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| Onions- 3 inches tall. Note the clippings on the ground. |
This Saturday marks two weeks since I planted the onion seeds and leeks for this upcoming season. I am trying to keep them at a height of about 3 inches to prevent them from getting too lengthy. Even as very young seedlings, they emit a potent onion smell when they are trimmed with scissors. Both seem to be doing much
better than last year when making a comparison in rate of growth.
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| Leeks! |
Last year, I used only coconut coir for seed starting with Espoma's dry fertilizer Garden-Tone (3-4-4). A number things may have contributed to ending up with very thin onion seedlings (still produce good onions at the end of the season though once outside) such as inconsistent watering, using a dry slow release fertilizer, and using only coconut coir (pH and salt levels not monitored). I would like to make my own media in the future and it is clear I basically randomly chose to throw things together ending up with weak transplants. This year, not only was it simpler to just choose a soil premix (Espoma's Organic potting mix), but hopefully I can isolate variables and work backwards after actually doing research on the best combos of perlite/coir/etc. to get the same results with my own mix.
