Perennial Batun Bow
The onion is a perennial plant from the genus of onions. It is sometimes called fist, Tatar, Chinese. The homeland of the plant is Asia. Wild batun is found in Siberia, China, Japan. The species tolerates low temperatures well, therefore it is suitable for growing in northern latitudes. It does not form real bulbs, like onions. It is bred exclusively for greens.
Onion
Description of the species
The onion is a perennial species that grows and bears fruit in one area for 10-12 years. The best harvest is obtained within 3-4 years after planting, then the bushes grow strongly and the amount of green mass decreases. To increase yields, they need to be planted.
The leaves of the batun are almost the same as those of onions: they are fistulous, pointed at the tips, but larger. The feather grows to a height of 40-50 cm, and its girth reaches 1.5-2 cm. From 3 to 7 leaves are formed on one plant. What this onion looks like can be seen in more detail in the photo and video.
The batun does not build up a real onion. In the lower part there is only a slight thickening, botanists call it a false bulb. The trampoline tolerates frost well, it can easily overwinter at a temperature of -40 ° C. It begins to develop already at 11 or 13 ° C, the seeds begin to germinate at a temperature of -2 ° C. The first feathers can be seen immediately after the ground begins to thaw. The green mass easily tolerates short-term frosts down to -6 ° C.
Over the years, the bushes grow strongly. Up to 30 branches can form on one plant. The leaves become smaller in size, so it is advised to plant onions on time. The cultivation of onions is practiced both as an annual plant and as a perennial. The culture is unpretentious, its care is simple, even for beginners it is not difficult to cope. The plant can be propagated easily if old bushes are divided and transplanted into a new bed.
It is possible to grow culture not only in the open air: it is easy to plant a bunch of onions in a greenhouse and even on a windowsill. Since it grows well at low temperatures, the greenhouse can be very ordinary, with minimal heating.
Planting onions by seeds
How to grow a bunch of onions from seeds? There are no particular difficulties in this. It is sown in spring or late summer. You can plant seeds in late fall, October or November. Sowing in March or April produces crops in July or August. Autumn or early winter sowing allows early greens to be cut off next year almost immediately after the snow melts.
Preparing the beds
Before planting the seed onion, you need to properly prepare the garden bed. The plant loves light, so you cannot plant it in a shaded place. Trampoline is moisture-loving, unlike onions. If the soil is too dry, the feathers will be shallow and too bitter in taste. In dry areas, plants need regular watering. The soil should be well fertilized a few days before planting. For 1 sq. m use the following composition of feeding:
- well-rotted manure - 4-6 kg;
- ammonium nitrate - 7-9 g;
- superphosphate - 8-11 g;
- potassium salt - 5-7 g.
It is best to sow the onion after potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, peas, beans and other legumes. These plants do not deplete the soil, but, on the contrary, enrich it with useful substances. The culture will grow poorly after garlic, carrots, onions. On such a site, you can not plant a bunch of onions either with seeds or seedlings. If you plan to plant early, it is better to prepare the bed in the fall.
Sowing technique
How and when to sow onions? We have already said that this species is very frost-hardy. Seedlings appear at minimum positive temperatures, and the seeds can withstand a significant cold snap. To harvest greens in summer, you can sow onions in early March or during the February thaw. If you plan to harvest next year, sowing is carried out in mid-August.
To grow onions from last year's seeds, they should be wetted before sowing until the first shoots swell and appear. The container with the seed is kept at room temperature, the water is changed 2-3 times a day. It is best to put the seeds on cheesecloth or a piece of natural fabric, then the liquid will not quickly evaporate.
On the bed, grooves are made with a depth of 2-3 cm. The distance between them should be 20-30 cm. For 1 sq. m you need 1.2-1.6 g of seeds (280-320 pcs.). The seeds are lowered into the ground to a depth of 1.5-3 cm, covered with a thin layer of soil on top, lightly tamped and leveled the bed. Careful watering is carried out from a watering can with small holes. When shoots appear, they must be thinned so that the onion grows well. The optimal distance between two plants is 6-9 cm.
Growing seedlings
He loves growing onions from seeds for seedlings. Seedling propagation is best suited for annual plants. Such a batun onion is affected by diseases much less often than perennial ones. You can get a good harvest in one season. Sowing of seeds in a container on the windowsill begins in April, transplanting into open ground - in mid-June.
