Pre-planted onions

Onion sets started in a covered tray outdoors

March is the time to plant onion sets. I bought a net bag of 'Stuttgarter' to plant in the allotment, but I haven't had the time to finish digging and preparing the beds for sowing and planting. Being realistic, I may not have time until next month to do that, so in the meantime I'm starting them in the garden in small pots or plugs to move to the allotment as and when I can. I know I could just put them in the soil now as it is, but I know myself and in a month's time I will want to rearrange the beds or add some edging or something, and it's a lot harder when you have seeds already in place... So yes, I'm making extra work for myself by planting these onions twice, but I hope it'll be worth it and I'll have a pretty yet productive allotment! (it's so tiny it's more of a garden, really). I am following a tip I saw in this programme in the Horticultural Channel, which is to cut the loo rolls in two and plant the onions in them. The green thing are egg cartons, which follow the same principle: the paper is strong enough to hold for a month or two, and then you plant the whole lot (onion and cardboard) and the roll just rots away. Monty Don in last week's Gardener's World also planted his onions in conventional plastic plugs. I have mine in a tray covered with a clear plastic lid and kept outside, they shouldn't need much more heat than that...

Marzo es el mes de plantar cebollas. Yo tengo una bolsa de cebollas para plantar, pero mi huerta nueva todavia no esta acabada de preparar, asi que de momento tengo las cebollas plantadas en bandejas en el jardin - para que empiecen a germinar y crecer, y cuando el mes que viene (ojala) tenga el terreno preparado poder plantarlas definitivamente. Ya, se que es trabajo doble, pero prefiero tener mas tiempo para preparar el suelo bien y decidir como voy a dividir la parcela, y si quiero poner un borde de madera o no, antes de plantar las semillas (me conozco, y seguro que de aqui a un mes he cambiado de idea, o he encontrado unas maderas ideales para hacer un borde, o algo). En la foto veis que he utilizado los tipicos tubos de carton, pero cortados a la mitad (las raices de la cebolla no son profundas). Lo verde son unos cartones de huevos, que tambien se plantan directamente (igual que los rollos). Las bandejas las tengo cubiertas con una tapa de plastico transparente, pero ya al aire libre - en este mes las cebollas ya no necesitan mas calor.