Slime onions: grown from seeds or seedlings

Sowing features

Slime onion, which is also called penetrating, grows wild in Eastern and Western Siberia, as well as in Altai and Central Asia. There, locals traditionally eat it not only fresh, but also make salting and dry it. Slime onions can rightfully be called a salad vegetable. It has a slightly pungent taste and is distinguished by a garlic-onion aroma.

This perennial vegetable is able to withstand even 40 degrees of frost without additional insulation. For 5-6 years, onions will give a good harvest if grown in fertile and moderately moist soil. It is best for sowing such a crop with seeds or growing in another way a plot of land normally illuminated by the sun.

In its predecessors, slime prefers to have tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, cabbage, radishes. You can not sow seeds in acidic soil, because then the onion feather will have bitterness.

In autumn, during digging, it is necessary to add compost or humus - the amount of fertilizer is about 10 kg per square meter. Phosphorus-potassium supplements are also added - about 40 grams per the same area. In the spring, before planting on the beds, humus is also introduced, and it is also good to spill them with a solution of peat-humic dressings. It is customary to plant a slug onion according to this scheme - in rows prepared in advance, the distance between which is ideally up to 40 cm, and between the planting material should be left somewhere 20 cm. in the form of a semicircle and at the same time displace all unnecessary weeds that have appeared. Since the slime onion is also an ornamental plant, this feature is successfully used by landscape designers to create beautiful rock gardens.

Seeds or seedlings?

Onions tend to branch during the entire growing season. In the second year of its life, it forms about 4 branches of the shoot, on which up to 10 leaves appear. By the end of the fifth year of life, their number is up to 25 pieces, and leaves on each vegetable crop grow from 50 to 200. The plant begins to bloom in the second year. Slime onions are also called penetrating because at the beginning of the flowering period, its arrows tend to straighten. Shooting and flowering of the plant occurs within a month.

Reproduction of such a culture is carried out by seeds or seedlings - shoots or parts of a bush. When choosing a method of reproduction by seeds, it is customary to sow them in the ground or grow seedlings. Experts advise sowing seeds in the spring and as early as possible. For this, grooves are prepared, the distance between which should be up to 35 cm. They sow about 1 gram of seeds per square meter. Entrances after sowing seeds can be seen in the garden after 25 days. Much here will depend on the degree of moisture in the earth, as well as its temperature.A crop that has a decent marketable appearance can be obtained by sowing seeds only in the second year.

Also, slug onion can be grown by seedlings, and not only by seeds. To get good quality seedlings, you should sow onion seeds before early June. Seedlings that have been grown from seeds are traditionally planted according to the following scheme - 70 by 20 cm.With this method of planting, the plants are more viable than with the method of dividing the bushes. But you can still prefer the method of planting the slime and individual bushes. To do this, from a two-three-year planting, you need to select bushes and divide them into separate crops. Keep in mind that each plant will give you about 15 to 30 bulbs. After that, they need to be planted in one line, the distance should be about 50 cm, and between the planting material - up to 20 cm.

Video "Highlights"

Plant care

Caring for this vegetable crop involves regular watering in the recommended doses, timely loosening and weeding of the earth, as well as the obligatory cutting of leaves and fertilization.

In the second and other years after the growth of this onion, the site should be freed from the remaining parts of the crops, as well as loosen the soil in the aisles. In addition, experts and experienced gardeners advise adding nitrogen fertilizers to the soil in an amount of up to 25 grams per square meter. In the summer, be sure to carry out about three pruning of leaves, the length of the cut should ideally be up to 25 cm.In order for the plants to recover after carrying out this procedure, it is recommended to carry out it for the third time no later than the end of August.

Also during this period, phosphorus-potassium fertilizer should be applied. To do this, it is taken at the rate of 50 grams of superphosphate, as well as about 30 g of potassium salt. It should be remembered that the forcing of plants that are two or three years old is usually driven out in greenhouse conditions, or even at home. In this case, in the fall, the plants need to be dug up and moved to shallow boxes, and then left outside to freeze. They can be used with the bulb in a month - after the leaves grow back.

What is the use of onions

Slime onions are very useful for our body. It contains such groups of vitamins as B1, B2, C, PP. There are also sugars, carotene and phytoncides, mineral salts of potassium, zinc, magnesium, molybdenum, a lot of iron. Onions are useful for low hemoglobin and anemia, gastrointestinal problems, including high acidity. Also, its leaves have analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties, so they are advised to be applied to wounds. Experts agree that 10 kg of onions contain an annual supply of all nutrients necessary for the human body.

If you eat it every day, even in small quantities, you can significantly improve even your general health, not to mention the above problems. Also, this amazing vegetable can promote the proper functioning of the heart, strengthen the walls of blood vessels, remove toxins and harmful cholesterol, and normalize the thyroid gland. Eating this vegetable in food, you can not only strengthen the immune system, but also effectively fight vitamin deficiency.

Video “A quick tour of the slime onion”

The video provides a short, but very comprehensive overview of this type of culture. The video will help you learn about the peculiarities of growing and caring for this variety.