we grew 25 pounds of onions in a two square foot space in today's episode
we show you the whole process from planting your onion sets caring for your onion plants
and all the way to harvesting large onions
so we're using these 10 by 20 trays to start our onion sets
and I'll provide some links in the video description and the best time to start
onions are feb through april that way you can harvest them in summer or late summer
and these are our onion sets as you can see some of these have started
sprouting already which is perfectly fine and we're using a base tray to hold the excess water
and we fill in the top tray with some good quality potting mix
and this has a lot of organic matter which will help nourish the onion sets as they grow
and all you do is put the onion sets just like you see here you don't have to bury them too deep
you just keep planting all these onion sets just like you see here
they have about a two inch spacing between them which is good enough
and just top it off with a little bit more potting mix or peat moss as you see here
and then water your onion sets thoroughly
now while the onion sets are growing make sure that the soil is moist at all times
this is extremely important for all the seedlings to emerge
now 12 days later you can see that the seedlings have emerged and this is another tray that we used
which also has some seedlings now the reason you need to start your seedlings like these
is to eliminate the bad sets which will not germinate or which will not produce a seedling
so this way you can keep the best seedlings that you can use for your planting and to save space
we are going to be planting this in our greenstalk planter we just finished harvesting all the beets
from the previous season and as you can see here we've kept all our planters ready to go and all
we do is remove the existing potting mix from the planters and add in some worm castings the
worm castings are one amendment that will add a lot of beneficial nutrients into your potting mix
and we are also adding some bone meal since onion is a root crop it benefits from bone meal you get
really good sized onions if you add a little bit of bone meal to your potting mix
and that is it that's all we do we don't really need anything else in our potting mix this is
some great quality potting mix that you see here and it will be excellent for growing our onions
and all we do is add it into our greenstalk planter tier and remember this is the greenstalk
leaf planter which means it has six slots or six pockets in each tier and we are going to be using
seven tiers which gives us 42 slots to grow our onions and as you can see here the onion seedlings
are looking pretty good now and they're ready for planting and all we do is take the onion seedlings
from these trays and plant it in the greenstalk planter pockets so we're going to be using six
seedlings for this one tier and we'll be planting one onion seedling or one onion plant per pocket
and while planting the onions make sure that you don't plant them too deep
if you plant your bulbs too deep they will produce a lot of shoots or greens but not large bulbs
you want the bulbs to be a little bit above the soil to produce really large sized onions
but at the same time you want to make sure that the roots are in contact with the soil and are
not exposed so if you follow this method that you see here you're on your way to getting really big
onions from your onion seedlings and once done make sure that you water your seedlings very well
now i prefer to water my seedlings while the planter is not stacked up
and once I'm done is when i put the planter back to the base and then start adding the tears
so the first step is to add the watering disc which will evenly water these onion plants and
then we are off to planting more seedlings on the next tier this is the second tier
and this time we will be using our seedlings from our seed starting cells as you see here
we can choose the best seedlings make sure that if you have a lot of seedlings which you usually
will have one pack of onion sets will contain about 80 onion sets out of which you can choose
the best ones so that you can grow the best onions the largest onions from the whole batch
and the planting technique is exactly the same as you see here we're just planting these
seedlings right at the side leaving a little bit of space for the onions to expand to a large size
and once done you can again water it very well
just to make sure that the roots have settled properly
and do this seven times and you have 42 onion seedlings that are
planted in this greenstalk planter using about 2 square foot of space
and 15 days since planting you can see that the plants are growing very steadily very nicely
they're looking really good and all you need to do now is make sure that you're watering your
plants very well and after approximately 120 days you can see that the onions are ready for harvest
and at this stage we are going to start harvesting the onions
and you can see here really good looking onions quite large bulbs
and once the onion tops start falling off like you see here you see how the tops are bent this is an
indicator that the onions are ready for harvest they will continue to grow larger if you keep them
this way once the tops bend over you can still give it some time however we needed some onions
so we started harvesting them and you can see here all the onions now are beginning to mature
and while you could have given it another month or so this is still a good time to harvest all
your onions because the bulbs are quite large as you see and they're very flavorful at this stage
and you can see here beautiful looking onions quite large onions we are growing all this in
the greenstalk leaf planter and as you see here the pockets are quite small but still big enough
to grow these wonderful onions now by growing my onions in the greenstalk planter i have saved an
entire raised bed for planting 42 onions i would have had to use an entire raised bed which is
now grown in the greenstalk planter which means we are growing all these onions in two square foot of
space without using the raised bed or using any ground space which is pretty amazing the smart
watering container that the greenstalk planter is ensures that all your plants get watered
efficiently and evenly and this fear of growing onions has been really amazing for me this season
just because of the amount of space that was saved by growing these in the greenstalk leaf planter
and as you can see here we are finishing harvesting all these onions
beautiful looking bulbs white large onions as you see here
and each one of these onions produced really good sized bulbs and i was quite happy with the way all
these onions grew and it took me quite a while to harvest all these 42 onions from this greenstalk
planter and you can see here these are beautiful looking onions and there are still a few more to
go so let's finish harvesting all the onions from this greenstalk leaf planter and the best
time to grow onions in southern California is the cooler seasons which is spring and fall and
spring season is actually better as you see here the onions are looking really good really nice
and once you set it out in a tray like this they're ready to cure
it takes about a week or two to cure these onions
and as you can see here beautiful looking onions that will cure within a couple of weeks
so
but you can actually start eating these onions right now you don't really have to cure it to
eat them they just store a lot better if you cure them but they taste amazing fresh onions
are pretty amazing in taste they stay fresh for a long time once you cured them and store them
they do stay fresh for quite a while all right so let's do a weigh in now of our onion harvest
so we picked up six average sized onions and they weigh about 3.6 pounds so we get
a final vein of about 25 pounds from all this harvest that we got from our greenstalk planter
and if you want to buy your own greenstalk planter greenstalk actually has a sale from
15th of july to 19th of july 2021 you don't only get a great price for your greenstalk
planter you can stack up coupon code cag to get an additional 10 off your entire order
so i hope you take advantage of the sale that's going on and buy your own greenstalk planter
that'll help you grow a lot of plants in a limited space in your own garden i hope you
enjoyed the episode if you found this video useful hit that like button and if you have any questions
comments or suggestions put them in the comments box below we'll see you again soon happy gardening