Sir, you have made gardening a pleasure. We live in the center of the USA ( Missouri) . I appreciate the time that you have put into your work. Thank You
I like your posts because you are a brilliant presenter and I like to learn from the more informative people's sites. Greets from zone 7b on Canada's maritime pacific coastline.
Hi Bruce - I grew a fantastic crop of onions last year by following Charles Dowding's onion video (he grows them multi-sown from seed). That black foliaged infected crop was a very depressing sight indeed. You were really unlucky..
Growing our own food is about learning how to grow our own food more than it is about saving money. So any crop we eat is candidate for space in the garden.
Thank you, this is super helpful. I'm in warm and dry SF Bay Area, California, and learning how to grow onions from seed. They are complicated! The expression, that a person knows their onions, is a humbling one. I don't yet know my onions! I used to pooh-pooh the idea of growing onions, since they are typically cheap to buy, but actually, I cook with a LOT of onions, and since the prices just keep going up and up.... well, time to learn how to grow onions. I will now keep a watch out for mildew. Last year we didn't have a proper frost, which we usually do, so insects are on the rise. Our springs have been warmer and wetter, and our summers have been cooler rather than baking hot and dry. All this points to more opportunities for fungus-type growth to party on. On point, you are!
I like the expression 'to know your onions'. I also like the french version 'Occupe-toi de tes oignons' which has quite a bit different meaning. Learing how to consistently grow this staple crop is an important task, I think. Good luck!
I think of mold spores as being essentially omnipresent, and their growth being a factor of local conditions. I would spray with an alkaline treatment, like sodium or potassium carbonates, as molds prefer to grow in mildly acidic environments. Of course, if it's raining all the time, any treatment would just wash off, so you do have quite a conundrum on your hands.
I think I agree with you about the local conditions being the big factor. I haven't tried an alkaline treatment. It would be interesting to see if it had an effect.
I work in a market garden growing for a box scheme. I was taught that I shouldn't trim the top of an onion until it is fully dry, to avoid creating an entry point for infection. We harvest directly into net bags, then fill a large crate (8' x 4') with a floor made of pallets. A domestic dehumidifier forces warm dry air through the onions. It uses some power but we can dry a ton in about a week and it's much less handling work than racking them all up, which is what we used to do
I had heard the same thing about not removing the tops of the onions. In this case I was more worried about them not drying out at all. That method you describe sounds good, especially as you don't need to pack them up again, and it saves space.
Thank you. I had thought onions are generally resistant to wet weather woes but we are getting a lot of rain this year so I'm glad to learn this a bit ahead of problems. For spring starts I have a lot of seeds and pips starting in the heated polytunnel bed. I Just gathered a bunch more leek and Chinese garlic chives seed heads outside in rainy zone 7 Vancouver Island Canada. Elephant garlic cloves are planted under a low tunnel on a wicking bed. Didn't even water them in. All good, I like your videos. You're a good teacher with your detailed explanations :)
I´m sorry to hear that. We´ve grown good yield of onions this year but I never heard about infections and problems about growing them. I live in Slovakia and we had cold may with lots of rains and warm june with less rains. I really don´t know how to help you out with onions but I´m sure you will find some way. And nice video!
Haven't grown them for years, but I'm pretty sure onions are cool weather loving crops, so if you avoided the hot weather that hit much of Europe then not only did the spores not have an ideal environment to propagate, but the onions would have been less stressed and more capable of fighting it off
Sorry to hear about your onions! Onions have been my best crop on my allotment this year! Grew from sets planted in the spring in a bed badly affected by mares tail.
Hi Bruce, we have a Downey Mildew problem almost every year (SouthWest UK), so I now only grow Troy over-winter and Santero for the summer which has good resistance.
Yikes!! It is very difficult to grow storage onion here in my area of Sweden as well. Nice information! I do have good luck with traveling onion and small underground “traveling” onion.
Thanks! Very interesting question. I figure I will be able to get about 3.5 to 4 tonnes of vegetable this year - not including potatoes. So I guess it depends on how much vegetables people eat. If people ate only a reasonable amount of vegetables (.5kg or 1lb each day), then this amount may supply in the region of 20 people for the year. If they ate vegetables in the quantity that I tend to, then it would be about half that. But if people were relying on my gardens for the vast majority of what they eat for a full year, then perhaps 5 or 6 adults. But that is just a wild guess.
I've found my crop from sets this season was rather poor in southern Ontario. It's been a less productive this year for most vegetables. Cold nights and cloudy days prevailed. My onions barely grew at all. Lots of leaves but tiny bulbs.
