Onions Sprouting and Spinach Transplanted

Busy day yesterday with the transplanting of spinach occurring.  The roots of my spinach plants were starting to get a little root bound especially the ones that had a few sets of leaves growing.  I put the strongest ones into the soil first and the others I will do very shortly.  Next week is the latest that I want to have them into the soil.

I tilled a couple of rows of soil for my spinach plants.  Twenty of them should be able to fit into the space that I provided for them.

I also discovered that some of my onions are growing bright green stems for the first time this season.  Granted it is only the early ones, but in another week or two more and more of them should be growing stems.  By the end of the month a majority of them will be sprouting and growing in their respective soils.

Garden soil onions.

Tote onions.

My Onions and Spinach are Growing Like They Should

Every gardener likes to see positive results from their work that they have put into this hobby.  It is always a sigh of relief when you are not experiencing any difficulties such as diseases, pests problems, or any other type of situation that can occur.  For the most part my onions and spinach leaves are doing quite well.

Even though the temperature has risen over the past week or so they are still thriving with dark green leaves.  A week ago I added some wood ash around my plants to see what would happen when I put them around the weakest plants.  So far the wood ash has proven to be a good supplement for these plants.

A week ago not all the onion bulbs were growing yet.  Only some of them have been sprouting and growing stems.  Now that they have had time to sprout and with the past rain that we received they have been sprouting on a consistent basis.  I would say at least 99% of them have begun to grow stems while only a couple have not.  This is the usual percentage that you should be getting when planting onion bulbs.

As you know I also added some pelleted lime to the onions that will last throughout the rest of their season.  I added them before the rain came because this type of lime is activated whenever rain or water is placed on these pellets.  You can see below that they turned into a fine powder that will be absorbed slowly by all the plants.

Most of the totes look like this but I am not worried because when I start watering them the lime will be pushed down into the soil where the roots can use it.

The Sprouting of an Onion

It has been a couple of weeks since I last discussed the exact way that I plant onions using totes.  They take some time before they will show any type of sign of growth or progress.  A couple of days ago I checked them to see if I could see the stems that should be beginning to grow and I happened to like what I saw.

The stems were finally coming in clearly and healthy.  They are small at the moment but they will continuously grow and they can reach over a foot or more in height.  Once they start producing these stems it will be very easy from now on because they can grow without much maintenance.

Once all the stems grow I like to add a thick layer of mulch mainly to retain water and keep the weeds from stealing the nutrients from the soil.  Do not let the soil dry out too quickly because this may cause them to prematurely go to seed and you will have a very poor harvest.  I may add some manure tea and fertilizer to them periodically, but I will not give them too much.  You can check out the pictures below.