How not to grow Kelsae onions

I could have called this post Allotment Wins and Woes – I’ll get to the good stuff in a minute but for now, this is definitely not the way to grow onions from seed.

What happened was this: we had four small trays of seedling Kelsae onions. I potted one whole tray up into individual pots, and then, a couple of days later, OH potted up the other three trays, also into individual pots, and all the pots went into the spare bedroom which is cool but not cold, and light. But what I didn’t realise was that OH had taken my first lot of onions and put them on a lower shelf in the spare room. So, thinking all the pots were on the top shelf, and the unit on which they are housed having a solid back, so I couldn’t see the lower shelf as the pots were facing the window, to get the best light, not the door, where I might have spotted them, I merrily failed, for ten days, to turn or water all the onions I’d transplanted.

Net result: about two of the twenty onions might survive.

The moral is, when two of you are working on a growing project together, try to exchange all information and not to make assumptions!

On the other hand, the broad beans in the greenhouse are doing magnificently. They will be used to replace the ones lost to mice, and although we’ll have to spray against blackfly (which never works: spring sown broad beans always get blackfly, in my experience) we should still have a good bean harvest this year, on the current showing.

Labels: allotment broad beans, allotment seedlings, Kelsae onions