@@seannaesseannaes I built up my soil quite well this year so I dont suspect soil fertility. Perhaps something unseen going on. I have 3 different test plots using different methods and all returned poor. I'm in a microclimate in a valley on the southern edge of oak ridges moraine. My nights have been quite cool. Recently hovering at 10 Celsius. Heavy dew forming each evening. Overall this year has been an odd one for climate. I have not had a single ripe tomato yet. Green on the vine. No peppers at all. Melon plants are thriving but no fruit just flowers. Same with zucchini. No eggplants, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, corn.... It's a bust for most things I planted but beets, and lettuce. Weeds did brilliantly though. I've never experienced such a poor season. I am accustomed to a plentiful harvest that I suspect will not happen this season. My late summer crops are starting quite well however but I expect I will have to cover most to finish. It's a head scratcher year for me.
Trails End that’s crazy, I just dug three 80 foot sections of very sandy soil in muskoka, put 3 inches of municipal compost on top. I have been canning all this week, I have had so many tomatoes, over 150 plants, the yellow pear tomatoes had no flavour but all the rest were fine. The Taiwan and Oregon sugar peas were great. Lots of lettuce. My Persian cucumbers only made 3 so far, and the bell peppers are only walnut sized right now. But all the onions are rather large, yellow, red, white, green, walla walla. The potatoes are also going great, as are the beats, pumpkins, watermelons, and squash. Even the few weed plants I grew are almost 6 feet tall! But all my garlic did not survive, I think I have 3 or 4 plants from 30 X 4 feet of garden. All the same fungus. It’s strange because I am a zone 4b, and you are near cedar mills. I just moved up here from there, and I did have better results down there last year. But I also had super soil that I would make and I spent hundreds at the university of Guelph to test the soil and make sure I have everything right in my different piles for the different crops. I’m sorry to hear you did not have a very productive year, I hope it turns out a little better for you next year.
Too bad about the mildew. I grow in central Canada and have the opposite problem. Often being much too dry. I do plant a crop of sets and plant a crop of seeds every year. With our very short growing season the seeds then provide me with sets for next year. I have decent luck with this. My problem is forgetting to water and weed control. But I have been able to grow enough to last our family our long long winter. Thanks for your videos!
@@REDGardens Yes. I would say 30-50% bolt. Depending on weather. And how lazy I am to take of the crop. But I plant alot of onions. I am not a market garden so its no big deal. I give alot away and usually have enough until the next growing season. I still purchase some sets from nurseries. But I find that they also bolt too. This is something my grandmother has done for a long long time.
I always grow alliums from seed, and aim for quality. I give them 20cm in row, and 80cm between rows, rotavator width. Plant out seedlings when the soil has warmed and overnight temperatures above 7°c. I've never had mildew, i've never used sets. Try Matador shallots from seed, mine were as big as your smaller onions. I'm on sand, and i tried irrigation this year. Made no difference in any factor. I did notice that they do need plenty of nitrogen, as yield was poor on last years sweetcorn patch.
Thanks for sharing our approach to growing onions. It is interesting that your spacing is quite a bit larger than mine,. That would make a difference, I guess especially on sandy soil.
I do think that the more drastic solution is overall the better solution. I've got some mildew on a few of my raspberry plants. I ended up choosing to eliminate any which is affected. They do spread sprout quite a few plants outside of the ranks, so I do have extra which I'm going to use to fill in the holes. They did have a rather bad summer last year followed by a really harsh winter, but thankfully, they are a really hardy plant. I had some insect problems 3 years back on a floral plant and systematic burning of the nests paid off. They are looking good this year without any intervention.
one of the reasons why I didn't go for the more drastic solution (beyond not expecting things to get so bad) was that my neighbours had the same issues, and unless they did the same thing, then my sacrifice would not be as effective.
Looking at your problem with downy mildew could be best explained with being a environmental problem as you stated your neighbours also had this problem, One or two solutions that may help overcome this next year are the time of season that the downy mildew started to appear at take action by spaying anti fungal sprays before the problem is evident or growing other early maturing varieties which will not be affected. I have used milk that is watered down to a 10 to 1 ratio as well as making my own fungicide from garlic, horseradish and bicarbonate soda this is a good all round fungicide and works for a variety of problems in the garden including curly leaf on my apricot tree, I also wonder how EM1 might help with this problem. Love the video's keep up the great work.
try black solider fly larvae manure or casting next time. you put it in a little water and carefully spray it. it's a fertilizer of sorts but it has an antibacterial/microbial /fungal life quality that might help you.
