128 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



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 nitrogen, 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. Very heavy 

 manuring gives earlier, harder, 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. 



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. Purslane is a very peculiar 

 weed ; it not only produces innumerable seeds, but I have 

 found that every 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 potash. 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 

 infested it is better to discontinue cultivating onions on it and try 

 new land. Where grass land is broken up the sod should be well 

 rotted b}' other crops before planting onions ; they can be raised 

 the second 3'ear from pasture sod and in three years from mowing 

 sod. In pasture lands 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. They seem to do better in the 

 West on such soils than here. New York, Ohio, and Iowa are 

 our great competitors in onion growing. Onions will follow car- 

 rots, potatoes, 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 element is given. Last year 

 I planted a bed, part of which had been in carrots and part in 

 mangel wurzel the year before, giving an extra quantity of 



