TRANSPLANTING ONIONS 



range. The seeder should be set to drop the seeds about three- 

 quarters of an inch apart in the drill, which will use from four to 

 five pounds to the acre. After sowing, the ground can be firmed 

 in any of the ways mentioned in Chapter XL A light roller is most 

 expeditious and satisfactory if the soil is in the right condition of 

 moisture. 



Onion seed is sometimes rather slow in starting and the culti- 

 vation should not wait until the plants appear. Mr. S. J. Murdock, 

 of Orange county, shows how skillfully the hand wheel hoe can be 

 used in the onion field : 



After seeding, thorough, shallow cultivation is essential. Do not wait 

 until the plants are up before beginning; from four to eight days will be 

 proper, or when the seed begins to show signs of germinating, which can be 

 ascertained by carefully brushing the soil from the drill row. I put the 

 curved hoes on my wheel hoe, with the straight ends of the hoes pointing 

 inwards and lapping about two inches and hoe right over the rows but not 

 deep enough to disturb the seed. It saves a great amount of hand-weeding 

 by killing the weeds just starting to grow in the rows. As soon as the onions 

 are up sufficiently to follow the rows, I reverse my hoes, with the curved 

 ends next to the rows, just far enough apart so as to hoe as close as possible 

 without cutting the young plants by running the hoes astride the rows. This 

 operation hoes both sides of the row at one trip of the machine. Follow this 

 by hand-weeding; this operation is best performed by the crawling process, 

 that is, by getting down on hands and knees astride of a row and pulling 

 every weed in sight, and loosening the soil around and between the plants. 

 Repeat this as often as any weeds are to be found, and under no circum- 

 stances allow the weeds to grow above the onions; at the same time keep 

 the wheel hoe at work between the rows and as close as possible. 



It is desirable to use plenty of seed in field sowing. Some- 

 times it is possible to make something from the young onions while 

 thinning the plants to about four inches apart to the rows, but 

 usually the thinning is done before the plants get the proper size 

 for "top onions." 



As previously said, the bulb of the onion should be at the 

 ground surface, and the dirt should not be thrown to any extent 

 on the onions by cultivation. The roots should be well covered, but 

 not the bulb. Practically all onions are grown by flat cultivation. 

 Even when started in furrow banks, etc., the soil is usually leveled 

 by subsequent cultivation. 



Transplanted Onions. Next to growth from the seed, the 

 transplanting of small seedlings from the seed-bed to the field, is 

 most practiced in California. This method has recently been pro- 

 claimed in the Eastern and Southern States as a "new onion cul- 

 ture," but it is really an old practice in the south of Europe, and 

 has been followed in California for a third of a century or more 

 in preference to starting from onion sets. It is a fact that trans- 

 planting produces more uniformly large onions than growth from 

 the seed in place, and the crop also reaches maturity sooner, as the 

 transplanting does not sacrifice the time gained by the earlier start 

 in the see$-bed. Employing these two points of advantage in a 



