442 ANNUAL REPORT 



I will not soon forget it, for some years ago I lost the entire crop by 

 sowing the seed on a rich, black mucky soil. I expected a great crop 

 and k«pt the ground clean, but I found that after every rain the 

 onions did not grow at all for tAVO or three weeks, and the result was 

 that in September the tops were fresh and green and as far from be- 

 ing matured as they should have been in July. The next year I cross- 

 plowed and made ditches lengthwise and crosswise, and the crop was 

 good, some onions being as large as saucers. 



Onions were first grown in Egypt on the fertile banks of the Nile, 

 which were yearly enriched by the overflow of that river. And for 

 that reason good crops of onions cannot be grown on virgin soil with- 

 out some kind of manure, although I have heard that good crops have 

 been raised on new breaking, the seed being sowed broadcast and 

 dragged in. But that was done a great ways off, and I never saw the 

 man who did it. If done at all, it must have been in a soil on which 

 large quantities of brush and trees had been burned, leaving the ashes 

 on the ground. Ashes containing potash are one of the best onion 

 fertilizers. 



MANURE. 



Onions need, for a heavy crop, more nitrogen and potash than is to 

 be found in new ground, hence the ground should be manured every 

 year. Animal manure contains both nitrogen and potash. Unless 

 the manure is old the onions are liable to be soft and have large necks 

 and do not keep well. Horse manure is better than cow manure* 

 Greener manure can be used if spread early in the fall and plowed 

 under. If the manure is very fine it will go further if spread after 

 plowing and dragged in. 



Long Island onion growers buy horse manure direct from the street 

 car stables of New York city and put one hundred cart loads on an 

 acre. Sometimes they pay as high as sixty-five cents per load. The 

 manure is not mostly straw, like our manure out West, but contains 

 very little litter. 



A German farmer not far from Rochester always raises good onions 

 with no other manure than ashes. He throws all of the ashes, the 

 year through, as fast as made, upon the onion bed, scattering them 

 during the growing season upon the rows. Ashes not only furnish 

 plant food but also help to keep the ground moist, which is very im- 

 portant for onions. Thirty or forty loads of well rotted and moist 

 stable manure, spread in the fall and plowed in the spring and 

 dragged in, will give a very large crop of sound and well keeping 

 onions. 



