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I was so disappointed when I walked out to look at the onion patch. They were beautiful 2 ft high and just beginning to bulb, and now a good one third of them are laying down. I don't know what went wrong.
I am doing the Back to Eden method and the ground has stayed nice and moist but not soaking wet.
Do any of you know what would cause this? TIA
In my garden, when that has happened, it was a visiting cat taking a roll around!! Pull one up and check the roots? Maybe a root disease or varmit snacking?
The roots look fine. It does look like an animal laid down in them, but my dog doesn't get in my garden beds and the only other animals around are squirrels.
I planted a lot of onions this year and spaced them 4" apart. Could that be a factor?
Thank you goatlady.
Unless the tops are totally broken off, it probably won't harm the bulbs so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
The "only" other animal around is the squirrels you have seen! LOL. Sounds like you have a visitor from somewhere, gal. If the tops are just bent and not broken, they most probably will recover just fine. 4" spacing is what I usually do and it seems to work fine.
DId you plant sets or plants? Long day or short day?
I planted Texas Sweet onions from sets and they are the the same kind that grew very well for me last year. I did plant them in a different spot this year.
Some of the tops are broken and some are just bent. I am going to leave them alone and see what happens.
I live in the burbs, but there is no telling what's visiting out there in the middle of the night.
I've already found two snakes in the yard in a week and that is very unusual around here.
Well, I did put in a Back to Eden garden so I guess I should have expected a snake to show up. lol
We are having the same problem here, as is a friend ~40 miles away. They were gorgeous, then suddenly just went downhill. We had 400 white granex & 100 'walking' onions... We pulled them, started dicing them up & freezing them for use during the upcoming canning season.
This morning we made a big pot of French Onion Soup.
A friend of mine told me she read an article in the newspaper that Vidalia onions are coming on the market this week and they are a lot smaller than usual because of our warm winter.
I planted just over three hundred of them and have pulled more than half that were laying down and the rest are tilting badly. They are slightly bigger than golf balls and more oblong.
I'm stringing them. They look pretty and they taste good but there won't be any fried onion rings any time soon.