Onion sets “Sturon”: is it possible to plant before winter and care features

Many gardeners prefer to grow Sturon onions in their beds. It is believed that this variety has increased resistance to diseases and severe frosts. It is valued for its ease of care and ease of cultivation. But you can get a good harvest only if you follow several important rules.

Bow Sturon

Onion Sturon (pack of seeds with sowing diagram)

Bow "Sturon". Characteristics of the variety

History of the variety's creation

The hybrid variety Sturon was obtained in Holland. For selection, we used the well-known variety of the Stuttgarter Riesen culture. The resulting plant was adapted to the climate of northern latitudes. Sturon quickly gained popularity in Europe, and Russian experts also appreciated it well. Registration in the State Register occurred in 2009. Onions can be zoned in the West Siberian and Central regions, in the middle zone, in the Urals and Ukraine.

Growing onions

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Sturon onions are grown as a two-year crop. In the first year, nigella is sown, from which onion sets are obtained. In the second year, the seedlings are planted, and a large, full-fledged root crop is obtained.

Important!

The best yields and high quality of seed material can only be provided by Dutch producers. Therefore, it is advisable to give preference to Dutch brands when buying nigella or sets.

Growing onions Sturon

Nigella is sown in early spring - March or April, depending on climatic conditions. Before planting, nigella is immersed in warm water for 24 hours (you can add the drug “Epin” to stimulate growth), and then wrapped in a damp cloth and placed to germinate for 3-4 days in a warm place. After such procedures, nigella is ready for sowing.

Sow the seeds to a depth of 2 cm, quite densely. Leave up to 30 cm of free space between the rows. Thinning is carried out in 2 stages. First, when 2 leaves appear, and the second time, when there are 4 leaves. As a result, there should be 8-10 cm between the sprouts.

Main characteristics

Experts advise growing onions for turnips in a two-year crop, but you can also get greens from them in an annual version. The first shoots appear 3-4 weeks after sowing the crop. The feathers are green and 45 centimeters long. Ripening occurs in late July or early August.

It is worth noting that in the first year after planting, it is natural to expect only small sets. But next season the percentage of marketable products will be much higher. The harvest ripens 110 days after germination. The plant is not afraid of even the harshest winters, which only increases its popularity. Many summer residents grow it without using any chemicals, because the crop has a very high resistance to most common diseases.

Recommendations for storing planting material

If the seed was purchased in the fall, then in order for it to retain its properties, it must be stored under certain conditions. Experienced farmers perform a special procedure to prevent onions from rotting or being damaged by diseases. They heat the onions at a certain temperature in four stages. During the first week, the planting material is heated at a temperature of 25 degrees, during the second - 30 and during the third - 35 degrees. The last stage lasts about 10 hours, and the temperature should be 40 degrees. After warming up, the seed is sent for storage. To do this, use a dry room with good ventilation. It is necessary to store the seedlings at a room temperature of 18 to 20 degrees and a humidity level of no more than 70 percent.

Description of the fruit

The bulbs have a transverse elliptical shape. Their weight is not too large - up to 100 grams, although some sources claim that the fruits can reach a weight of 200 grams. The juicy scales are colored white and green. Dry ones, of which there are usually 5 pieces, have a yellow-golden hue with brown stripes. The onion tastes pleasant, bitter-spicy. Its aroma is tart and quite pronounced. The harvest can be used for fresh consumption, canning and preparing various dishes that require heat treatment. If stored properly, the shelf life is about 8 months.

Growing sets yourself

Many novice vegetable growers are interested in the answer to the question of how to plant Sturon onions so that they produce a rich harvest and have high taste. Shortly before planting the onions, the beds are watered. You can sow planting material either in rows or with a ribbon. In the first case, approximately 10 centimeters should be left between the rows, and in the second - 20 centimeters. You can sow chaotically, without adhering to any pattern. One square meter of land requires about 10 grams of planting material. After sowing, the seeds are sprinkled with soil, covered with compost and watered.

Advantages and disadvantages

It is worth mentioning separately the advantages and disadvantages of this variety. Fortunately, the variety has more advantages than disadvantages.

Advantages

1. Pleasant taste, the smell does not cause rejection.
2. The crop can be grown in temperate and northern latitudes.
3. You can get a lot of onions from one hectare.
4. The mass of the bulb can reach 200 grams.
5. The shelf life of the fruit is 8 months.
6. The term is resistant to most diseases and pests, so it is not necessary to use chemicals when growing.
7. The head sizes are equal.

Flaws

1. The seedlings take a long time to mature.
2. You cannot grow onions from seeds that you collected yourself.
3. The cost of seeding material is quite high.
4. Weak resistance to powdery mildew and mosaic.
5. To get a good harvest, you will have to grow onions on loamy or sandy loam soils.