How to sow seedlings
Seeds are prepared in the same way as for planting in the ground. You can stratify them in the refrigerator for 2-3 days. The soil for seedlings of onion-batun is suitable as follows:
- sod soil - 1 part;
- humus - 1 part;
- wood ash - 2 cups per bucket of mixture;
- mineral dressing for garden crops - 70-75 g per bucket.
They fill up the earth in a box, make furrows 6-8 mm deep. The distance between them is 4-5 cm.It is also recommended to plant seedlings in plastic cups or pots with a diameter of 5-6 cm.Seeds are sown in grooves or 4-6 pieces in cups (the seed sowing depth is approximately 1 centimeter), then sprinkle them soil, and a layer of sand with a thickness of 3 mm is placed on top. Watering after planting should be delicate, through a spray bottle, after which the container is covered with a film.
Seedling care
Caring for seedlings of onion-batuna is simple. It is necessary to adhere to the correct temperatures at different periods of the growing season, water the plants in moderation, and periodically feed them. Here's a quick step-by-step guide:
- As soon as the onion rises, the container is transferred to a bright and rather cold place (9-13 ° C).
- In the future, the thermal regime is maintained at the level of 13-15 ° C during the day, and at the level of 10-12 ° C at night.
- Daylight hours for seedlings should last at least 14 hours, therefore artificial lighting should be organized, in the first days - around the clock, then from 6 am to 8 pm.
- Watering should be moderate, without waterlogging the ground.
- Once every 2 weeks, the seedlings are fed, diluted with 2 g of potassium salt and superphosphate in a bucket of water.
- After the appearance of real leaves, the sprouts are thinned so that there is a distance of about 3 cm between the plants.
- A week before transplanting to the garden, hardening is carried out, the pots are put out on the street.
When growing seedlings, there are no special problems.The main thing is that the bushes do not grow too densely, do not stand in a draft, because then they will be weak, they will not take root well in the garden and give a meager harvest.
Disembarkation at the site
When to plant onions in the garden? Outdoor planting takes place in mid-June. By that time, 60 days should have passed from the appearance of the first shoots. Plants already have 3-4 leaves, and the thickness of the stem at its base is 3-4 mm. The soil on the site should be neutral or slightly acidic. It is worthwhile to apply fertilizers of the following composition 1-2 weeks before planting (calculation per 1 m²):
- compost or humus - 5 kg;
- potassium salt - 15-20 g;
- superphosphate - 30-40 g;
- ammonium nitrate - 25-30 g.
How to plant a bunch of onions correctly? On the beds, they dig holes 10-15 cm deep at a distance of 10-12 cm from each other and 20 cm between two rows. Each plant is carefully planted in a separate hole, sprinkled with earth and watered. If the seedlings grew in pots, the distance between the holes is made a little more, 3-4 onion bushes can be transplanted into one hole. After planting the plants, moderate watering is carried out.
As you can see, planting and caring for the onion and its seedlings are not difficult. There is no need to allocate large areas for growing plants. The main thing is that it is cool in the room where the seedlings are bred. If there is no such place in the house, the room should be regularly ventilated. You can cut onions grown from seedlings in the middle of summer.
Plant care
Growing and caring for batun onions is not difficult. Culture does not require investment of time and energy. Five or six times during the summer you need to loosen the soil in the garden, it is better to do this after the rain, while weeding the weeds. To weed and loosen the soil less often, you can lay mulch from peat or straw. Water the onion every other day in dry weather and 1-2 times a week in rainy weather.
You can achieve high yields if you feed and fertilize the onions from time to time. Once a season, it is poured with mullein diluted 1:10 with water or chicken droppings in a dilution of 1:15. Every 3-4 weeks, the bushes are poured with wood ash.
Sometimes the onion is affected by diseases and pests. The most common ones are:
- onion fly;
- moth;
- downy mildew (downy mildew).
For pest control, plants must be sprayed with karbofos or fufanon. The treatment of bushes with a concentrated solution of common salt helps well. Powdery mildew is a fungal disease. You can fight it with a solution of copper sulfate, the fungicide HOM received good reviews. To completely defeat the disease, you will need 2-3 treatments with an interval of 10 days. If the pests or fungus have not receded, you need to cut and dig up all the plants, plant new ones in this place after 5 years.
Harvest
Batun onion is a fairly early type of agricultural crop. Perennial plants can be harvested for the first time in April or early May. In the first year of growth, after planting in spring, greens will appear in the second half of summer. How many times can a feather be trimmed? During the season, it is easy to collect 3-4 crops from the garden if you take good care of the plant.
