After a long winter, gardeners can hardly wait to get out into the vegetable garden and experience the smell of freshly tilled soil and the feel of the soil running through their fingers.
Hey, wait a minute, we are talking February here, aren’t we?
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Yes, I know it is February, but February marks the start of the vegetable gardening season. The ideal time to plant onions is in the middle of February, or Valentine’s Day weekend, as I always like to tell people, “Nothing says love like onions.”
In Oklahoma, we can grow either short-day or intermediate-day onions. The short-day onions are the sweet onions that we have come to love such as Vidalia, Texas 1015, Imperial Sweet or OSO Sweet. Except for the Texas 1015, these varieties are all the same Texas Yellow Granex .
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What makes them sweet is where they are grown. The Vidalia onion is grown in calcium-rich, low-sulfur soils, in 20 specific counties around Vidalia, Ga. The OSO Sweet is grown in rich volcanic soils at the foot of the Andes Mountains in Chile. The Imperial Sweet is grown below sea level, in the rich, loamy, desert soils in the California desert.
Since we do not live in California, Chile or Georgia, attempting to grow sweet “Vidalia”-type onions is not going to yield us much success. We will end up with a regular Texas Yellow Granex onion that can be purchased at any supermarket, and that is not what we garden for.
Here comes the Texas 1015 to the rescue. It is genetically bred to be sweet. Its sweetness is not dependant on a specific soil or a specific growing condition. So we Oklahomans can grow as sweet an onion as anybody in Georgia, Chile, California, or anywhere else.
Here are a few growing tips to help you on you way to growing the biggest, sweetest onions you ever imagined. The secret to growing large, bragging-size onions is soil fertility.
• 1. A soil test should be taken with potassium and phosphorus applied at the recommended rates.
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• 2. Three weeks after planting, start applying nitrogen, use ammonium nitrate or urea. Apply at rates of 1 cup per 20 feet of row and apply every two weeks. Nitrogen stimulates leaf growth and every leaf represents an onion ring. More leaves equals more rings and more rings mean the bigger the onion.
• 3. Once the neck starts feeling soft do not apply any more fertilizer. This should occur approximately four weeks prior to harvest.
• 4. Always water immediately after feeding and maintain moisture during the growing season. The closer to harvest the more water the onion will require.
• 5. Onions are fully mature when their tops have fallen over. After pulling from the ground allow the onion to dry, clip the roots and cut the tops back to 1 inch.
The flat “Bermuda”-type onion is another onion that you may want to try. They perform well here in central Oklahoma and come in reds and whites. I recommend planting onion plants also known as slips. With slips we know exactly what cultivar we are we are buying, as opposed to bulbs.
Source: https://t-tees.com
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