Transplanting Onion and Leek Plants/Composting Manure

Welcome back and as always thank you for reading.

The planting of the Spring vegetables continues as about 10 days ago on May 8th, I transplanted some sweet Spanish onion and Lincoln leek plants that I had started from seed.

As you may recall, I detailed the planting of the onion and leek plants in my post on March 8, 2014 (http://dansgardening.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-time-to-start-some-vegetables.html).

The transplanting process for these is pretty simple.  The main thing is to be gentle while removing and separating the plants from the original planting container.  I always water them in the original container before removing which allows as much soil as possible to cling to the roots.

I recommend using a string to keep the row straight.  The onions and leeks were planted about one inch deep:

Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions

Yellow Sweet Spanish Onions

Lincoln Leeks

Be sure to keep the transplants watered, especially for the first week after planting, since the roots are very shallow and it's always a shock to plants after transplanting.

Composting Manure:

In past years, I normally would put cow manure (from the farm right across the road) on the garden in the very early spring.  It would then get rototilled into the soil in April, but it never seemed like it had enough time to break down.

Last year I started a  different process which I think works better. Actually I discovered this by accident.  I had left part of my manure pile unused from the previous spring. What I found was a gardener's treasure: compost.  After sitting for a year, the manure turned to a beautiful black compost.  So last summer I used the compost to plant pumpkins and gourds, creating a hill of the compost to plant the seeds in.  The results were one of the best pumpkin and gourd crops that I had in years.  So this spring I have already made some compost hills that I will use for planting pumpkins.

Composted Manure

Compost Hills

In my next post, I will have updated garden photos as the lettuce, radishes, Swiss chard, etc. have sprouted and are coming along nicely.  Also an update on my tomato  and pepper plants which are rapidly growing in the green house.

Also, I will write a future post on the bird houses I have in my yard (10 total), and an update on the birds nesting in them.

Until next time.