Late last year I sowed a tray of over-wintering onion seed and I mostly left them outside undercover with just the odd watering now and then. Today I decided it was time to plant them out, especially as we have had a whole week of clear skies and warm daytime temperatures. The onions in the seed tray had over-wintered, looking a bit messy but it seemed that most tray modules still had viable young onion plants.

Up at the plot, I hoed and levelled off a row within the onion bed I prepped with well rotted down horse manure the week before. This gave me a nice soil to dib holes in a row and pop in the onion plug plants. Using the sturdy module trays with the big hole at the bottom meant this was quite a quick and easy process with just the odd cell not having any plant at all. I thought I had lost a lot more over the winter but it turns out I did not. Most modules had two or more plants, so I expect these to grow into small onions. I thought I would leave it a week before I plant out onion sets and the freshly sown onion seed I did last month (which have now all germinated and growing well.

I covered the newly planted out onions with insect netting with the aim to keep of allium leave miner that has plagued the plot for years. Last year I had much better, although not perfect, results from using the netting and not growing leeks. Fingers crossed this year.

It was a warm day which I finished off with some weeding and hoeing. I started to enlarge the bed by the fruit bushes, making the path thinner and making more space for potatoes later on. I’ll probably regret this later on when I’m trying to find my way through.