Red Barons

[mew]

Planted out some red onions the other day (barons) but about a month ago a incorporated some well rotted organic muck into the bed. Read that you shouldnt plant onions in freshly mucked soil (albeit it is well rotted not fresh).

Have I dropped a cod here?? will this result in naff red onions??

Thanks
MEW

[MKG]

All of the onion growers I've ever known say this is codswallop. They say their onions love manure. Giant onion growers swear by manure. I have no direct experience, but ...

[johnhcrf]

Some gardening advice says do not use fertiliser over much for onions? Try it learn from the experience.

[Thurston Garden]

I am with MKG.

I certainly muck my onions and have done for years. My Dad did too and grew some whoppers. There's only two crops I don't muck and that's carrots and parsnips. They love muck too much, that's why you don't muck for them - they go off searching for it and that's why the roots fork.

[ina]

Glad to hear that - because my onions went into a well mucked bed, too! Extremely well rotted muck, though. Let's compare notes later in the year... (Last year my onions went in after potatoes, and I didn't put any more muck on - the tatties had had a lot. They did quite well - better than most other stuff I tried to grow in that perpetual rain - but didn't grow very large.)