In The Garden: Growing Onions

0:00I'm joined as ever by Judy Beck from a clon-road garden center. Judy, good morning to you. Good morning, Alan. How are you today? Well, we have talked about things like carrots in recent weeks and cabbage and here's a vegetable now that it took me some time to acquire a taste for what happened later in life and love them now. And this is onions. Yes, so we'll continue with the vegetable theme because that's what a lot of gardeners are coming in to buy at the moment. I call them the real gardeners, the people who grow vegetables. In that sense, what they're making full use of their garden? Absolutely. And nothing better than grows yourself. So onions would probably be one of the easiest things to grow.

1:01So not only for your experienced gardeners, it's probably if you want to start growing a few vegetables, onions is a really good one to start with because you're pretty much guaranteed success. Okay. Well, I mean, for that reason alone, you can't go wrong. So what else do people need to know about onions? I suppose in terms of growing them, is there a hard and fast rule on that? Well, there's two different ways to grow onions. One is from seed and one is from sets. And sets are basically little onions that have been grown from seed last year and the growth has been stopped when they form a small tiny little onion. And people buy them then and replant them now and then they grow into a nice big onion. And it's probably the easiest way to grow them. But a lot of experienced gardeners do grow them from seed and it's probably more economical to grow them from seed, but sets is easier. So if you're beginning gardening, I would recommend to grow from sets. Okay. So grow from sets when is the best time to be growing onions?

2:01So you can plant onions in the autumn, but it's more popular to plant them now in the spring. In the autumn, you do have the risk of very wet ground and the onions could rot. So most people plant them now in the spring and they're widely available to buy the sets and the seed. But if you are going to grow them from seed, you'd want to get a move on because we're into March now, almost towards the middle of March, sets you still have plenty of time. That's the good news. So you can sew sets right up until the end of April. And you can get a course of red onion sets, white onion sets, you can get shallots. Now the one type of onion you don't grow from sets would be the spring onion or scallions as we call them. And those ones you do have to grow from seed. So if you are I think, I mean, shallots are really nice actually and a lot of people who cook like to grow shallots, but they're still not as popular as the ordinary white onion we would sell, an awful lot of those.

3:02Then when you are growing onions, the one probably, well, there's a few things you have to watch out for. One is because they grow so tall and narrow, the onion bed can get an awful lot of weeds around them. So in order to avoid that, well, you can obviously, you can break your back by doing all the weeding, but there is an easier way to avoid it. Oh, people will be happy to hear this, go on, tell them to use your eyes. So what you can do is put down a sheet of weed block. That's like the black plastic that people put under bark mulch or under stones to stop weeds coming up. And if you lay that down and then put little holes into it and put your onions through the holes and that stops all the weeds growing up around your onions. And of course, you can use that every year, you don't need to throw it out. At the end of the season, you can save that for next year. It saves an awful lot of time and it just makes life so much easier for you. Okay, well, I think that's the option a lot of people are going to go for. I do wonder as well, Judy, so they've got to watch out for weeds. That's one way to tackle them the best way when growing onions.

4:04We spoke about with cabbage and look, whatever type of vegetable, I'm going to need to cast a flower on plant. There's going to be some sort of pest that they need to be wary of. Is it similar with onions? Is there any flies or any insects out there that like to munch on onions? Very few. One of the biggest things is the birds. Actually, they just because the way you plant onions, you plant them half peeping out of the ground. So you don't bury this set into the ground. You leave it half peeping out and then the birds see them. They obviously must think it's type of food. They come along and they pull the onion out of the ground. They don't like the taste of that and they drop it. So that can be a bit annoying after you've gone to all your hard work. So if you have that problem, you can put netting over them to avoid that. Now, they do get a couple of diseases when it's powdery milled you and to avoid that that can be from very wet ground. So to avoid that, you could try growing them in a raised bed. And the other thing you can get is white rot, which rots the onion and makes it inedible. So to avoid that, you could do it for your rotation.

