14 THE NEW ONION CULTURE 



be hard to find better onion soil than a well-drained, 

 well-subdued sandy muck. 



With good plants, and an early start, I would not 

 hesitate to set Prizetakers or Gibraltars on such well- 

 drained muck land. Small, poorly-grown plants, set 

 late in the season on moist muck soil that is exces- 

 sively rich in nitrogen and less abundantly supplied 

 with mineral plant foods, are liable, especially in a 

 wet season, to give you thick -necked, worthless onions, 

 and plants rather than bulbs. Sand and sandy loam, 

 however, favor this undesirable development much less 

 than other soils. 



Fig II — A PERFECT CROP OF GIBRALTAR ONIONS 



I wish to call especial attention to this fact, that 

 wherever plants of nearly pencil thickness were set 

 reasonably early in the season, the onions were large, 

 uniform and fine, without break in the row, and the 

 yield at a high acre rate. One of the finest crops of 

 perfect bulbs — of Gibraltars, Yellow and Pink Prize- 

 takers — that I ever grew, I secured last year on a clay 

 loam of only fair fertility, but having good drainage. 

 The season was excessively wet, especially in its earlier 

 part, and reports received by me showed that many 

 patches of onions of this type, all over the country, 

 produced little else but scallions. My patch had re- 

 ceived only a light dressing of old stable manure, but 

 a good dose of muriate of potash and acid phosphate. 