You are 100% right,I have a problem with powdery mildew, the only thing that helps is casting spray, never heard of black solider fly larvae manure, need to try that, thank you for a tip :)
This video came out at perfect time for me. I just am harvesting my onions. I planted sets and seeds. My seeds did much better resisting disease even though they were all exsposed, the seeds the worst. The seeds got much bigger yields also. Needless to say I will plant all seeds next year. I live Oregon coast usa. We have had a wetter summer also but warmer than normal
I am currently trying to learn how to garden with a limited space. I have started composting and will create a raised garden bed to grow some vegetables. I live in the PNW so the climate is similar.
i've been growing onions just north of you for decades, just as wet and cold, no composing, just FYM and 10:10:20, and i've never seen mildew like that on onions or any other crop, I think this all this on-site composting promotes disease both by wind transmission of spores from compost heaps and from not fully sterile compost used in beds. Plant disease in small gardens was a big issue in GB during WW2, heat sterilisation of soil was used to kill disease. Also, ground needs to be left fallow to rest.
I grow onions from seed because I don't like onions bolting , I start them in January and by the end of February they are in the cold greenhouse in march they go in the ground. I grow sturon but this year I tried alisa craig 3 or 4 seed in a module and I planted the module in the ground and all the onions did very well, so much so next year Alisa Craig is going to be the main onions I grow.
I'm wondering, could the better result in the no dig garden be because of the presence of beneficial bacteria, acting as a guard against harmful bacteria?
You're not alone! Same thing happened to us here in Waterford. We're using and dehydrating any that won't keep. Ho hum.."next year will be better!" eh?
@@REDGardens Not as such. There's always some tiny bits after the drying process has finished and these get put into a separate jar for grinding if required but we mostly use the dried onions for soups, stews. Don't forget long term storage (just as any self-respecting Squirrel would do!).
I really enjoy your videos and your scientific approach to farming. I love gardening and I even went to college for agriculture. I have an idea for you - that I have not seen done anywhere. The absolute best protection against disease and pests is healthy plants. I have had neighbors develop problems with crops that I have completely avoided by having super healthy plants. This idea I have could be something that is applied to a lot of what you grow and I think would provide a unique and interesting experiment. The experiment I have in mind would be to take a small portion of each bed and each crop (maybe 18 inches wide in the example of your onion bed) and remove just a bit of soil and replace it with a super amendment of compost and nutrients that would be the absolute best soil you could produce. (and mark this part with colored sticks or something) I think it would be fascinating to see how crops growing side by side fared in comparison to maximum fertility. Would this super strip of onions have done better? I don't know. But if you started to find even some examples of super fertility overcoming disease and pests it would be very interesting I think. Keep up the good work.
That would be an interesting experiment. I am hoping to do similar explorations next year, but figuring out how to achieve this maximum fertility is the interesting part.
Spraying your plants with liquid aminos (totally natural and organic) as well as compost tea foliar sprays will drastically help with mildew resistance!
I've heard that digging a bed will awaken disease and pest cycles so that may be why the no-till garden was consistent, albeit still lower yielding than other gardens.
I have heard that too, but not sure i understand the mechanism. With the downy mildew, this is an wind spread disease, not a typically soil based one, so I don't know if that is as a factor here.
I'm not sure. I think they were just earlier in the season, so the spores didn't have a chance to develop. But it could also be that the leaves were drier as you suggest.
Sorry to hear of your mildew problem. I've never had great luck with onions here in the U.S., but I haven't put much study into them either. My problem this season is I ordered Ailsa Craig seeds and they're all coming up as purple onions. Will have to contact supplier and ask them to check their batch numbers. Just curious! Do you like sauteed onions and fried liver? :)
Weather happens. As our climate change effect is also wetter (rather than hotter), a local market gardener with 50 years experience has advised me to grow in mounded beds from now on. No reason to buy tons of lumber to make them raised beds; just make rows of mounds to improve drainage. Of course that just exacerbates the "There's never enough compost" problem...but it's probably excellent advice. Not sure it would have saved your onions this year, though.
I can see how that advice would l work in heavy or poorly drained ground. If anything I have the opposite problem with the soil draining too well sometimes.
@@REDGardens aha. Yeah, we've that claggy clay soil. Lots of minerals, but little air. I'm trying "leave 'em in the ground" turnips and radishes this fall in one section to see if that does anything to improve it.
No. The weather is variable, as usual. With some really warm and some quite cool seasons. My own records for the past 10 years don’t show any trend either way. But much of the rest of Europe is showing a definite trend towards warmer summers. The research that I have done into the GSM indicates that any effect would be greatly outweighed by the warming caused by increased greenhouse gasses.
Thank you for this detailed vid. I am moving out of UK. My seed suppliers are all in the UK. Can you post Irish suppliers who I could then order from as once Brexit occurs I will not be able to obtain seed as I am retiring to Cyprus.
