Forcing Green Onions In Winter In An Apartment

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Winter conveyor belt of green onions in a city apartment

Our family provides itself with vitamin green onions throughout the winter. We grow it from the beginning of the heating season in a city apartment, and without land, any soil, in two simple ways that do not require special costs.

To obtain green feathers, we use our onions grown in the summer in the garden. For about forty years in your gardening, you have been planting an unnamed variety, which is popularly called "family". This name is due to the fact that this variety produces a large number of bulbs in each nest.

Having planted one bulb at the end of spring, you can collect a multiply increased number of bulbs by autumn, it happens that there are up to 20 of them in the nest. True, in my beds I limit their number, pinching off the extra ones, leaving 6-8 pieces. As a result, I get bulbs weighing up to 50 grams.

This onion looks a little like Siberian yellow shallots, it is also yellow in color. However, when we compared our onion with shallots of the Siberian yellow variety, which, by the way, is recommended for cultivation in the soil and climatic conditions of our zone, it turned out that the folk variety is "family" in terms of a number of indicators (yield of turnip, feathers, etc. to some others) is superior to the Siberian yellow variety and other varieties.

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Perhaps the best results of our "family" onion are explained by the use of the method of soil preparation and onion cultivation developed over many years, which allows us to annually receive from 3.4 to 4.1 kilograms of onions from each square meter of the garden.

We are convinced that with our method of growing top dressing, both root and foliar are not needed, we do not do them, because we believe: dressing is doping, unnatural violence for achieving temporary success. Our position is that you just need to grow this or that crop, collecting a real crop, and not surprise. We also consider oven ash to be an important key to success, we put it under the onions, but we do not use it under carrots, lettuce, beans, cucumbers, because these vegetables react negatively to it and, therefore, will not give an increase in yield.

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Preparing the soil in the fall for future spring plantings, we strive to take into account and ensure the needs of plants in a particular nutrient, create a neutral soil reaction (pH 7). We use green manure to compensate for the lack of organic fertilization. It should be remembered that different types of green manure provide different amounts of certain nutrients. For example, potash siderates are good for onions, which can be potato tops (potassium content over 20%), sunflower stalks (potassium up to 30%).

To deoxidize the soil, we use drinking soda (sodium bicarbonate) in the required amount, we give it in order to provide the onions and beets with the sodium they need. We do all this instead of the notorious method recommended in a number of publications, where the authors write about the introduction of table salt (sodium chloride) into the soil, which is harmful to the soil. Edible salt will not add to the harvest, and we know from practice that drinking soda has a positive effect on beets and onions.

In the fight against pests, including the onion fly, birds help, and for this you need to weld them to your plots. As for onion diseases, they are not terrible if the soil is properly prepared. And then you won't need various chemicals.

The use of the method of growing "family" onions, tried and tested over many years, allows to obtain a guaranteed harvest of bulbs, which are enough for culinary purposes, for spring planting, and there are also reserves for forcing vitamin green feathers in winter. I want to tell the readers of the magazine about my methods of growing green onions without land.

The first way to grow green onions

We take an ordinary plastic, clean and dry bag measuring approximately 20 by 30 cm. Then we prepare the bulbs from the crop grown on our site (I assume that purchased onions are also suitable for this purpose) for the so-called "planting". To do this, we cut the neck of the onion to the shoulders, free it from excess husk, then put these onions on a warm radiator, keep it there for two hours. It should be borne in mind that you need so many bulbs so that they are located at the bottom of the bag in one or two rows. Then we tie the very top of the plastic bag with a string and leave a loop so that you can hang it on the window - on a carnation or on the handle of a frame or window - one side of this bag will face the glass, and the other - into the room or kitchen (see photo).

If you do everything as it is written, then in 30-45 days you will have a full bag of green onions, and the onion itself remains usable.

How does the onion grow in the bag? An experimental device, a psychrometer, found that it turned out to have a higher humidity than in a residential apartment. It is created by different temperatures of the walls of the bag from the side of the window and from the side of the room, as a result of which condensation appears in the bag - moisture, which is enough for the growth of green onions.

The second way to get green onions is on water

Unlike the first method, which I invented myself, the second was borrowed in Moscow at VDNKh around the 60s. It's called hydroponic cultivation. To do this, we take various boxes, jars (see photo), and of such a size that they fit and do not fall from the heated towel rail in the bathroom. For example, I take juice packs with a cork, in the upper part of them I make holes of such a size that the bottoms of the onions fit in them. When all the holes are occupied by the heads of the onions, the bottoms down, pour boiled cold water into the package up to the top and put it on the battery. After about 20-30 days, the green onions will appear ready to use.

And there are many options. Here is one of them: now on sale there is fertilizer for seedlings OMU-growth, produced by the Buisk chemical plant. One teaspoon of this fertilizer is enough for a container of up to 1 liter, the solution changes after two to three weeks. But the onion in this solution is not suitable for food.

By the way, there was a time when I grew hydroponically, however, using a more sophisticated technology, tomatoes, cucumbers and their seedlings. And I advise readers to use any of the above methods at home in order to provide family with fragrant vitamin onion feathers until spring. Good luck to all!