of tomatoes from each plant. What is your weather like in Texas? Tomatoes do not like hot weather. I live in TN we are having a mild summer so far it was 90 today. It usually gets 98 to 100 or hotter here tomatoes suffer in 100. When I lived in Phoenix AZ my best garden was planted Nov 1st it was 65 to 70 all winter during the day.. Arizona soil has no food value for plants, Texas soil is about the same, you probably will have nitrogen problems with tomatoes and other things too.

[TomatoNut95]

Oh wow! Love all those tomatoes. I see a lot of my tomato plants that will turn yellow. Miracle Gro fixes it within a few days.

Texas weather is hot. Hot and humid after rains, and hot and dry during drought.

I like to cage my tomato plants to, but my beefsteak got so big, I had to stake it to keep the branches from breaking. I took the pruning shears to it last week because it was overtaking my smaller plants.

[imafan26]

Remember day length and temperature dependent crops like onions, garlic, zingerber, chiso , many of the flowering bulbs need to be planted at the right time of the year and you need to choose varieties for your zone. Onions and garlic are usually planted by seed in the fall. Some places, not mine, can plant garlic for their zone in the Spring from sets. In Texas you would need to plant either intermediate or southern varieties. You cannot plant northern varieties.
Dixondale farms has a good tutorials on choices of varieties for your zone and when and how to plant them.
https://www.dixondalefarms.com/

Grey duck garlic has some good information for first time garlic growers.
https://www.dixondalefarms.com/

https://www.centraltexasgardener.org/re ... ng-garlic/

No matter what you want to plant, you have to get your soil in shape first. Add organic matter, lots of it about 4-6 inches and you will need to add more compost every year or season. Compost is not fertilizer. The best way to know if you need to correct your pH or what fertilizer to use is to get a soil test. Your local extension office is a good resource for finding a testing center. It cost me $12 for pH and major nutrients except nitrogen and it comes with recommendations for fertilizer.

The recommendations will offer organic amendments if you ask. There is always a recommendation for nitrogen, but there is an easy test. If the plants do not grow well and are stunted, you are missing a major nutrient. Nitrogen is the most common limiting factor of growth. The total nitrogen requirement needs to be divided and delivered to the plants when they are actively growing and need it. Organic fertilizer have low numbers and is not plant available until it is converted by the soil microbes. Organic nutrients might not be available when the plant needs it. You will need to supplement with fast nitrogen when needed. Organic inputs ideally should go in up to 6 months in advance of when you need it. A high or low pH, or imbalance in the quantity of nutrients can affect nutrient availability to the plants. Synthetic fertilizer is always available in a form that plants can use immediately, but you need to still make sure you add the right kind and amount. Even with synthetic fertilizer, it is a good idea to add organic matter to improve soil tilth and support the soil community.

[TomatoNut95]

I never grow onions from seed. I always just buy a bag of little bulbs from Tractor Supply. I don't know what variety they are, I just assume they are meant for this area. I just choose what color I want(yellow, white or red) and plant a few and give the rest away.
I plan to get my hands on a bunch of fertilizes for my garden renovation this fall. Would bone or blood meal be good for onions? (If I added it before planting the bulbs that is)

[imafan26]

Bulbs and sets are brought in by big box stores in the Spring here too. Unfortunately, they ship to stores all over the country and since they are retailers, they probably don't really know that onion bulbs won't grow everywhere.

Living in Hawaii, is pretty much like living in a foreign country. It is very difficult to get live plants imported because of ag quarantine rules. We also pay twice the shipping, once to bring the product in and again to send the empty ship back. Most catalog companies will not ship to Hawaii. I have had seeds confiscated by dept of Ag because the vendor did not have a phyto certificate.

I plant onion seeds, Texas granax = Maui onion. They are readily available here and the right southern variety for me to grow. The big box companies also buy seed racks that contain Walla Walla onions, a Northern variety, which I know will require a longer day length so will not produce good results. I plant the seeds in the fall around September/October and the onions will grow through the winter months and be harvested sometime in Early May (approx 5-6 months from seed). I have not had good results with Spring planting. I don't have the space to waste on a fussy crop like bulb onions. I am not able to grow enough onions to meet my needs and short day onions don't store well. I am better off using the space for something that is easier for me to grow and yields better. I do occasionally grow a small patch bulb onions in my alkaline plots because when it does work out, the onions are very sweet and not hot at all, but that only lasts for about 2 weeks in my summer heat. I rather grow bunching onions instead since they are much easier to grow and I get tops year round and I get repeat harvests for almost 2 years.