Seedhaolic is Irish. They sell online, ship overseas and have good prices and a great catalog. www.seedaholic.com/ PS btw good luck and all the best. I hope you are moving to Cyprus for the climate and not because of Brexit. 😁
Yeah, I think a lot of people forget to consider that space has value. If you could be putting another higher value crop in that space then it is worth doing so. Any crops that don't provide enough value relative to the space available you might as well get from the super market
I have a different rule :) I grow for flavour. Growing from seed gives me much greater range to choose from and over the years I have tried various varieties, of all sorts of crops, and family has voted on best flavour. So I'm happy to grow even low-value / low-yielding crops where I can get flavour far better than shop-bought.
it's an excellent rule, but onions/leeks/chives around the edges of my gardens convince the rabbits (which do indeed breed just like rabbits every year) to not dig in or try that meter-high leap over the fence. :D They don't like the smell. That I get a tasty crop too is one of those nice bonuses. Otherwise, yeah, tomatoes, herbs, salad mixes, all expensive, or anything absent from the stores and impossible to buy at any price seem like the sensible choices for a small garden.
@@REDGardens Application rates: 0.5 - 2.0% solution (5 - 20 grams per litre) Here in the Netherlands I can get it for these prices: www.deoplosmiddelspecialist.nl/kopen/Kaliumbicarbonaat. , For the control of powdery mildew in all horticultural crops Potassium Bicarbonate Horticultural fungicide : solufeed.com/media/46370/potassium-bicarbonate.pdf
I saw a recommendation to take the beds out of cultivation for at least three years after sustaining a bad crop. This would mean not planting onions, leeks or chives. However, other crops would be OK. Your neighbors also got downy mildew. Did you buy sets from the same source or purchased compost from the same supplier? Were their onions as closely spaced as yours? Did any of the neighbors plant their onions several weeks later to avoid the cool, wet conditions when your sets were planted? agrilifecdn.tamu.edu/amarillo/files/2010/11/DownyMildewOnion.pdf
The 4 year crop rotation that I have been doing would mean that the onions won't be back in that section of the garden for at least 4 years, but because the gardens are relatively small, it is possible that the disease could still spread. I am not sure about the source of the sets my neighbours used, but one of them had much wider spacing then I typically have.
Add roll-up tarps on the front and back of your stacked onion racks to keep the rain off. Leave the 2 sides open for air flow. Maybe this video will help... Hollis calls it something different, but he also uses it for curing his potatoes, and drying garlic and onions... th-cam.com/video/QbWF6glOnWc/w-d-xo.html
Sir, you have made gardening a pleasure.
We live in the center of the USA ( Missouri) .
I appreciate the time that you have put into your work. Thank You
Thanks! So good to hear from people in very different climates!
Here in sLOVEnia we also had a bad onion harvest this year. Apparently we wont cry so much this year :D
:D
I like your posts because you are a brilliant presenter and I like to learn from the more informative people's sites. Greets from zone 7b on Canada's maritime pacific coastline.
Thanks!
Hi Bruce - I grew a fantastic crop of onions last year by following Charles Dowding's onion video (he grows them multi-sown from seed). That black foliaged infected crop was a very depressing sight indeed. You were really unlucky..
What variety did you grow?
Growing our own food is about learning how to grow our own food more than it is about saving money. So any crop we eat is candidate for space in the garden.
and about eating less synthetic poison and not having to pay for a gym and doing something useful instead
Good approach - i'd agree with that.
Thank you, this is super helpful. I'm in warm and dry SF Bay Area, California, and learning how to grow onions from seed. They are complicated! The expression, that a person knows their onions, is a humbling one. I don't yet know my onions! I used to pooh-pooh the idea of growing onions, since they are typically cheap to buy, but actually, I cook with a LOT of onions, and since the prices just keep going up and up.... well, time to learn how to grow onions. I will now keep a watch out for mildew. Last year we didn't have a proper frost, which we usually do, so insects are on the rise. Our springs have been warmer and wetter, and our summers have been cooler rather than baking hot and dry. All this points to more opportunities for fungus-type growth to party on. On point, you are!
I like the expression 'to know your onions'. I also like the french version 'Occupe-toi de tes oignons' which has quite a bit different meaning.
Learing how to consistently grow this staple crop is an important task, I think. Good luck!
I think of mold spores as being essentially omnipresent, and their growth being a factor of local conditions. I would spray with an alkaline treatment, like sodium or potassium carbonates, as molds prefer to grow in mildly acidic environments. Of course, if it's raining all the time, any treatment would just wash off, so you do have quite a conundrum on your hands.
I think I agree with you about the local conditions being the big factor. I haven't tried an alkaline treatment. It would be interesting to see if it had an effect.
I work in a market garden growing for a box scheme. I was taught that I shouldn't trim the top of an onion until it is fully dry, to avoid creating an entry point for infection. We harvest directly into net bags, then fill a large crate (8' x 4') with a floor made of pallets. A domestic dehumidifier forces warm dry air through the onions. It uses some power but we can dry a ton in about a week and it's much less handling work than racking them all up, which is what we used to do
I had heard the same thing about not removing the tops of the onions. In this case I was more worried about them not drying out at all. That method you describe sounds good, especially as you don't need to pack them up again, and it saves space.
