Thursday, April 10, 2014

First Compost of the Season and Spring Onions

I got the first load of compost at the Waste-to-Energy facility today. I think they mark the start of spring by my first pick-up load of compost. It is nice to see everyone after a long winter. I got about 150 pick-up loads last year so I am one of their better customers.

My first pick-up load of compost of the season is typically used for the...

onion beds. I make strips of compost about 12 inches wide and about 500 feet long and plant onion plants in these strips in double wide rows. Before laying down the strips I spread a liberal strip of organic slow release fertilizer. The onions are a green plant for the first 2 months and you want to grow them as quickly as possible. The more leaves you can get the bigger the onions will be.

Last year we were really late at getting the onions planted as it snowed every weekend in April. This year we have had a couple of nice days and it looks like this week will continue to hang in there.

If I can get several rows prepared we can get about 5000 onions planted this weekend. This would be about half of what we will plant for the season. In addition to the plants, you can plant onion seed at any time now. If you can get them in early, the seeds can often get just as large as the onions from plants.

This is where we get the accuracy of the compost counter, seen in the top left side bar.

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