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Onions and garlic - these crops are especially loved by gardeners for their simplicity in cultivation and versatility in application. Garlic is traditionally planted before winter - this allows you to save on spring planting and at the same time get a race in time. So the crop can ripen much faster than with spring sowing. Although spring garlic (the one that is sown in spring) has a big advantage - it has a much longer shelf life.
Onion sets small sizes are also planted in the fall, so that it has time to mature well by the end of summer. Planting of onions in the winter is especially common in the southern regions, where winters are not so severe.
After a long and cold winter, the emerging seedlings of plants need to be helped to restore strength, which is why it is so important feeding onions and garlic in the spring. The further development of plants and, ultimately, the resulting harvest depends on it.
What happens in early spring
Often the first crop in the garden to mark the beginning of spring is winter garlic. After all, its young leaves sometimes germinate even before the snow melts. They appear through the thickness of the mulch with which they cover planting winter garlic in autumn.
One to two weeks after the snow melts, the garlic is ready for the first spring feeding. If the weather is still very unstable and unfavorable for the active growth of garlic, then it would be better to spray the plantings with the immunostimulant "Epin" or "Zircon". To do this, 1 drop (1 ml) of the drug is diluted in 1 liter of water. With the help of these means, it will be easier for garlic to endure possible frosts and do without yellowing of the leaves.
First dressing of garlic
In other cases, garlic must be fertilized with a composition with a predominant nitrogen content. It can be both mineral and organic fertilizers. The following recipes are most often used for the first feeding.
- One tablespoon of urea or ammonium nitrate is added to 10 liters of water. With this solution, you need to shed the aisles of the garlic plantings, trying not to get on the green leaves. When the solution gets on the foliage, the plants are well spilled with clean water to avoid burns. For each square meter of the garden, about three liters of liquid with fertilizer are consumed.
- Mullein infusion is often used for the first feeding of winter garlic and onions. Only you need to prepare it in advance, about two weeks before the date of the proposed procedure. Manure is bred in a large container in a ratio of 1: 6 with water and infused for 12-15 days in a relatively warm place. If it is still cold outside, you can place a container with manure in a greenhouse or in a room where animals are kept. If such conditions are not possible, then it is better to postpone the preparation of organic fertilizer until warmer days, and limit yourself to mineral feeding.
- In recent years, the method of feeding garlic with ammonia has become widespread. After all ammonia is a solution of ammonia, and therefore, differs little from ammonium nitrate, except perhaps in concentration. To prepare a working solution, 2 tablespoons of ammonia are added to 10 liters of water and the resulting solution is poured with garlic at the very root.If you want this solution to serve as additional protection against pest larvae that begin to wake up in the soil, then you must immediately spill the plants with twice as much water. In this case, ammonia will be able to reach the deep layers of the soil.
Later, this mulch can be used to cover the aisles so that the land does not dry out in the heat, and growth decreases. weeds.
Awakening the onion and its nutrition
Onion sprouts sown before winter usually appear somewhat later than garlic sprouts. If the spring is very wet, the seedlings need to be completely freed from the winter shelter and the soil should be shaken off a little so that there is no stagnation of water, and they are slightly dried in the sun.
When the sprouts reach a height of 15-20 cm, they must be fed using the same fertilizers as for the first feeding of garlic.
Considering that phosphorus is very important for onions at all stages of its growth, instead of pure nitrogen fertilizers, you can use nitrophoska or nitroammophoska. These fertilizers are diluted according to the same scheme as nitrogen fertilizers, they are also watered at the root, without touching the green leaves of the plants.
For processing winter onions, it also makes sense to use ammonia. After all, it can serve not only as a fertilizer, but also as a means of protection against onion flies and other pests that winter in the soil, since they do not tolerate ammonia. The processing method is exactly the same as described above for garlic. In order to finally solve the problem with onion pests, you can use additional folk remedies.
- A week after the onion has been treated with ammonia, spill the onion aisles with a salt solution. To do this, a glass of salt is diluted in a bucket of water and this solution is used for irrigation. After the end of the onion planting procedure, be sure to spill it with clean water.
- A week later, the onion beds are spilled according to the same scheme with a bright pink solution of potassium permanganate. Don't forget to rinse them with water afterwards.
Spring garlic and its feeding
Spring garlic is planted one to two weeks after the snow melts, at the earliest possible date, when the earth only has time to thaw. But this garlic does not withstand frost well, therefore, at early planting dates for the first few weeks, it is advisable to cover the beds with plants with any protective material: film, lutrasil.
For him, the best option would be to use complex mineral fertilizers, in order to provide all the nutrient needs of plants from the very first days of development.
Basic spring feeding
Spring is the time of active growth of all garden crops, and onions with garlic are no exception. Approximately two to three weeks after the first feeding with nitrogen-containing fertilizers, both onions and garlic need to apply fertilizers that contain a greater variety of nutrients.
Both onions and garlic will thank you for using organic fertilizers during this period. You can prepare a herbal infusion - after all, for its production you only need weeds that grow in every garden, and in terms of the richness of the mineral composition, few fertilizers can compete with it.
To do this, prepare any container with a capacity of more than 10 liters, fill it tightly with any weeds, add a few handfuls of wood ash and fill everything with water. If there is an opportunity to add at least a little bird droppings or manure, then it's great, if not - it's okay, the liquid will ferment well anyway. All this should settle for 12-15 days and the finished complex fertilizer is ready.
Dilute one glass of this fertilizer in a bucket of water and use it instead of watering onions or garlic every two weeks.
Since the bulbs will ripen from this, but they will be poorly stored.
If the land for planting onions and garlic is sufficiently fertilized and the plants develop well, then there is no need for further feeding of both crops. If something bothers you in the condition of the plants, and the soil where they are planted is rather poor, then it is possible to carry out one or two additional dressings in the summer. It is only important that the fertilizers contain mainly phosphorus and potassium.
Thus, it is spring feeding onions and garlic are the most important and decisive for the further growth and development of plants.