I look forward to your storage discussion
Thank you. I had thought onions are generally resistant to wet weather woes but we are getting a lot of rain this year so I'm glad to learn this a bit ahead of problems.
For spring starts I have a lot of seeds and pips starting in the heated polytunnel bed. I Just gathered a bunch more leek and Chinese garlic chives seed heads outside in rainy zone 7 Vancouver Island Canada. Elephant garlic cloves are planted under a low tunnel on a wicking bed. Didn't even water them in.
All good, I like your videos. You're a good teacher with your detailed explanations :)
I´m sorry to hear that. We´ve grown good yield of onions this year but I never heard about infections and problems about growing them. I live in Slovakia and we had cold may with lots of rains and warm june with less rains. I really don´t know how to help you out with onions but I´m sure you will find some way. And nice video!
Haven't grown them for years, but I'm pretty sure onions are cool weather loving crops, so if you avoided the hot weather that hit much of Europe then not only did the spores not have an ideal environment to propagate, but the onions would have been less stressed and more capable of fighting it off
Sorry to hear about your onions! Onions have been my best crop on my allotment this year! Grew from sets planted in the spring in a bed badly affected by mares tail.
It is so interesting how some people have great success and others have real problems in the same season.
Hi Bruce, we have a Downey Mildew problem almost every year (SouthWest UK), so I now only grow Troy over-winter and Santero for the summer which has good resistance.
Thanks for the recommendation.
your not alone, most of my onions failed this year
mine too. They looked good for a while, but then they all failed and just never fully grew into anything.
Yikes!! It is very difficult to grow storage onion here in my area of Sweden as well. Nice information!
I do have good luck with traveling onion and small underground “traveling” onion.
I haven't tried the travelling onions. Something i might look into net year.
Thanks for another great video. At this point, if all you had were your gardens, how many people would you be able to feed for an entire year?
Thanks! Very interesting question. I figure I will be able to get about 3.5 to 4 tonnes of vegetable this year - not including potatoes. So I guess it depends on how much vegetables people eat. If people ate only a reasonable amount of vegetables (.5kg or 1lb each day), then this amount may supply in the region of 20 people for the year. If they ate vegetables in the quantity that I tend to, then it would be about half that.
But if people were relying on my gardens for the vast majority of what they eat for a full year, then perhaps 5 or 6 adults. But that is just a wild guess.
"A Bad Year For Onions" would be a great title for an album.
Hmmm ... but what kind of music?
@@REDGardens Thrash Metal. Or Irish Folk.
I've found my crop from sets this season was rather poor in southern Ontario. It's been a less productive this year for most vegetables. Cold nights and cloudy days prevailed. My onions barely grew at all. Lots of leaves but tiny bulbs.
Here in the USA ( Missouri) as well.
Trails End Thats strange, I am 3 hr north of Toronto and my onions are rather large. Maybe not good soil?
@@seannaesseannaes I built up my soil quite well this year so I dont suspect soil fertility. Perhaps something unseen going on.
I have 3 different test plots using different methods and all returned poor. I'm in a microclimate in a valley on the southern edge of oak ridges moraine. My nights have been quite cool. Recently hovering at 10 Celsius. Heavy dew forming each evening. Overall this year has been an odd one for climate. I have not had a single ripe tomato yet. Green on the vine. No peppers at all. Melon plants are thriving but no fruit just flowers. Same with zucchini. No eggplants, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, corn.... It's a bust for most things I planted but beets, and lettuce. Weeds did brilliantly though.
I've never experienced such a poor season. I am accustomed to a plentiful harvest that I suspect will not happen this season. My late summer crops are starting quite well however but I expect I will have to cover most to finish.
It's a head scratcher year for me.
Even my chickens failed to perform as well as other years. Weights were down by 40%.
Trails End that’s crazy, I just dug three 80 foot sections of very sandy soil in muskoka, put 3 inches of municipal compost on top. I have been canning all this week, I have had so many tomatoes, over 150 plants, the yellow pear tomatoes had no flavour but all the rest were fine. The Taiwan and Oregon sugar peas were great. Lots of lettuce. My Persian cucumbers only made 3 so far, and the bell peppers are only walnut sized right now. But all the onions are rather large, yellow, red, white, green, walla walla. The potatoes are also going great, as are the beats, pumpkins, watermelons, and squash. Even the few weed plants I grew are almost 6 feet tall! But all my garlic did not survive, I think I have 3 or 4 plants from 30 X 4 feet of garden. All the same fungus.
It’s strange because I am a zone 4b, and you are near cedar mills. I just moved up here from there, and I did have better results down there last year. But I also had super soil that I would make and I spent hundreds at the university of Guelph to test the soil and make sure I have everything right in my different piles for the different crops.
