Today, for us, the 2014 growing season has officially begun! We seeded 1400 Redwing onions today, in multi plant soil blocks. First, we mix up the potting mix and get our soil blocker out:
We use the soil blocker to fill up 1020 trays with soil blocks (yes, that is most certainly snow on the ground):
We made 4 trays of 1.5″ soil blocks, totaling 280 soil blocks:
We enlist some cheap family labor to sow 5 onion seeds per soil block and then cover each block with a small amount of potting mix:
Finally, the trays go underneath the lights until they are ready for the garden bed, sometime in late April!
When it is time to transplant the blocks, we place them 3 rows per bed, at about 12 inch in row spacing. They form nice size bulbs at this spacing, almost as large as if they were planted one per hole. I was not sure about multi-plant onions, but in 2013, we grew all of our onions this way, and it is such a time saver at transplant time that I will never grow them as single transplants again!
-Bruce
