3 20 



GARDEN FARMING 



and the crop brought to maturity. The crop should, under favor- 

 able conditions, be ready to go into the market during the month 

 of April or early in May. By intensive cultivation, supplemented 

 by large quantities of stable manure or commercial fertilizer, as 

 high as 40,000 pounds or 20 tons of onions have been produced 

 on an acre. These onions, reaching the markets at a time when 

 the stored crop grown at the North is nearly exhausted, meet with 

 little competition. 



Marketing the Bermuda onion. As Bermuda onions are some- 

 what milder in flavor than the Northern-grown stored product, the 

 market will take a large quantity of these at good prices during 

 the spring months. In other respects the crop is handled as de- 

 scribed for the Northern-grown crop, but instead of being stored 

 the onions are packed in slat crates containing i bushel and are 

 immediately placed upon the market. This type of onion is very 

 perishable and cannot be stored like the hardier onions grown 

 at the North. It is therefore distinctively a truck crop, and one 

 which must be handled quickly. 



THE PRODUCTION OF ONION SETS 



The term " sets " is applied to seedling onions which have 

 formed small bulbs (see figure 120) and have been brought to 



early maturity either by 

 crowding or by insuffi- 

 cient nourishment. Sev- 

 eral hundred thousand 

 bushels of onion sets are 

 grown annually in Amer- 

 ica. While sets can be 

 produced in any region 

 where mature bulbs for 

 winter use are successful, 

 the areas for their com- 

 mercial production are at 



FIG. 1 20. Onion sets 



present confined chiefly 

 to sections of Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, and California. The East- 

 ern product is chiefly used by market gardeners for growing early 