The onion is grown solely for the sake of the feather, it does not form real bulbs. Pruning of green leaves is carried out at the very base, after 40-50 days they will completely grow back. Feathers can grow up to 40-50 cm in length. But it is better to collect them when the height reaches 20-25 cm: then they are tastier and better preserved, do not crack.
The last harvest takes place no later than mid-August. Pruning later weakens the bulbs. If the onion is grown for one year, it is completely removed from the beds in the first days of autumn. The batun onion leaf turns yellow in mid-September. During this time, enough useful substances have time to accumulate in the roots that will help the plant survive the cold season. There is no need to cover the onion for the winter, it tolerates frost well.You can dig up some of the bulbs and plant them at home on the windowsill, as a result, you can enjoy delicious and healthy herbs all winter.
The benefits of the plant
The onion has beneficial properties that are used in both official and traditional medicine. It contains more vitamin C than ordinary onions, which helps a lot with vitamin deficiency in the spring; the plant also contains carotene, which has a positive effect on the condition of the skin, nails, hair and mucous membranes. Other vitamins include niacin, riboflavin, thiamine, which regulate metabolism and have a positive effect on the nervous system. The leaves also contain potassium, magnesium, a lot of iron, oils with esters, which give the onion a specific burning taste and smell.
Onion-batun has anesthetic, diaphoretic, tonic, antihelminthic effect. It is used as a hemostatic agent, antiseptic. The properties of onion-batuna are actively used in the complex treatment and prevention of diseases such as:
- gout;
- liver pathology;
- atherosclerosis;
- high blood pressure;
- dysentery.
Has a batun onion and contraindications for use. It is not recommended to eat it for people with gastritis, stomach and duodenal ulcers, acute and chronic inflammation of the pancreas.
Onion varieties
So, we figured out how to grow onion correctly. Now let's talk about its varieties. Varieties of onion-batuna were bred in different countries, in our time there are more than two dozen of them. Conventionally, this species is divided into two subspecies: Russian and Japanese.
Russian varieties
Russian onions have dark green leaves, rather coarse and pungent in taste. They grow in length by 30-40 cm, strongly branch. The subspecies tolerates frost well, can be grown in cold climates. Here is a description of the main varieties of Russian batun onions:
- May variety onion. The ripening period is late, frost resistance is high (the plant does not die even at -45 ° C in a snowless winter). The taste is spicy, 200-400 g of leaves can be harvested from one bush.
- Gribovskiy 21. Differs in high productivity, foliage is light green, arrows are formed late, the taste of greens is soft.
- Trinity. Ripening time is average, foliage is covered with a dense waxy bloom, taste is medium-sharp.
- Russian winter onion. Ripening time is average, leaf height is 50 cm, taste is weak, high resistance to frost.
Japanese varieties
The Japanese batun grows to a lower height. The tips of the leaves droop at the end of the season. The flesh of the greens is soft and tender, the taste is semi-sharp. Winter hardiness is high, but lower than that of the Russian variety. There are 4 types of Japanese onions - Ro, Senju, Kujo and Kaga. The most popular in Japan is Senju. It has a mild taste and rich aroma, the arrows grow 50-70 cm. Ro and Kaga have a medium-sharp taste, ripen very early. Kujo is the smallest of all varieties and has a semi-sharp taste. On the basis of Japanese types, the following varieties were bred:
- April tramp 12. Leaves are large, but tender, do not coarse for a long time. It ripens early, the yield is 200-300 g per bush, the taste is medium-sharp.
- Long Tokyo. The leaves can grow up to 60 cm in height, the ripening time is average, the taste is sharp, the frost resistance is high, the pests are rarely affected by the variety.
- Long white cat. Ripening periods are average, the variety grows quickly, the yield and frost resistance are high, the leaves are long with a semi-sharp taste.
- Salad 35. You can cut the first harvest in early spring, the leaves are long, up to 20 cm, do not become tough for a long time. The variety rarely gets sick, but shoots up arrows too early.
Other varieties of onion are also known. The most popular of them are Ural family, tenderness, performer, handsome, well done, parade. They differ in terms of ripening, taste, yield, requirements for growing. Since the care of the crop is simple and does not require large expenses, the onion is becoming more and more popular.It can be planted in a vegetable garden, dacha, at home on a balcony or windowsill, in a greenhouse or greenhouse. Batun is also grown on an industrial scale.