240 T HE) * GA RD EN UW A GAY ZaeN May, 1916 
ONIONS OF SPECIAL MERIT——ALL SEEDS SOWN APRIL 25 
AVERAGE 
BULBS | SHAPE Dane AVERAGE | yrELD IN QUALITY — 
VARIETY NAME FULLY OF WEIGHT | poUNDS OF BEING REMARKS 
DEVELOP | cLAss {CROSS || ypprrcan | Ee  BUL® [PER is FT. FLESH Quagies 
SECTION | (OUNCES) ROW 
White Portugal . Aug. 14 II 25 2 4 125, Coarse, dry, mild Fair, use in fall and | Earliest American white 
early winter 
Southport White Globe. Aug. 24 III 22 23 54 17 Fine grained, juicy, mild | Good for early winter | Most beautiful and highest priced 
Flat Yellow Danvers Aug. 12 II 2h 2 44 I4 Fine grained, dry, strong | Excellent Standard flat yellow 
Yellow Globe. . . . Aug. 20 Til 24 ai 6 18} Fine grained, dry, strong | Excellent, Standard yellow globe 
Southport Yellow Globe. Aug. 30 III 3 3 a} 234 Fine grained, juicy, Excellent Latest and best yellow globe 
strong 
Prizetaker . . Sept. ro III 34 3 Ui] 21 Fine grained, juicy, mild’| Fair only; use quickly | Fancy salad sort 
Red Wethersfield.  . Sept. ro II 3k 24 a4 23 Coarse, juicy, strong Excellent Standard red in West 
Southport Red Globe Sept. 10 Til 22 22 ve 24 Coarse, juicy, strong Excellent Standard red in East 
Australian Brown Aug. 30 II 23 2 5t 18 Fine grained, dry, mild | Best of all in keeping | Variesin color. Will keep a year 
White Queen. Aug. 1 i 2t 1} 3 9 Coarse, juicy, mild Poor, use quickly For salads and pickling 
Mam. Silver King Aug. 15 If at x2 5 17 Coarse, juicy, mild Poor, use quickly For salads and pickling 
Gigantic Gibraltar Aug. 14 Til 3r 33 hss 23 Fine grained, juicy, mild | Good if handled with | Fancy, fine for South 
; care 
varieties suggested as the most 
dependable of all sorts (see 
table): Seeds were sown on 
April 25th. On May 10th the 
rows were weeded for the first 
time and thoroughly hand-hoed. 
On June 10th, the seedlings, 
which had made a rather slow 
growth due to cold weather, 
were “thinned” out to stand 
four inches apart in the row. 
At the same time wood ashes 
were applied at the 
rate of a large tea- 
SHAPE 1 
SHAPE 2 
<Z.M1-ROUND 
THE STANDARD VARIETIES OF ONIONS 
or yellow sorts of similar na- 
ture. The answer is: If you 
just intend to grow onions for 
home use, there is no use in- 
cluding these late mammoth sorts 
in your growing programme; 
but if you want to grow bulbs 
for either exhibition purposes, 
or, living in the South, you want 
to ship fancy onions to North- 
ern markets, then you need 
them, because they will do what 
no other varieties 
can. 
cupful to every fif- 
teen feet of row. 
After that, the 
onions were weed- 
ed every two or 
WHITE 
YELLOW RED 
Any one can grow 
IMPORTED 
t+White Silverskin 
{Philadelphia Silverskin 
*White Portugal 
*Southport White Globe 
three weeks or as 
often as the weeds 
became evident. 
Onions are heavy 
feeders. The fer- 
tility that goes 
into the weeds will not be available for 
the crop you want. In order to offset 
the loss of plant food due to weeds, 
three applications of a complete fer- 
tilizer were made between July 15th 
and end of August. While this proved 
a wonderful stimulus, it also lengthened 
the growing season, thus making all 
varieties later in maturity than they 
would have been under normal condi- 
tions. One fact was firmly impressed 
upon me in connection with onion grow- 
ing and that is that all kinds do almost 
as well on poor soil under intensive cul- 
tivation as on rich soil under neglect 
among weeds. 
One of the best tools for 
working in the onion bed I 
found to be the Excelsior 
Weeder; it comes nearest 
to doing the work of a hand 
without the wear on the real 
thing; it stirs and aérates 
the soil as thoroughly as is 
needed to make the onions 
thrive, and in order to 
thrive onions need air in the 
soil quite as much as fer- 
tility. 
Students of this report 
will perhaps be disap- 
pointed at the rather poor 
showing made by Mammoth 
Silver King, Prizetaker and 
Gigantic Gibraltar. The 
question will arise, why 
should these be grown at all 
when they do not show up 
any better than other white 
Tt Superfluous 
t Too much alike 
TYellow Strasburg 
*Flat Yellow Danvers 
*Yellow Globe Danvers | t¢ 
tOhio Yellow Globe 
{Michigan Yellow Globe } , 
*Southport Yellow Globe \ * 
*Prizetaker 
tExtra Early Red Flat 
jEarly Rose 
*Red Wethersfield 
*Southport Red Globe 
*Australian Brown 
* Merit . 
Two excellent yellow varieties: left, Southport Yellow 
Globe; right, Yellow Globe Danvers 
Prizetaker (left) and Gigantic Gibraltar (right), late mammoth sorts, grown 
principally for exhibition and commercial purposes 
*White Queen 
+White Barletta t 
tWhite Pearl 
*Mammoth Silver King 
these large sorts 
to immense size if 
he (or she) be 
willing to start the 
+White Bermuda seeds early in 
Veena either hotbed or 
*Gigantic Gibraltar \ t greenhouse, trans- 
Deny plant the young 
seedlings several 
times and then set 
them out about May 1st in an exception- 
ally rich piece of ground. Treated in 
this fashion, bulbs weighing 144 to 3 
pounds have been grown of all three of 
the sorts mentioned. My reason for not 
including Ailsa Craig is that, all con- 
ditions being equal, it will not grow any 
larger than either Prizetaker or Gigan- 
tic Gibraltar and it is an even poorer 
keeping sort, being extremely juicy, 
rather coarse-grained and having a very 
delicate skin. 
In sizing up the total yields recorded, 
please remember that the bulbs stood 
four inches apart in the row on soil that 
was far from being ideal 
onion soil. In the rich muck 
soils of Ohio, Indiana, and 
other Western states, I have 
seen four bulbs of six to 
seven ounces each grow on 
a space not larger than I 
gave each individual bulb 
in my trials. But there the 
onions would almost lie on 
top of the ground. They 
would “hang on” to the 
humus with eight and ten 
roots and expand just like a 
balloon in almost four weeks. 
On such soils one may ex- 
pect yields of 800 to 1,000 
bushels or even more per 
acre; but in clay soil of av- 
erage fertility, such as is 
found in the average home 
garden, it would not be well 
to expect more than what is 
here recorded. 
