Subject: Re: Split onion plants or not?

From: [email-masked] (Anthony Wallis)
Date: 29 May 1995 11:45:08 GMT

Keith Ashbey, a novice vegetable gardener, from the UK ..
> I bought a number of small onion plants as "plugs" containing
> about 3 plants each. These were too small to separate so I
> planted them together. They are now established-do I separate
> the plants or leave them to grow together?

Keith, I've been transplanting densely-sown onion seedlings for
15 years.  Let's say they are 1/4" thick at the bottom and 5-6"
high, and clumped together with their root systems entangled.
(If they are much bigger than that, I don't guarantee the
 following, but it may still work.  So either keep this for future
 reference, or try it with the dimensions "scaled up" a bit.)
Small onions are surprising tolerant to separation and transplanting.
My technique is as follows :

[1] Thoroughly soak the matted root systems in water.
[2] With the help of a gentle spray of running water, ease each
    seedling away from its "siblings", washing away all the soil.
[3] As you observe the seedling lose maybe 1/2-2/3 of its roots,
    mutter "I _do_ trust that man in Canada who gave me this advice" :-)
[4] With a pair of scissors trim both the (remaining) roots _and_the_
    _foliage_ to 2.5"-3".
My transplanting technique is to
[5] Punch a finger-length hole in the soil.
[6] Holding the seedling by the foliage, poke it down into the
    hole as far as you can (maybe twisting a bit to make the
    roots go in), and then pull the seedling back up to the
    right depth (this will distribute the roots) and firm the
    soil to hold it at the right depth.
[7] Watering with transplanter solution might help recovery from
    the "trauma".

My success rate is 95+ %

--
[email-masked] = Tony Wallis, York University, North York, Canada.