The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-10-02
Onion Culture in the South.

While Just as fine crops of onions can
be grown in the South as in New England,
the southern grower labors under the dis
advantage of not being able to preserve
them after making them as the New
England grower can. With us the crop
planted in February or March, whether
with seeds or sets, natures in midsummer,
and it is very difficult to preserve the
onions from rotting after they are har-
vested. If the southern grower had
plenty of dry cellar storage and grew the
crop from the seed from as late planting
as it is possible to make and yet make a
good CROP it might be possible with
proper care to preserve the onions up to
and through the winter. We know of no
tests extensive enough to be of any value
to determine this question satisfactorily.
1t is one for southern experiment stations
to make a thorough test of, and we hope
several of them will undertake a solution
of it.
The most that we have ever done
toward testing the preservation of the
onion through the autumn season was by
braiding limited quantity and hanging
them up in lofts. In some instances the
onions kept perfectly, in others they
rotted badly 1t depends considerably
upon the variety, and the character the
weather at and about harvest time,
whether they are kept more or less per-
fectly.
By far, the greater bulk of onions
grown in the south are raised from sets,
either planted out late in the fall or Just
after the severe weather of the winter is
over, from the middle of January to the
middle of February. Onions so grown
are not good keepers, and are not, as rule
planted with the expectation of being
preserved, but are intended for use in
green state mostly. Some few good house
wives manage to preserve for a short
period such as are not used by the time
they are matured, but the bulk of these
garden paintings are consumed in the
period from April to August. Usually
onions are out of season the rest of the
year in the southern gardens, though
most of them will contain their little
patch (or row of "shallots" for frying or
seasoning purposes.
Except for home use or supplying the
local market with green onions during
the spring and early summer, we should
never grow onions from planting the sets.
The bulk of the crop we would grow from
the seeds, sowing them in February or
March, just as we would for a crop of
beets, or fair part of the crop can be
made by raising plants in seed beds, just
as we would for cabbage or peppers and
setting out the plants as soon as they get
large enough, or the proper time arrives.
In using plants instead of sets, you have
the advantage of knowing just what va
riety of onions you are using, which will
not be the case with sets unless you grew
them yourself. Success hinges to a con-
siderable extent upon the variety used,
and some onion sets are raised from poor
quality of seed, and Oftentimes from a va
rety very poorly suited to our climate
These sets will shoot to seed instead of
making bulbs, and the consequence will
be perfect failure, or very nearly such.
A long experience has taught us how
great the risk may be with sets of uncer-
tain parentage, and the market gardener
or trucker must be very careful in respect
to this matter, else he may be sorely dis
appointed at the outcome. This risk can
be avoided by purchasing fresh seeds of
good strain of some of the varieties that
we have mentioned, from some reputable
grower An acre of highly enriched soil,
mat has been properly prepared, may be
made to prOdu~e anywhere from 200 to
oOO or 600 bushels of onions under this
pan OF transplanting the plants of some
OF Ihe Italian mammoth onions.
II the rows are feet apart and plant
al every inches in the row, it would re-
qulre 1920 plants for an acre. and it
needs that each onion averages s ounces,
10 nave this number of plants make
crop OF 400 bushels. 1t is quite possible
W make them average 16 ounces on rich
'oH mat IS adapted to the onion.