5:07There is no chemical available for white rot. So you really need to prevent it. Because if you get it, you can't actually grow onions for seven years again. Seven years. It stays in the ground. So it's very important when we were talking about rotation last week. So don't put onions in the same place every year. This year, you could do onions there. Next year, maybe you could do carrots there and change it up. Change it up exactly. Okay. And while we're talking about that, the soil, what type of soil do onions like? So they do like a fairly fertile soil. So add compost to the ground before planting. To get a nice big size onion, they do like a fairly fertile soil. And one tip actually, really good, what onions are really good for, is if you grow them beside carrots, the smell of the onion confuses the carrot fly. So if you do get the carrot fly coming along and laying its eggs on your carrots, onions is really good because the carrot fly actually finds the carrot by smell and the onion confuses them. So really good. So onions alongside carrots. And that would be, it's not an old wives tale that does work.

6:09Very good. You heard it here first. In terms of grow bags, containers, what type of vessel, aside from the ground, is go to grow them in? Yes, so you don't have to have, you don't have to sow onions in the ground. You can grow them in, they do have fairly shallow roots, so you can grow them in grow bags and in containers. And especially spring onions, they're very good in grow bags and containers. But even regular onions are shallots, you can grow them as well. You can buy grow bags in the garden center. And often used for tomato plants, for example, they're called tomato grow bags. But you can use them for loads of vegetables. And onions is one that grows really well in those grow bags. OK, so good to use those. Anything else that people should be aware of about onions, other than they tend to make a cry before we move on to jobs of the week? Well, I would say, you know, it is a really good one to start with. I know they're not that expensive to buy in the shop, but they do taste much nicer when you grow them yourself. And I've seen, you know, for any beginner gardeners out there that are thinking of growing some vegetables,

7:11and they're a bit, oh, I'm not sure. Sounds a bit complicated. I would say start with onions, see how you get on. And that'll give you confidence, maybe, to go on and try other vegetables next year. OK, brilliant stuff. Thank you for that, Judy, 086, 1800, 964. If you have any gardening questions to put to Judy, before we get to that, though, some jobs for the week ahead. Yeah, and hopefully we'll have a week of nice weather, so we'll be able to get out and do a few jobs. Delias and begonias, if you lifted them out of the ground last year and put them away in the shed for the winter, now would be the time to start planting them up. If you don't have any bulbs, you can buy them now and start them off yourself in pots of compost. So that's your delias and begonias. If you're looking for a bit of color, because they're not going to give you media color, if you want a bit of media color in your pots, lovely pantomoroses and pansies and bellice, lots of color coming in now into the garden center. So if you want to do a few pots to go with any bit of good weather,

8:11it's lovely to look out now and lovely in the garden center with all the new color coming in. So now would be the time to put those out. And for the vegetable gardeners, we'll lots to do vegetable gardeners, but now's the time to start sewing cucumbers, crickets, tomato plants, chili plants, lots of different vegetable plants. If you want to buy your seed and start those off. Okay, bringing stuff, let's get on to the listeners' questions and I know 8, 6, 800, 9, 6, 4 again. If you want to send one in. First question from a listener asking, is there a type of sweet pea that comes back every year? There is actually, now most people know the sweet pea, that's annual, that you sew every year and it dies back. And then you have to sew it again the following year. There is a type that is called everlasting sweet pea, it comes back every year. You can buy that in plants or you can grow it from the seed. But the one thing about the one that comes back every year, it doesn't smell as nice as the annual one. And most people grow sweet pea for the smell. So, I mean, they look really nice too.

9:13And it's great that they come back every year, but they just don't smell as good as the annual one. Okay, a listener wondering what they should feed, what are chameleas with? Yes, chameleas are, chameleas is the flower that is flowering right now. It looks almost like a rose. You see them in pink and red and white. Now, they're not as popular in our county because most of us are in limestone and they don't grow well in limestone. But in certain areas of the county, you'll see them, are people grow them in pots. And they really are gorgeous when they're flowering. And for feeding them, you should be using a sulfate of iron. Our sequestered iron, this particular, are often just be called chameleafood, liquid chameleafood. So, there is a particular type, you don't use to match food. Are those regular feeds on chameleas? There is a particular type of feed for chamelea that are easy enough to get. Okay, morning focus listener, Joan wondering, is it too early duty to put lawn feed down? Well, I'd wait maybe a day until the same frost is gone. It's a little bit cold at the moment.

