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Common onions are a two-year-old culture. In the first year, the onion crop is set, small heads with a diameter of one to three centimeters. To get full-fledged bulbs, next season you need to plant the sevok again in the ground. The onion set itself grows from seeds, which are popularly called nigella, since they are painted black. You can sow onion seeds in the spring, but gardeners often do this in the fall. Winter sowing has its advantages, so you should definitely try this method on your own farm.
When to plant black onions before winter, and how to do it correctly - all this can be learned from the article.
Pros of winter planting of chernushka onions
Onion crops ripen for a long time, so the development cycle of such plants has to be divided into two seasons. If you sow nigella before winter, in late spring or early summer, you can harvest the seed, and plant the site with other crops.
It would seem, why bother with small seeds, if you can immediately buy a ready-made set and grow onions in one season? but self-growing onions from nigella using the winter method has a lot of advantages:
- the choice of varieties and varieties of onions in the seeds is much larger than in the set;
- the onion will grow strong, it will be hardened and adapted to the conditions of a particular region, soil composition, climate;
- you do not have to store planting material, which will save space in the basement or in the pantry;
- in the spring, the gardener will have time for other activities, because nigella will be planted in the fall;
- spring soil is well saturated with moisture, which will save on irrigation;
- with the first warmth, the seedlings will grow and the winter nigella will germinate much earlier than if it had been sown in the spring.
Planting black onions before winter and its stages
In any case, the winter planting of onion seeds will not be difficult for the gardener, and the benefits from this will be considerable. Firstly, it will be possible to shorten the period of full ripening of the onion, and secondly, you will not have to spend money on buying sets.
If you collect fresh onion seeds every year, you can completely forget about buying planting material - the "onion farm" will become completely independent. Although the technology of growing onions from nigella is not considered difficult, here you need to know some subtleties and nuances.
Is it possible to grow nigella seeds on your own
It is not necessary to buy nigella every year, this is justified only if the gardener wants to experiment with different varieties or new onion hybrids. The easiest way is to grow black onions yourself on your site.
This is not difficult to do. You just need to choose a few of the highest quality and largest bulbs and plant them in spring or autumn (this does not matter). Around the middle of summer, the plants will begin to bloom - they will throw out arrows, which are the inflorescences of the onion. Very quickly, small seeds of black or dark brown color will ripen in the umbrellas of the peduncles - this is nigella.
Onion seeds need to be collected and spread out on paper to dry thoroughly.
Preparing nigella for planting
Before planting the onion, the nigella must be prepared. The first stage of preparation is sorting the seeds. It is imperative to sort the nigella, since larger seeds can germinate several weeks earlier than the smallest ones.
To sort the seeds, you can use one of the following methods:
- Take a sieve with cells of different sizes and simply sift the dry nigella.
- You can also shake the black onion on the fabric.
- Place all the seeds in water and wait for some of them to settle to the bottom. After that, the onion seeds floating on the surface are collected and placed in water again, as a result, only the smallest seeds and debris that are not suitable for planting will remain.
Even before planting, the nigella must be checked for germination. This is done in several stages:
- several seeds are counted from the entire batch;
- take a paper napkin, fold it in several layers and moisten it with water;
- black onions are laid out on a saucer and covered with a damp napkin;
- create favorable conditions for the germination of onions: place the saucer in a plastic bag and put it in a warm place;
- within a week, they monitor the condition of the napkin and seeds, if necessary, add a little water.
The results of such a test are judged by the number of nigella seeds germinated per week: if there are more than a third of them, the onion is suitable for planting. If, under such conditions, less than 30% of nigella has sprouted, this batch of seeds can already be thrown away - it will not be possible to grow a good harvest from it.
When sowing winter nigella
In different regions, onion seeds are sown at different times. After all, a lot here depends on the climate, on when stable frosts begin, whether there is snow in winter and other factors.
In most regions of the country, winter nigella is planted not earlier than the end of October. Sowing of onions is finished, usually by mid-November. If nigella is planted too early, the seeds will germinate and with the first frost will certainly freeze out. Therefore, in such a matter it is better not to rush.
Often, onions are sown even in frozen ground or under snow - this is more effective than premature planting with frozen seedlings. In the frozen ground, small seeds immediately "fall asleep" and start growing only with the arrival of spring heat.
How to sow nigella before winter
The procedure for sowing onion seeds is a simple process, but here it is imperative to follow the technology:
- Choose a site on a hill that will be well illuminated by the sun.
- It is better to give preference to those lands on which tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes or legumes grew in the previous season.
- Onions love light soils, so it is recommended to add sand or humus to the ground.
- After fertilization, the land is dug up on the site, the roots are removed weeds and other debris, leveled with a rake.
- At a distance of 20 cm, parallel grooves are made, the depth of which should be about 2.5 cm.
- It is better to sow nigella seeds in a thicker layer, because not all of them will germinate (in the spring it will be possible to thin out onion crops).
- Then the black onion is sprinkled with 1.5 cm of dry earth and watered.
- To prevent the formation of a crust from the soil, the beds with nigella must be mulched with peat, leafy soil or sawdust. Mulch will additionally protect the onions from freezing and washing out during the snow melting period.
Sowing onions is over, now it remains to wait for frost and the first snow. As soon as snow appears on the site, you need to collect it and cover the beds with onions for additional insulation.
Care for seedlings of black onions
After the snow melts in the beds with nigella, the onions must be mulched, otherwise the bare beds will freeze out during recurrent frosts. When the danger of freezing has passed, the mulch is carefully raked off, the onion shoots are examined, if necessary, thinned out.
Spring care for nigella onions is as follows:
- when the first shoots appear, the nigella must be fed with superphosphate - at the rate of 40 g of the drug per square meter of earth or urea - about 10 g per meter;
- twice a week, tender seedlings should be carefully watered if the weather is dry and warm;
- it is imperative to regularly weed the beds and remove weeds, because the young onions are still very weak;
- if a crust forms on the surface of the soil, it must be loosened;
- immediately after the emergence of seedlings, the nigella is thinned out so that the distance between the plants is no more than two centimeters.
The distance between adjacent plants should be about 6 cm. However, to obtain onion sets, re-thinning is not required, because in this case, just the smallest heads are valued.
Outcomes
Planting black onions before winter is a painstaking exercise, but giving good results. Probably, this method will not suit summer residents or those who have little free time - it is more convenient for such gardeners to purchase ready-made sets. And here for those who fully devote themselves to household chores, growing onions from nigella can become a source of additional income, because sevok is not cheap.
