Farmers Guide With Mugenyi Joseph: Best Tips On Growing Onions

By Joseph Mugenyi

Onions are sometimes called bulb onions. These are most widely cultivated by my many farmers. They belong to the genus called Allium. It’s close relatives are garlic (Katunguru cumu), Shallot, Leek etc.

When To Plant Onions

1. They take 4 and half months to be ready for harvesting.

2.Harvesting should be done in a dry season.

Applied Mathematics

We are supposed to start harvesting in a dry period of early/mid December.

This implies we deduct 4 and half months from early/mid December meaning you plant in mid/end of July.

So you can now start preparing the site and plant within that range of mid/end of this July so that you will be able to harvest in a conducive dry period.

Growing And Management Tips

1.Prepare a nursery bed on well drained soil.

2.You can add NPK (fertilizer) during their growth.

3.Transplant when they’re 5-6weeks old.

4. Plant spacing should be 15-20cm (between columns) and 8cm within rows.

5.Irrigate the garden to keep the soil cool.

5.Do irrigation twice for direct seeded onions in a dry period.

6.Water shortage at any stage affects the growing process.

7.Over irrigation softens the bulb which later affects their growth.

8.Weeding should be done as early as possible.

9.Use insecticides to control insects that destroy onions mostly trips.

10.Plant resistant cultivars in order to control some diseases.

Harvesting

Harvesting should be done in a dry period/summer.

Make sure it is a dry period 2 weeks before harvesting.

Pull any onions that have started sending up flower stalks.

Harvest when foliage become yellow and fall over.

Remove the soil around the bulbs to encourage drying.

When tops are brown, pull up the onions.

Clip off the roots and cut the tops.

At this point you can sell them.

In case you want to store them, allow them to dry for several days.

Store them in an open dry ventilated space.

Market for Onions

Onions have both local and international market because of its high demand. Each kilogram of onions currently costs between Shs3000-4000 meaning 100kg now costs between 300,000-400,000shs.