If you plant your onions, shallots and garlic in to deep will it cause problems or do you think it will be okay, also a few of my onions are splitting what do you thinks causing it? cheers
Garlic should be planted deeply anyhow, so they will be fine. As for the onions and shallots, I don't know. I should imagine the main problem would be them rotting in damp cold ground.
I think onions and shallots really like to have their bulbs sort of roasting in the sun - that's the best way I can describe it - they almost should sit on top of the soil. Not sure what would happen if planted too deep - suppose it depends on what you mean by deep - an inch may be ok but 4 or 5" may mean they don't get going and rot, as EJ says.
Not sure what you mean by onions splitting either to be honest - do you mean that the shallots are splitting into a cluster of bulbs? This is normal. Don't really know of ordianry onions having splitting problems.
I don't know either, but I'll soon be finding out what happens to shallots when planted deep, since I put mine in the same way as I plant garlic by mistake. I suspect they'll be fine, but we'll soon see. If the worst comes rto the worst, at least I'll have an excuse for failure, and plenty to plant for next year!
Assuming you have grown them from setts then it is reccommended that the sett is virtually buried leaving only a wisp of stem sticking above the surface of the soil.
I suppose pricked out seed grown varieties would be planted out at around 1"/25mm deep.
....and if sown insitu ½"/12mm deep.
I hope this helps.
one of my sett onions has split into two, but the rest all look OK.
You always get the odd one that splits.
just the onions im concerned about, i know shallots split , but a lot of my onions have split in two three times as many as last year, could it be dry weather , to fresh manure or just dodgy setts? Also do moles and birds eat slugs?
What proportion have split? I always get the odd few but it's never been any more than that. Certainly not enough to worry about.