ONIONS. 



^-^ ^HE following is a portion of a 

 paper read by the well known 

 seedsman, J. J. H. Gregory, be- 

 fore the Massachusetts Horticultural So- 

 ciety : 



As regards soil, onions will grow on 

 any soil from muck meadows to clay 

 loam. They succeed on soil so gravelly 

 that after a rain there will be places a 

 yard square on which not a particle of 

 soil can be seen. Muck soil will not 

 make a first-class onion without silica 

 added in the form of gravel or sand. 

 Two hundred loads of gravelly, gritty 

 soil should be carted on to an acre ; 

 otherwise the onions will be coarse, thick 

 necked, of bad color, soft and spongy, 

 and poor keepers. In other respects 

 the muck may be treated like upland 

 soils. Muck is very rich in latent nitro- 

 gen, and if manure is applied it should 

 be bone and ashes rather than barnyard 

 manure ; this remark will apply not only 

 to onions, but to any crop in such soil. 

 Thin upland soils need humus ; muck 

 does not. A gravelly, sandy loam gives 

 onions the strawy color so much desired. 

 Ver)' heavy manuring gives earlier, har- 

 der and thicker bulbs and causes them 

 to ripen all at once. To put in more 

 manure than is really needed makes the 

 crop so much earlier that it pays well. 

 The speaker mentioned an instance of a 

 Revere cultivator who by extra manuring 

 sent sixty barrels to market in one day, 

 which brought a far higher price than 

 the general crop. 



A weedy soil should be avoided Old 

 soils add greatly to the expense of raising 

 this crop. There are three weeds which 

 are especially injurious in an onion bed 

 — twitch grass, purslane and chickweed. 

 In regard to the first, money is saved by 

 taking out every spear before planting. 

 The soil should be lifted lightly with a 



fork and the grass drawn out. Pursiane 

 is a very peculiar weed ; it not only pro- 

 duces innumerable seeds, but the speaker 

 had found that ever)^ piece into which it 

 is cut in weeding will take root. It is, 

 however, not a tall, smothering weed, 

 and is said to indicate land rich in pot- 

 ash. Chickweed is the worst of all weeds 

 for onions. It washes over the land, 

 and sticks to your boots, and is carried 

 about in that way. If a bed is badly in- 

 fested it is better to discontinue cultivat- 

 vating onions on it and try new land. 

 Where grass land is broken up the sod 

 should be well rotted by other crops be- 

 fore planting onions ; they can be raised 

 the second year from pasture sod and in 

 three years from mowing sod In pas- 

 ture land there are few weeds, and it will 

 warrant a large outlay for beets, onions 

 and similar crops. As much as seven 

 hundred bushels of onions per acre have 

 been raised on black muck soils without 

 manure. Onions will follow carrots, po- 

 tatoes or corn kindly, and will follow 

 cabbages and mangel wurzel, which have 

 drawn heavily on the soil for potash, 

 provided an extra dressing of this ele- 

 ment is given. Last year the speaker 

 planted a bed, part of which had been 

 in carrots and part in mangel worzel the 

 year before, giving an extra quantity of 

 potash to the latter portion, and no dif- 

 ference could be seen in the crop on the 

 two parts. It used to be thought that 

 onions could be raised successfully for 

 many years on the same ground, now we 

 can get only a few crops off the same 

 piece of ground. A deep, strong soil is 

 best ; it should have sufficient moisture 

 and be level or nearly so, else the wash 

 of the land will cover the young plants. 

 The top onion is sometimes planted in 

 August for May marketing The Egyp- 

 tian belongs to a distinct class ; it is of 



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