10:14So, certainly they are available to buy now. And there's lots of different types of lawn feed depending on where they read, where they have mass, where you just want to feed the lawn. And all of those are available now. And a good time to buy it and have it ready for when the temperatures pick up a little bit. This next one, I'm intrigued about, because I'm wondering myself, what is, somebody wondering, what is a carpet rose? So, carpet rose is, well, it looks pretty much like a regular rose, but the name there, the carpet, is, gives it away. It's a low-growing rose that spreads wide instead of growing really tall, really nice rose. Very easy to mind. You don't need to be worried about fussy pruning. You just get your head shears and cut it away and it springs back up next year. Flowers all summer, loads of flowers. They're usually single flowers, which are good for the bees, actually. And really pretty, I love carpet roses. And they come in lots of different colors. I love the emphasis you put on that. Cut the rose.

11:14Yeah. Some people are scared of pruning roses, so with carpet roses, it makes life so easy. OK, is this too lazy, Judy, to prune a beach hedge wanders another list? Well, that's a great question. And it isn't, it isn't. Beach hedge should be pruned in August, actually, at the end of August, is ideal. But if you didn't do it then, you can do it now. Don't overly prune it too heavily now. I'm pruning it again in August. But if it's really out of control and if you really need to want to give it a bit of a haircut, yes, you can prune it now. OK, Mary, asking, can I grow an apple tree if I live near the sea? Yeah, something to never talk about. Does it be close to the sea? Can that affect growing fruit trees? It can affect lots of growing lots of things because of the salty air. It's really tough on plants. Most plants really struggle near the sea. But it all depends on how close she is to the sea. And because some people say they live near the sea, but they might live three miles away. Yeah, that's fair point.

12:14And so, yeah, what kind of, are we talking like, if you're a mile in, you're pretty safe, anywhere from there or... Well, you see, it then depends on what kind of garden you have. OK. Because if you've sheltered garden or if you're up in a hill, if you're up in a hill, you're going to get that cold winds coming in with the salt. So that can be really tough. If you live near the estuary, it can be really cold there and you're getting, you know, where the estuary there meets the sea and it can be cold and salty and difficult. But if you have a sheltered garden and you have good hedging, for example, around your garden that's breaking the wind, definitely, that sounds very rude. And definitely, you can, I would give it a go. I would definitely give it a go. And you know what, you could even try the miniature trees, the dwarf trees, because they don't catch the wind as much. So that might be an option for you. It'll be difficult for anything to grow if there's a break and wind happening around the place. Anyway, moving swiftly on. Someone else asking about orchids. They say they got a gift of an orchid and they're just wondering in terms of care,

13:16how often they should water it. Yeah, so if you haven't minded an orchid before, they're actually surprisingly easy. And they generally, they kind of thrive on neglect because the orchids are planted into like a really barky compost that lets the water release of the water really quickly because they hate to have roots sitting in water because the roots literally drowns. So in the wild, the orchids grow actually on a tree bark and the roots are totally exposed to the air. And they actually, they can first synthesize the roots which is really unusual for that type of plant. But if you notice your orchid roots going shriveling up, then you know you need to water it. And also, if you notice them too fleshy, then you're over watering. So orchids actually like to be brought into the shower, given like a nice watering down, wash off the dust off the big leaves, consider it like a spa day for your orchid and they love that kind of damp atmosphere in the bathroom.

14:16But don't do it too often, you know, in the wild they'd get absolutely drenched very rarely. And that's what you should be thinking about trying to replicate those conditions. Okay, and the final question from one of our listeners, again, it's said to do it roses. They're just wondering when they should feed them. Well, you know what? Claire people love their roses and they're actually really good at roses. We sell a lot of roses and this seems to be kind of a tradition of growing roses and Claire. And feeding roses. So you do that now in March and you can do that by feeding them like with a farm yard manure or you can actually buy, if you're not crazy by dealing with farm yard manure cause there is a smell of it, you can actually get a granular feed for roses. So you feed your roses now at the beginning of the season and after the first flush of roses, you feed them again and that encourages more roses to come back on them later in the year. Okay, brilliant advice, Judy. Thank you very much for being with us as ever and we'll chat to you again next Monday. That's Judy back there from Clon Road Garden Center with us for in the garden. And if you ever, at any stage of the week,

15:17not just on Mondays, I'm always keen to stress, have a gardening conundrum that you would like Judy to help you solve, send them in to 086, 1800, 964.