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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Onions & Garlic in small Greenhouse.

I built this small green house from 8 old house windows just to plant onion seeds it measures 27"x28"x92". After watching the video from the company in Texas that grows onions I decided I need some artificial warmer weather to may my onions grow more leaves before days get 12 hours long, they will stop making leaves and start making a large bulb when days get longer. I hope to get 12 to 15 leaves on each onion that = 12 to 15 rings for 1 lb onions. I planted 1/2 of these onion seeds in a different location like I always grow onions so I will be able to see if this green house helps grow larger onions. I only had 90 seeds to plant in the green house so I planted 30 garlic in the extra space. It was 37 degrees this morning at 8 am green house was 80 degrees in full sun. Middle of the day sun is low behind the trees green house is 70 degrees in full shade and 60 degrees outside.

I planted 4 types of onions and garlic in the garden a few weeks ago. I have a total of 300 onions planted and 105 garlic planted.

ButterflyLady29
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Nice set-up. Be sure to open it and vent it when it gets hot inside. I cooked a bunch of cacti seedlings once because the cold frame wasn't vented.

Taiji
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Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito

That is really a nice little set up. I have some old windows laying around, (along with a lot of other useless stuff) :) kinda gives me an idea!

Do you plan on transplanting the onions out of there eventually, or are you going to leave them in that location for the duration? (oops, silly question, 90 seeds, you must be going to transplant)

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Gary350
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Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Taiji wrote:That is really a nice little set up. I have some old windows laying around, (along with a lot of other useless stuff) :) kinda gives me an idea!

Do you plan on transplanting the onions out of there eventually, or are you going to leave them in that location for the duration? (oops, silly question, 90 seeds, you must be going to transplant)

https://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/Dur_OneYear.php

No I am not going to transplant. Seeds will grow leaves all winter. When day light become 12 hours long the plants stops growing leaves and starts growing bulbs. Trick to getting large onions is to grow lots of leaves, each leaf is also an onion ring. An onion with only 4 or 5 rings will never grow a large onion. Onions with 15 leaves will have 15 rings they will grow large. Online daylight geographic calculator says my days will become 12 hours long March 16th 2017 that is about when onions stop making leaves and start making large bulbs. My 85 day onions should mature about June 15th. My 125 day onions should mature about July 20th. The only thing the tiny green house is doing is allowing the onions to grow more leaves during the winter. Onions do not grow much when it is cold and covered with snow. Green house will be cold at night and 70 to 80 degrees every day in 30 degree weather. When spring weather gets warm enough the green house will have to get vented I need a servo motor to open the lid to let out the heat other wise I have to remember to open it myself then close it at night.

You can get free windows from window replacement companies. They throw all the old windows in the dumpster make arrangements to pick them up before they get broken.

Taiji
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Location: Gardening in western U.P. of MI. 46+ N. lat. elev 1540. zone 3; state bird: mosquito

This is strange. I just noticed from a past post that last May 14th, my Candy onion seedlings in a dishpan had not yet been set out. They were really small at that time and don't know when I set them out. For the sake of argument, say, maybe June 1. Funny thing is, looking at the daylength calculator that you talked about, at that time my daylength was already at 14 hours. Candy are intermediate and supposed to start bulbing at 12 to 14 hours of daylength.

Yet, they sat out there and grew leaves and grew leaves for a long time, before starting to bulb up. So, I'm really a little confused about the bulbing up process. Yet, I had a harvest of huge 5 inch diameter onions; some a bit bigger. Maybe there's something else at work there that triggers the plant to start bulbing. But the onion farm site says bulbing up isn't dependent on size or age of plants but on daylength and temp. According to that, my little teeny seedlings should have started bulbing right away. Hmmm. :?



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