I’m sorry to hear you did not have a very productive year, I hope it turns out a little better for you next year.
Generally i'v found with onions and garlic the best way to store them is upside down so any liquid flows from the bulb to the stalk end.
no, let them die back naturally and don't cut the tops off till they're bone dry, otherwise you introduce rot
Too bad about the mildew. I grow in central Canada and have the opposite problem. Often being much too dry. I do plant a crop of sets and plant a crop of seeds every year. With our very short growing season the seeds then provide me with sets for next year. I have decent luck with this. My problem is forgetting to water and weed control. But I have been able to grow enough to last our family our long long winter. Thanks for your videos!
I am intrigued that you are able to grow your own sets from seed. Do you find that they bolt in the second season?
@@REDGardens Yes. I would say 30-50% bolt. Depending on weather. And how lazy I am to take of the crop. But I plant alot of onions. I am not a market garden so its no big deal. I give alot away and usually have enough until the next growing season. I still purchase some sets from nurseries. But I find that they also bolt too. This is something my grandmother has done for a long long time.
Love your videos, it is great to see such a well documented, factual data from your well studied practices. Looking forward to your future videos!
Thanks. It is really good to know that my approach to these videos is appreciated.
I always grow alliums from seed, and aim for quality. I give them 20cm in row, and 80cm between rows, rotavator width. Plant out seedlings when the soil has warmed and overnight temperatures above 7°c. I've never had mildew, i've never used sets. Try Matador shallots from seed, mine were as big as your smaller onions. I'm on sand, and i tried irrigation this year. Made no difference in any factor. I did notice that they do need plenty of nitrogen, as yield was poor on last years sweetcorn patch.
Thanks for sharing our approach to growing onions. It is interesting that your spacing is quite a bit larger than mine,. That would make a difference, I guess especially on sandy soil.
I do think that the more drastic solution is overall the better solution. I've got some mildew on a few of my raspberry plants. I ended up choosing to eliminate any which is affected. They do spread sprout quite a few plants outside of the ranks, so I do have extra which I'm going to use to fill in the holes. They did have a rather bad summer last year followed by a really harsh winter, but thankfully, they are a really hardy plant. I had some insect problems 3 years back on a floral plant and systematic burning of the nests paid off. They are looking good this year without any intervention.
one of the reasons why I didn't go for the more drastic solution (beyond not expecting things to get so bad) was that my neighbours had the same issues, and unless they did the same thing, then my sacrifice would not be as effective.
Looking at your problem with downy mildew could be best explained with being a environmental problem as you stated your neighbours also had this problem, One or two solutions that may help overcome this next year are the time of season that the downy mildew started to appear at take action by spaying anti fungal sprays before the problem is evident or growing other early maturing varieties which will not be affected.
I have used milk that is watered down to a 10 to 1 ratio as well as making my own fungicide from garlic, horseradish and bicarbonate soda this is a good all round fungicide and works for a variety of problems in the garden including curly leaf on my apricot tree, I also wonder how EM1 might help with this problem.
Love the video's keep up the great work.
Thanks. I have heard from a few people about the sue of milk. Very interesting .
try black solider fly larvae manure or casting next time. you put it in a little water and carefully spray it. it's a fertilizer of sorts but it has an antibacterial/microbial /fungal life quality that might help you.
You are 100% right,I have a problem with powdery mildew, the only thing that helps is casting spray, never heard of black solider fly larvae manure, need to try that, thank you for a tip :)
Onions make a good soil conditioner, the humidity is the main control problem :)
Yes. It sounds like humidity is the issue.
This video came out at perfect time for me. I just am harvesting my onions. I planted sets and seeds. My seeds did much better resisting disease even though they were all exsposed, the seeds the worst. The seeds got much bigger yields also.
Needless to say I will plant all seeds next year.
I live Oregon coast usa. We have had a wetter summer also but warmer than normal
Interesting to hear that the seeds did better.
I am currently trying to learn how to garden with a limited space. I have started composting and will create a raised garden bed to grow some vegetables. I live in the PNW so the climate is similar.
Best of luck with your garden.
I live in western washington and onions grow like wildfire here
What kind of climate is that - temperate costal, with high humidity?
RED Gardens it’s up and down, humid not too warm summers not too cold cold
try looking at the varities Hylander and Sarento developed from new breeding progammes. Both got reistance to mildew
Thanks for the recommendation.
Ailsa Craig and yellow Parma grew best in my maritime climate. I highly recommend them.
Thanks
My onions didn't do well this season either. My garlic even worse. No DM but low production.
Very wet and cold spring seemed to be a factor.
