All about planting onions before winter in the Moscow region

Onions are a plant rich in vitamins and actively used in cooking. Buying onions in a store is not a problem at any time of the year. Another thing is its price and growing conditions. Therefore, many residents of the Moscow region, who want to save money and be sure that the plant was not affected by harsh chemicals, prefer to grow onions on their own, including winter varieties.

Planting onions before winter in the Moscow region differs little by its principles from planting in other regions of central Russia, to the climate of which many crops are adapted, with the exception of, perhaps, the most thermophilic ones.

But before moving on to them, let's talk about the advantages and disadvantages of such a solution.

Pros:

• planting before winter will require less costs for the seed itself;
• the gardener gets the harvest about a month earlier;
• winter onions are stored longer;
• the landing area for other crops is freed up faster;
• planting onions in the fall frees up the gardener's time in the spring;
• the risk of encountering a number of pests is reduced, for example, with an onion fly;
• the plant suffers less from weeds;
• already at the beginning of May, fresh onion feathers may appear on the gardener's table.

It is clear that such a landing has its own obvious disadvantages:

• it is quite difficult to guess the ideal planting time due to changeable weather conditions;
• the plant needs additional care and protection from cold weather;
• the risk of death of some of the seedlings requires an increase in the volume of planting material by 10-15%.

So that the minuses do not outweigh the pluses, you need to choose the right onion variety.

For winter planting, frost-resistant small-breasted onion varieties are well suited. Spring varieties will be an unsuccessful solution. The following options have proven themselves well in the climate near Moscow.

• "Arzamassky"... A very old and time-tested variety with a medium ripening period. Up to 3 round-cubic bulbs are formed in the nest. The scales are dark.
• "Bessonovsky"... Another old-timer variety, the distinctive features of which are flattened fruits. It has good keeping quality and tolerates transportation without any problems.
• "Myachkovsky-300"... The brainchild of Russian breeders. An early ripe variety (from 65 to 75 days) with good keeping quality and transportability.
• "Odintsovets"... Mid-season small-breeding onion variety. Fruits are golden, round-flat.
• "Panther F1"... Hybrid variety originally from Japan. Able to withstand temperatures down to -28 ° C. Ripening period is about 130-140 days. The bulbs are round, weighing up to 200 g.
• "Radar F1"... Also a hybrid, but already Dutch. The admissible temperature is up to -25 ° C. Ripens early. The fruit has a rounded-oblong shape, weighing more than 300 g. The taste of the bulbs is pointed. The harvest is well kept.
• Red Baron. Early ripening onions - 90 days. Well protected from diseases and insects. Red variety. The taste has a noticeable spike.
• "Ruby". These are small, round, purple-colored bulbs weighing up to 80 g. Early ripening, well kept.
• Strigunovsky. Another early variety. Dense bulbs with good keeping quality and pungent taste.
• "Sturon"... A hybrid onion variety native to Holland. The bulbs are elongated, weighing just over 200 g. They have a bright and slightly pungent odor, bitter-pungent taste.
• "Chalcedony". Brown-bronze onions with a spicy taste. Long-term storage is well tolerated.
• "Shakespeare"... An early maturing variety that easily survives at temperatures down to -18 ° C. Medium-sized bulbs have a firm skin.
• "Stuttgarten Riesen"... German variety of mid-season onions. Ripening time - about 110 days. The weight of the bulbs, which are pungent in taste, is 150-250 g, their shape is flattened.
• Ellan... Kuban variety with round-flattened yellow bulbs. Ripens early and is well stored. An excellent salad onion with a sweetish mild taste. The mass of one onion is 65-123 g.

After going through the varieties a little, it's time to move on to the most difficult issue - the timing of planting.

Winter onion varieties are planted in late autumn, in the second half of September or on the 20th of October. Planting in November is already a very risky undertaking. It is difficult to name the exact dates: the weather in the Moscow region is quite changeable. Therefore, the main recommendation here is one - to carefully monitor what is happening on the street and monitor forecasts of weather forecasters.

Optimum temperatures for planting are between 0 ° C and + 8 ° C during the day and -3 ° C at night. Landing is carried out in the cooled ground so that the onion does not sprout ahead of time. It should be about 3 weeks before the soil completely freezes, as onions take 2 weeks to root normally.

When the variety and timing are selected, it's time to move on to preparing the soil and material for sowing.

A well-lit area for planting onions must be chosen: this way there are more chances of getting large fruits. Water should not stagnate in the selected location. In addition, onions are poorly suited to soils with high acidity. It is also important to take into account which plants were cultivated in the selected place earlier. You should not grow onions in one place for several years in a row (the optimal break is 3 years) and plant it after:

• potatoes;
• celery;
• clover;
• alfalfa;
• parsley.

Suitable precursor plants would be:

• tomatoes;
• cucumbers;
• cabbage and all kinds of salad;
• corn;
• peas;
• beans;
• rape;
• mustard.

You need to prepare the place in the fall. The beds must be carefully dug up and fertilized with a mineral mixture or organic fertilizer, for example, compost or manure.

The optimal seed size for winter planting is up to a centimeter. It is important to remember that the seed of the small fraction freezes easily, and the large one can give arrows ahead of time.

The material must be sorted out and carefully examined:

• sevok should not exude foreign odors;
• bulbs should be selected dense, even;
• fruits that have damage or traces of disease must be discarded immediately;
• in shape and shade, the sets must correspond to the characteristics of the variety.

If wet samples are present in the total mass of planting material, they must be thoroughly dried. The bulbs need to be warmed up by holding for about 7 hours at + 30 ° C, or by lowering them first for 10 minutes in water with a temperature of + 50 ° C, and then for 10 minutes in cold water.

After that, the material is disinfected in a solution of salt and copper sulfate or in potassium permanganate. The last mixture is made according to the following recipe: 1.5 crystals of the active substance must be dissolved in 5 liters of water. It is risky to keep onions in a disinfecting solution for longer than 5 minutes. Also, you can not combine disinfecting compounds.

Not only sets are used for winter planting, but also nigella - onion seed. In this case, in the spring, the gardener will not receive a finished product, but material for new plantings.

There are subtleties and the planting process itself. The spacing between the furrows should be about 20 cm, the distance between the bulbs should be 5-7 cm, the planting depth should be 5 cm. With this scheme, the plants will be additionally protected from the cold.Nigella is planted according to the following scheme: 25 cm goes between the grooves, 2 - between the holes. The layer of earth on top is 2 cm.

It is worth watering the plant soon after planting only if it does not rain after 7-10 days. In no case should you water the onion right away: it may start to sprout... When it becomes clear that frosts are just around the corner, it is worth mulching the planting with straw, sawdust or dry foliage. The mulch is pressed down with spruce branches so that it is not blown away by the wind.

After the final snow melt, the straw shelter is removed, the soil is loosened and fertilized with ash. At the stage of appearance of 4 leaves, complex feeding is carried out.

Thus, it will not be difficult to grow a decent harvest of winter onion varieties in the Moscow region, if you choose the right variety, meet all the deadlines and properly care for the plant.