[music]
In today's video we will see how to grow onions in Whisky Barrels
So onions can be planted in winter for a harvest in late spring or summer
Depending on the weather in your area
Now I will not be going over the planting details for onions as they are the same as
garlic, which I just explained in my previous video
There are many ways to grow onions
You can either use onion seeds that you can buy from any garden center
And then you can sow these onion seeds and then transplant them when they are ready into
bigger containers
Or you can use onion sets which are basically small onions
That you can start in containers to get bigger onions
The onions that you see here have been started from seed and then transplanted into this
bigger container
[music]
Now onions use the same kind of soil that garlic uses
Nice and loose, with lots of compost
But onions do grow bigger bulbs
So they do need fertilizer as opposed to garlic which can grow pretty much with no fertilizers
added
Use a nice balanced fertilizer for your onions
The general rule to determine whether your onions are ready for harvest is when the tops
start falling off as you can see here
So what you should do is once the tops start falling off, just make sure you break the
tops of all the other onions
Now what this does is it signals dormancy
What it means is that now plants stop forming the greens
And continue to form the bulbs and go into dormancy
This is the general life cycle of an onion
It first produces a lot of greens
And then the plant concentrates its energy on producing the bulbs
[music]
So it takes about 1-2 weeks for the dormancy to trigger in
And for these 1-2 weeks, you just have to wait patiently for the dormancy to set in
And then get ready for harvest
[music]
So when you are harvesting the onions
All you need to do is
Just uproot them
And just lay them by the side
And this first step let's them dry a little bit
Before you actually start the drying and curing process
And don't worry, some of the bulbs will be smaller than the others
That's just the way onions grow
And I'll tell you a neat tip that you can use to something with your bulbs that are
smaller
And I'll give you that tip towards the end of the video
[music]
So do not wash the onions after harvesting because you need them to be very dry before
you start curing them
So leave them on a sunny spot or maybe a partially sunny spot like a window sill or something
like that
And let them cure
It takes about 2 weeks for them to dry completely
[music]
So once the drying process has completed, you will notice
That almost all the leaves have turned completely brown
And then what you need to do is just cut off the extra roots and the tops
And just do that for all the onions that you have
[music]
So here we go, that's our harvest
Nice big onion bulbs that you can store for weeks to come
And for the onion bulbs that did not grow, you can use them as sets for your next season
So I hope you liked this video
And planting onions in whisky barrels lets you grow a few onions
And if you want to grow more, you can just use multiple whisky barrels or grow them in
raised beds with the same techniques
And if you have any tips for growing onions, please do leave your comments and feedback
I would love to know from you what you have in your mind
What you do to grow great onions in your garden
And I'll see you again soon in another episode of California Gardening
Until then...Happy Gardening!
[music]