Some years are tough.
i've been growing onions just north of you for decades, just as wet and cold, no composing, just FYM and 10:10:20, and i've never seen mildew like that on onions or any other crop, I think this all this on-site composting promotes disease both by wind transmission of spores from compost heaps and from not fully sterile compost used in beds. Plant disease in small gardens was a big issue in GB during WW2, heat sterilisation of soil was used to kill disease. Also, ground needs to be left fallow to rest.
Interesting.
I grow onions from seed because I don't like onions bolting , I start them in January and by the end of February they are in the cold greenhouse in march they go in the ground. I grow sturon but this year I tried alisa craig 3 or 4 seed in a module and I planted the module in the ground and all the onions did very well, so much so next year Alisa Craig is going to be the main onions I grow.
Interesting that you have had good success with Ailsa Craig. Thanks for the info.
By the way, I live on the isle of Wight (south uk)
@1:28
I wonder if we could start a war on flies that would make my day thanks for your hard working and info,,,Robert:) cheers.
👍
I'm wondering, could the better result in the no dig garden be because of the presence of beneficial bacteria, acting as a guard against harmful bacteria?
Mildew are fungi iirc.
@@acctsys sure, but the question still stands. One idea with no dig gardening is that beneficial bacteria and fungi build up to protect the soils
Possibly, but it could also be other factors, such as the crop being sheltered by adjacent broad beans.
You're not alone! Same thing happened to us here in Waterford. We're using and dehydrating any that won't keep. Ho hum.."next year will be better!" eh?
Yeah, next year! Do you grind up the dehydrated onions and use it as a powder?
@@REDGardens Not as such. There's always some tiny bits after the drying process has finished and these get put into a separate jar for grinding if required but we mostly use the dried onions for soups, stews. Don't forget long term storage (just as any self-respecting Squirrel would do!).
also Golden Bear and Toughball mildew resistance
Cool.
I really enjoy your videos and your scientific approach to farming. I love gardening and I even went to college for agriculture. I have an idea for you - that I have not seen done anywhere. The absolute best protection against disease and pests is healthy plants. I have had neighbors develop problems with crops that I have completely avoided by having super healthy plants.
This idea I have could be something that is applied to a lot of what you grow and I think would provide a unique and interesting experiment.
The experiment I have in mind would be to take a small portion of each bed and each crop (maybe 18 inches wide in the example of your onion bed) and remove just a bit of soil and replace it with a super amendment of compost and nutrients that would be the absolute best soil you could produce. (and mark this part with colored sticks or something)
I think it would be fascinating to see how crops growing side by side fared in comparison to maximum fertility.
Would this super strip of onions have done better? I don't know. But if you started to find even some examples of super fertility overcoming disease and pests it would be very interesting I think.
Keep up the good work.
That would be an interesting experiment. I am hoping to do similar explorations next year, but figuring out how to achieve this maximum fertility is the interesting part.
I'm pretty sure you know I'm not trying to beat a dead horse but you can prevent mold spores or at least kill them which organic fungicides
Thinks make us now we need onions. Its useful and your soooo cool
Spraying your plants with liquid aminos (totally natural and organic) as well as compost tea foliar sprays will drastically help with mildew resistance!
Definitely an option I want to try next year.
Better luck and planning next year nevertheless great growth of onions, thanks for sharing 👍
:)
Looking forward to storage related videos!
I hope to do one later in the season.
I had this problem too. I am gardening in the Netherlands. NO 😢 for me.
Seems to be an issue in lots of places.
I've heard that digging a bed will awaken disease and pest cycles so that may be why the no-till garden was consistent, albeit still lower yielding than other gardens.
I have heard that too, but not sure i understand the mechanism. With the downy mildew, this is an wind spread disease, not a typically soil based one, so I don't know if that is as a factor here.
So the spores didn't settle in the polytunnel because there was no misty leaves to cling onto?
I'm not sure. I think they were just earlier in the season, so the spores didn't have a chance to develop. But it could also be that the leaves were drier as you suggest.
Sorry to hear of your mildew problem. I've never had great luck with onions here in the U.S., but I haven't put much study into them either. My problem this season is I ordered Ailsa Craig seeds and they're all coming up as purple onions. Will have to contact supplier and ask them to check their batch numbers. Just curious! Do you like sauteed onions and fried liver? :)
Ah, that is a shame about the seed mix up!
I like liver and onions, but haven't had it in ages.
another great video, keep it up
:)
bet you were able to learn alot more about onions this year!
Indeed!
Take a shot everytime he says ‘onions’
The onions that were effected by the disease, they seemed to have grown a bit can you not eat an onion effected by the mildew?
Yes, they are edible - most of them - but I don’t think they will keep for as long as they usually do.
Weather happens.
As our climate change effect is also wetter (rather than hotter), a local market gardener with 50 years experience has advised me to grow in mounded beds from now on. No reason to buy tons of lumber to make them raised beds; just make rows of mounds to improve drainage. Of course that just exacerbates the "There's never enough compost" problem...but it's probably excellent advice. Not sure it would have saved your onions this year, though.