As far as fertilizer goes. Phosphorus is not a mobile element, so things like bone meal should be added prior to planting if needed. However, it depends on whether or not phosphorus is needed. Blood meal is a fast release nitrogen and should be added after the plants are up. Slow nitrogen can be added up to six months before planting. Again, the exact amounts will be determined by the soil test. Onions require high nitrogen during the vegetative phase, but you need to apply nitrogen in increments at the right time. Too much nitrogen and the onions won't bulb up nicely.

Since you are saying your plants are not growing that well, you need to focus more on improving the soil tilth and balance the pH and nutrients. To do that organically, you should be planning ahead. Organic components need time to work. Start with a soil test and follow recommendations for the crop you are planning.

https://agrilife.org/etg/2015/02/13/tim ... nt-onions/
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~hector/prod%20g ... I-HV99.pdf

[TomatoNut95]

Wow, I don't think I want to live in Hawaii if they're going to be nitpicky on seeds and plants like that! (no offense to the beautiful place) What's the deal, are they afraid a certain plant is going to spread a disease? I guess I could understand that on live plants; but seeds?

I do have one of those automatic soil tester gadgets- you mix up some dirt and stick the rods down in the soil and a needle on the box part points towards either alkaline or acidic. I tried it once, but I don't think it worked....or I did something wrong, which sounds more like it. I think I am dumber than my own garden.

[Taiji]

Did you happen to notice what looks quite a bit like a regular house fly on the tips of your onion stems? This year I am dealing with those and I believe them to be the onion maggot. I think they lay the egg(s) in the tips of the onions.

Those stems are turning brown and keeling over. I first noticed them because my little song sparrows scratch around the garden and I would keep seeing them jumping up to the onion tips to get something, then noticed the flies. Most of the flies were dead already. I haven't seen any new damage for a few days so am hoping that cycle is over. Don't know if they'll come back later or not. Most of the plants are surviving though for now. I'm watching to see if they'll continue to put out new leaves.

I'm thinking next year a solution might be some floating row cover. Of course, you may have any of the other issues that the others have mentioned.

Guess I meant to say the tips of the leaves, not stems.

[TomatoNut95]

No, no flies. I have worms eating on the greens of my last two barely thriving ones though. Stupid worms. I think they're cabbage worms: small, brown and squishy.

[applestar]

If you are getting onion fly infestation, the issue is not so much the leaves as the bulbs.

@taiji, I think you should try pulling up some severely affected onions — wash and examine the bulbs. Peel outer layers. The maggots tunnel in and around just under a layer and encourage rot. I had a REALLY bad case a few years back — had to do this with every single harvested bulb and slice off ugly bits to clean them up to usable level. Advanced cases had brown pupa under the layers at end of tunnels.

Chopped up the good parts after thoroughly washing and froze (or dehydrated) the lot. No possibility of curing for dry storage.

I reluctantly grew no onions during the main season for two years (when you were posting about those lovely candy onions, etc.....)

They got into young tender garlic too when they couldn’t find onions, though not as severely.

[Taiji]

Thanks for the info applestar. I'm going to post some pics of the fly on the onion leaves and the damage on my 2019 garden progress thread so I don't hijack TomatoNut's thread. I did pull up an onion and didn't see any damage to the bulb, but maybe I need to look more closely.

[TomatoNut95]

Hey, go right ahead and post all you want on onions here! I can use all the advice on onions I can get. I think one of my last two died.

Yesterday I went shopping and bought a bag of bone meal. At first I couldn't decide between the blood or the bone meal, but the bone meal said it was best for bulbs, so I went with that. Beside the blood meal numbered 6-8-0 and the blood numbered 12-0-0.

[Gary350]

When I lived in Phoenix AZ area my best onion & garlic was planted Oct 1st when it was about 90 degrees. 2 months later it was 70 during the day and 35 at might. Best onion & garlic crop I ever grew I think it was the cool weather that made them grow so well I did not use much fertilizer. My fertilizer was Ammonium Sulfate in 50 lb bag and wood ash. My garlic was large as grocery store garlic and onions were larger than I can grow in TN. I think TN is too hot in summer for garlic and onions. I am going to plant onion seed soon Aug 7th I hope it does better here growing in cooler fall weather. Go to farm supply store buy 50 lbs of 15-15-15 fertilizer for $10 use 25 lbs of a 40 ft row of onions.