Garden enthusiasts, start your engines. On your marks, get set…. SEEEEED. No really, we’re truly ok with you starting now, but ideally only alliums (and perennial herbs and flowers). February through mid-March is indeed the ideal window to start your onions, leeks, and scallions indoors. Yee haw! Here we go.
At Deep Harvest, allium seeding entails planting seeds in seed starter mix at 1/4-1/2 inch deep, about five seeds per inch in rows in open flats. We place the flats on heat mats set around 55F°, but remove them when germinated. Too long on the heat is seriously stressful for those tender babies. Once plants are about 6 inches tall, we give them a couple inch haircut (aww) and allow them to continue sizing up until outside soil temps hit 50F°. Then it’s out of the nest and into the great wide open to fend for themselves. Don’t worry, you’ve raised them right! At this point, we trim the roots to ½-1 inch long so they don’t J-root in the soil when planted and we even give ‘em a little liquid fertilizer dunk. Plants are pushed in about one inch to cover their roots and plant bases and are spaced at about 5 inches in rows 12 inches apart. That’s all there is (all-lium there is?) to it, folks!