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Did I plant onions too early?

8 years ago
last modified: 8 years ago

Planted dixondale onions this past Saturday. Now all this rain and its going down to 27ish. Didn't think to cover. Will they make it? I did raised mounds so they shouldn't drown

Mike

Comments (4)

  • 8 years ago

    I hope so! I planted mine on Saturday too!

  • 8 years ago

    Well if not at least they are cheap to replace.

  • 8 years ago

    They should be fine. The only danger would be if they are both extremely cold (colder than I think y'all will get this week) and heavily waterlogged in slow-draining clay at the same time. Usually onions can tolerate normal freezes and frosts just fine, and often a hard freeze (28 degrees or less) won't even hurt them. Sometimes they can handle temperatures down into the low 20s or lower with no damage. The main issue seems to be prior cold exposure, which unfortunately, onions just planted in the last week have not had since we were having warm weather. Snow usually helps onions by insulating them from cold air, so pray that you get snow instead of ice. In the few times we have received ice after my onions were in the ground, I only lost them once and that was in very, very wet ground. I think it was more the moisture than the ice. Sometimes ice will damage the leaves, but the onions will put out new growth very quickly. So, I wouldn't worry too much.

    As far as whether you planted too early or not, I like to plant my onions 4-6 weeks prior to my average last freeze date, as is generally recommended. If you planted earlier than 6 weeks prior to your average last freeze date, then you may have planted a bit too early. Most years you can do that and get away with it, but I tend to not push our luck that way. For our location in SC OK, the ALFD is March 28th, so I aim for mid-February. I have had my onions since February 12th and chose not to plant them prior to this big round of rain/ice/whatever the heck is gonna fall from the skies. That was sort of a deliberate choice but it was because I was worried about our forecast of 3-5" of rain more than the temperatures. Even well-amended clay can sometimes hold too much moisture too long when that much rain falls quickly, so I waited and I'm not sorry. Again, though, it wasn't because of the temperatures that I waited. I do hope to get my onions planted as soon as the rain ends. I have their bed ready. I have them ready. I am ready. I just wanted to wait until after the rain so I could spare them some of that over-abundance of moisture.

    If you need to hold onions for planting in the future, just remove the rubber bands and spread out the onions a bit for better air flow, and keep them in a cool, dry location. They easily can survive 3-4 weeks out of the ground and I have held them as long as 6 weeks in a really crappy winter when it wouldn't stop raining, sleeting and snowing and our ground, even in the raised beds, was squishy with puddles on top of the raised beds' soil.

    For anyone who doesn't know their area's average last freeze date, here's a map with general info. You can use the Climate section of the OK Mesonet website to find climate-specific weather summaries that give you the exact dates for your area.


    Average Date of Last Freeze

  • 8 years ago

    Thanks dawn. Im probably about 7 weeks out. Hopefully march is much more mild than what we have had. It so hard to not want to plant when it was 70 outside LOL

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