Sow your onions!

If you are in Hospital, O Leary's have onion sets, and very good ones too. Out of the 454g( I think it was a very generous pound) bag I bought for €2.50 we only threw away 3 bad ones. And if you are not mathematically inclined we used 20x6=120 sets to fill one 8x4 bed. There were 60 left over. So one pound of onion sets will fill a bed and a half, great value considering the price of organic bags of onions in the shops.Every hardware/garden shop wil have onion sets, shallots and garlic now.

measuring a hand span to space the onion sets

We used the leg of the pot/staggered row system. If you were growing onions with carrots you would have to use rows, but then you wouldn't fit as many onions.Remember no fresh manure for the onions either but they will be happy if you put them in a bed that had a good manuring last year. If you have a cat or just lots of birds it will be worth your while to net the bed when you are finished. In Eileen's garden we did this to prevent her army of cats turning the onion bed into roman loos!

covering the sets with netting

Onions; plant a hand span apart( your small finger to your thumb stretched as far away from each other as possible), leave on the surface until you have finished the whole bed and then just push under the soil to bury them. Putting them the right way round is helpful-heads up arses down!! Cover with netting and leave to grow.