How to soak onions before planting

Any hostess strives to grow onions, if there is an opportunity, because no matter what dish you take, everywhere you can’t do without onions, except maybe sweet. It seems that growing it is a couple of trifles – you stick a sevok into the ground and collect a ready-made crop in a few months. But in reality, everything is not so simple. Either it will rot, then it will dry up, or, in general, someone will eat the bulbs in the bud. Therefore, even experienced gardeners often argue and cannot come to a common opinion about certain features of growing onions.

Especially a lot of controversy raises the question of preparing the bulbs for subsequent planting, whether they need to be soaked or not, and if necessary, what to soak the onions in before planting. Of course, such questions usually arise in novice gardeners. Indeed, those who have been growing onions for a long time have many of their own secrets and tricks that they use depending on the circumstances. This article attempts to collect the various techniques used by gardeners and explain them in terms of what the onion itself needs.

What is it for

Before you figure out how and in what you can soak the onion for its further planting, you need to understand why it actually needs to be done. Maybe this is just a tribute to the tradition that has developed over the centuries and today there is no point in these procedures?

So, you need to soak the onions before planting:

1. So that the bow does not subsequently shoot.
2. To accelerate germination, which may be especially important for northern regions with short summers.
3. For good further growth and a bountiful harvest.
4. To accelerate the ripening of the crop.
5. For disinfection or disinfection of onions, that is, for the destruction of all eggs and larvae of pests and spores of fungal diseases.
6. For additional moisture saturation in the first period of growth.
7. For additional sorting of onions before planting.

Although, perhaps, there are circumstances in which none of these reasons is relevant. For example, growing onions from their own guaranteed healthy and pre-sorted sets in the southern regions with drip irrigation. But these circumstances are very rare, and most gardeners understand that it is easier to prevent problems than to deal with their consequences later.

Now we need to consider all these reasons in more detail.

Processing from shootings

Onion arrows – that is, shoots that carry inflorescences with future seeds, take a lot of strength from the set, while the bulbs themselves form a very small size.

Of these, after sowing, numerous flower arrows will begin to develop. Therefore, the easiest way to avoid shooting onions is to store them in winter at a temperature not lower than +18°C. This is easy when it comes to onion planting material grown and preserved on its own. But much more often we buy onion sets for planting in stores or markets, and sometimes we don’t know at all under what conditions it grew, what diseases it suffered from, how it was harvested and then stored.

What to do in cases where nothing is known about the bow you are buying, but at the same time you don’t want it to start shooting at all? There are fairly reliable methods, known for many hundreds of years and based on the biology of the plant itself, to help stop the shooting of the onion.

• If you still have a lot of time before sowing, then you can simply dry the onion sets indoors at a temperature of + 7 ° C – + 8 ° C for 20-22 days.
• It will be more effective to warm up the onion sets for 3-4 days near the stove or heaters at a temperature of + 30 ° C.
• Before planting, onion sets can be soaked in hot water (+45°С-+50°С) for 2-3 hours.

All these methods are based on heating the bulbs before planting. At the same time, special hormones of temperature stress are produced in the tissues of the bulbs. It is these hormones that are responsible in the future for blocking the development of flower buds.

Soaking for good growth

In the northern regions, it is especially important that the onions sprout sooner, so that they develop quickly and well. Accordingly, it is desirable to accelerate the ripening of the crop by at least a few weeks, because the weather in August can already be very unpredictable and it is necessary to complete the harvesting and drying of the onion before the onset of inclement and cold weather.

To accelerate the emergence of seedlings and the ripening of the onion crop, there are several ways:

• Onion sets are poured into flat boxes and about three weeks before planting they are kept in a warm place, not lower than + 22 ° C and preferably in the sun. Such pre-sowing vernalization can speed up the emergence of shoots by 4-5 days, and the crop as a whole will ripen several weeks earlier as a result.
• Onion sets are cut to the shoulders, without touching the sprout, and soaked in any solution of nutrients (manure, humates or nitrate) for about 12-18 hours.

  

• After trimming the onion, it is soaked for half an hour in the Epin-Extra solution. This procedure helps to speed up the emergence of seedlings. If the temperature of the solution is taken at about + 40 ° C + 50 ° C, then this soaking will additionally serve to disinfect the bulbs.

Disinfection of bulbs

Traditionally, for the disinfection of onion sets, as in the cultivation of onions on a feather, soaking the bulbs in potassium permanganate was used. Now there are many new tools that are more effective, however, some old methods of disinfection also show themselves quite well to this day.

Disinfection of the bulbs, of course, can be omitted if you are 100% sure of your planting material. But most often, almost no one can give such a guarantee, since the eggs of many pests, such as thrips or onion fly, are completely invisible to the eye, and the presence of spores of fungal diseases does not affect the appearance of the bulbs.

The oldest and time-tested method of disinfecting onion sets, in addition to soaking in potassium permanganate, is soaking it in a saturated salt solution. To do this, 1 kg of salt is dissolved in 5 liters of water until completely saturated. Prepared onions are soaked in this solution for two hours. What is the preparation? It is necessary to carefully cut off the upper neck with a sharp knife, without affecting the sprouts.

If the top is not cut off, then disinfection will affect only the bottom of the bulb, otherwise the saline solution will be able to penetrate between the scales and disinfect the entire bulb. After soaking, it is very important to thoroughly rinse the onion from salt, changing the water several times.

If, before planting, soak the onion sets simply in hot water (+45°С-+50°С) for 10-15 minutes, the disinfection effect will be exactly the same as from soaking in a saline solution. In both cases, no special preparations are required, choose what is easier for you: heat water or use salt.

All other methods involve the use of special preparations for soaking onions, and they are also quite effective.

• In manganese. In ordinary cold water, so many crystals of potassium permanganate are dissolved to make a bright pink color. In the resulting solution, the onion is soaked for 15-20 minutes.
• In copper sulfate. 10 grams of copper sulphate dissolve in 30 liters of cold water. Soak the onion in the solution for 30 minutes.
• In the drug “Maxim”. To prepare a solution in two liters of water, dilute 4 ml of the drug and soak the onion in it for half an hour.

After all treatments, do not forget to rinse the onion sets in clean water and you can start planting. To make it more convenient to plant, it is possible to dry the onion after soaking at a temperature of + 20 ° С – + 22 ° С.

Additional sorting

You can also do the opposite, after washing, keep the bulbs moist for another 8-10 hours in a warm place. To do this, they are placed in film bags or in a bucket under the lid. As a result of this procedure, small roots appear on the bottoms of the onions – these are the ones that will help to carry out additional sorting of the bulbs before planting.

If the onion roots have sprouted around the entire perimeter of the bottom circumference, then it is ideal for growing on a turnip.

If the roots hatched only partially, half, then the bulb is likely to go into the arrow and it can only be used for planting on greens.

From the above, it is clear that many soaking methods can be combined with each other to obtain the best result. Choose what you need specifically for your circumstances, and get a great onion crop.