Get your onion sets & wait for a break in the weather to dash outside & plant your onions. You can get onion sets at your local plant nursery or feed store. If you don’t want to leave your house, you can even order them online. I try to link my planting dates to holidays so that it is easier to remember. I try to get my onions in the ground by Martin Luther King Jr. day every year, at least in Dallas TX. Watch the video & plant onions with me!

If you have never read my newbie gardener onion seed vs sets story you really should. It is a tad bit humiliating, but gives me a good laugh looking back. I hope it gives you a good laugh too:  https://bloomwhereyourplanted.com/time-to-plant-onions-in-north-texas/  the link above includes the story on video. It also includes where I store my onions & how to braid them for hanging. Enjoy, I hope I inspire you to grow your own onions this year from sets not seeds!

You will notice that I don’t plant in rows like my grandfather did. While he raised his earth in hills with trenches on either side, I raised mine up in a 4 x 8 gardening bed. Why the difference? My Grandfather John didn’t garden in Dallas Texas! While our clay soil is pretty nutrient dense, it doesn’t lend well to raking into rows. Root crops like onions love a good fluffy raised bed mix, because they can spread out to their hearts content. I always say:

“I wonder how many plows the settlers broke in this clay soil before they decided to invest in a few head of cattle instead!”

Space your onions 3-4″ apart. If you want to you can make a planting grid out of a pizza box like I did. This is also my secret planting tool for kids;)

Remember when you are planing your garden, that when it comes to onions, the magic/bulb happens at the end. What this means to a gardener is, that I will be wanting to plant a lot of things right after the last possible Spring freeze date on April 14th, but I won’t be harvesting those beautiful  onion bulbs until late May.  So leave plenty of room in your garden for those early Spring crops like tomatoes(remember when it comes to tomatoes-PPP–Plant early and be Prepared to Protect; see my article here for successful North Texas tomatoes)

After I harvest my onion bed I will follow with a crop of sweet potatoes in late May because they LOVE the heat. Also the local rabbits don’t seem to like onion so I am free to plant outside my front yard garden fence. I will plant my onions in what I call my sweet potato pit right in my front yard. In Winter it serves as my onion pit. I also managed to squeeze in a crop of broccolli and cauliflower in there before the freeze.

Have fun getting out in the garden again. If you are reading this from a snow bound Northern state, then you have my condolences. Comfort yourself in the fact that it will get REALLY hot here this Summer and we will be inside fanning ourselves and wishing we were you!

This post was shared on the Simple Homestead Blog Hop