I can see how that advice would l work in heavy or poorly drained ground. If anything I have the opposite problem with the soil draining too well sometimes.
@@REDGardens aha. Yeah, we've that claggy clay soil. Lots of minerals, but little air. I'm trying "leave 'em in the ground" turnips and radishes this fall in one section to see if that does anything to improve it.
Is the grand solar minimum affecting your crops with early cold weather?
No. The weather is variable, as usual. With some really warm and some quite cool seasons. My own records for the past 10 years don’t show any trend either way. But much of the rest of Europe is showing a definite trend towards warmer summers.
The research that I have done into the GSM indicates that any effect would be greatly outweighed by the warming caused by increased greenhouse gasses.
Thank you for this detailed vid. I am moving out of UK. My seed suppliers are all in the UK. Can you post Irish suppliers who I could then order from as once Brexit occurs I will not be able to obtain seed as I am retiring to Cyprus.
Seedhaolic is Irish. They sell online, ship overseas and have good prices and a great catalog.
www.seedaholic.com/
PS btw good luck and all the best. I hope you are moving to Cyprus for the climate and not because of Brexit. 😁
@@pansepot1490 No climate....thank you.
@@pansepot1490 Just been through the catalogue and placed an order...thanks great company.
I got a rule for my garden. If I can buy it for less than 1 dollar a kilo, then I don't bother growing it.
Onions fit that category.
good thinking and use the ground for crops that dont have that mildew problem
QB Mac, yeah, I too tend to avoid growing things that are more work than they are worth however, most people garden for the fun of it.
Yeah, I think a lot of people forget to consider that space has value. If you could be putting another higher value crop in that space then it is worth doing so. Any crops that don't provide enough value relative to the space available you might as well get from the super market
I have a different rule :) I grow for flavour. Growing from seed gives me much greater range to choose from and over the years I have tried various varieties, of all sorts of crops, and family has voted on best flavour. So I'm happy to grow even low-value / low-yielding crops where I can get flavour far better than shop-bought.
it's an excellent rule, but onions/leeks/chives around the edges of my gardens convince the rabbits (which do indeed breed just like rabbits every year) to not dig in or try that meter-high leap over the fence. :D They don't like the smell. That I get a tasty crop too is one of those nice bonuses.
Otherwise, yeah, tomatoes, herbs, salad mixes, all expensive, or anything absent from the stores and impossible to buy at any price seem like the sensible choices for a small garden.
Potassium bicarbonate appears to work very well as a fungicide. Very cheap and adds P to the soil. Win, win, win.
Interesting. I'll have to look into that.
@@REDGardens Application rates: 0.5 - 2.0% solution (5 - 20 grams per litre) Here in the Netherlands I can get it for these prices: www.deoplosmiddelspecialist.nl/kopen/Kaliumbicarbonaat. , For the control of powdery mildew
in all horticultural crops
Potassium Bicarbonate
Horticultural fungicide : solufeed.com/media/46370/potassium-bicarbonate.pdf
I saw a recommendation to take the beds out of cultivation for at least three years after sustaining a bad crop. This would mean not planting onions, leeks or chives. However, other crops would be OK.
Your neighbors also got downy mildew. Did you buy sets from the same source or purchased compost from the same supplier?
Were their onions as closely spaced as yours? Did any of the neighbors plant their onions several weeks later to avoid the cool, wet conditions when your sets were planted?
agrilifecdn.tamu.edu/amarillo/files/2010/11/DownyMildewOnion.pdf
The 4 year crop rotation that I have been doing would mean that the onions won't be back in that section of the garden for at least 4 years, but because the gardens are relatively small, it is possible that the disease could still spread.
I am not sure about the source of the sets my neighbours used, but one of them had much wider spacing then I typically have.
just 3 words, use copper compownds
What is your growing zone? I’m in 8b 9a
I don’t know. We don’t use that type of zoning over here in Ireland/Europe.
Add roll-up tarps on the front and back of your stacked onion racks to keep the rain off. Leave the 2 sides open for air flow. Maybe this video will help... Hollis calls it something different, but he also uses it for curing his potatoes, and drying garlic and onions... th-cam.com/video/QbWF6glOnWc/w-d-xo.html
Higher humidity means longer drying times, regardless of rain
Around here we seem to get the best drying due to the wind, so long as I can keep the rain off.
regular watering with compost tea will improve your onions and reduce most of the issues you have had
I should try that.
like your video not your situation 😔
Thanks!
Have you considered the grand solar minimum
I have looked into it, but the likely impact seems to be inconsequential compared to the forcing from increased greenhouse gasses.
P U
HYDROGEN PEROXIDE
Do you spray it as a preventative, or as a remedy after infection?