Bow Sturon – Main features: pros and cons

The description of the Sturon onion variety should begin with the fact that it is a hybrid with pronounced selection characteristics.

1. The rounded head of the Sturon onion, elongated at one end, cannot be confused with anything in the photo, much less in the garden.
2. It has dry, dark golden, dense outer layers and juicy, thick-walled flesh with a sharp-sweet taste.

Weight and yield

The average weight of a mature bulb reaches 190-210 grams. According to this indicator, the onion variety Sturon

is somewhere in the middle:

• Between such small varieties as “Bessonovsky” (45-50 g), “Centurion” (80-100 g).
• And giants like “Bogatyr strength” (up to 500 g) or “Russian size” (600-800 g).

With timely planting of Sturon onions, you can get yields of up to 30-35 kg from a standard 90x400 cm bed. Of course, it is worth making allowances for climatic and weather conditions. But in general, active growth is laid down at the selection stage. And high yields have been proven in practice by thousands of gardeners.

Storability and disease resistance

The positive characteristics of the Sturon bow also include its keeping quality. Promptly harvested and well-dried in the sun, golden onion heads can retain their taste and beneficial properties from six months to 8 months.

This is all the more important because a competent farmer is able to provide himself and his family with environmentally friendly, healthy vegetables virtually until the new harvest.

One of the most important characteristics of Sturon onions is resistance to diseases and pests. When developing varietal characteristics, the ability was highlighted as one of the dominant ones, so that the variety breaks all records in this indicator. Indeed, in the middle of summer you can see how, at the height of the onion midge breeding, the beds with Sturon are clean and green.

Pros in the kitchen

Housewives value the Sturon onion variety for its practical properties: it is convenient to cut it into even rings for salads and preparations. Of course, you will shed a lot of tears (after all, there is plenty of acrid juice in it), but in brine the onion gives a pleasant pungent aftertaste. The small, neat bottom and the raised, dried “neck” are cut off to a minimum, with virtually no waste.

A little about the disadvantages

In a two-year crop, this variety is quite difficult to grow in the first year to the size of a set. Seeds germinate very slowly, and thin threads of green feathers are sometimes simply difficult to see in the garden bed. During the season, the heads grow no more than 1 cm in length, and require care throughout the summer.

• He is still afraid of some diseases, for example, powdery mildew.
• It is also susceptible to mosaic disease, which is transmitted by nematodes.

With proper crop rotation and the use of healthy seeds, these problems can be avoided.

Landing

It’s worth remembering right away that growing sets from seeds can be incredibly difficult. It would be better for a novice gardener to use ready-made planting material. But if this is not possible, then you will have to master the technology.

So, it is very important to choose the right site for planting onions. The soil should be either loamy or sandy loam. All weeds will have to be thoroughly removed. The seeds of the crop will germinate slowly, so other plants may simply suppress them. In the spring, before sowing, the bed should be thoroughly loosened several times so that nothing unnecessary appears on it.

Sowing time: end of March or beginning of April. By this time, the soil should have already warmed up to a depth of 5 centimeters. The seeds are sent into pre-prepared furrows that have been thoroughly watered. Depth – up to 5 centimeters, interval – 10 centimeters. Up to a hundred seeds can be sown per meter of furrow. At the end of the work, the onion is sprinkled with earth and compacted a little.

After sowing, you need to carefully care for the bed:

1. As soon as the seedlings appear, they should be thinned out, maintaining an interval of a couple of centimeters.
2. Water the plants a couple of times a week, depending on weather conditions.
3. After watering, you should loosen the soil to a depth of 4 centimeters, while pulling out weeds.
4. As soon as 3 weeks have passed since the emergence of seedlings, fertilize using a urea solution. You will need 25 grams per square meter.

Around the end of July, the greens will wilt, which indicates that the bulbs have matured. You should take them out with a pitchfork, dry them slightly, sort them by size and store them in a room with a temperature of +2-4 degrees.

When growing onion sets, even inexperienced summer residents do not have any special problems. It is worth remembering only the following nuances:

1. For planting, choose open sunny areas.
2. If you need to plant a plant before winter, you should use small bulbs with a diameter of up to a centimeter. The best time is late October-early November.
3. In spring, onions are planted as soon as the cold and bad weather have passed.
4. The best planting pattern: furrows up to 5 centimeters deep, made at a distance of 20 centimeters from each other. The interval between the bulbs is 10 centimeters.
5. Watering the crops is carried out a couple of times a week.
6. 3 weeks after planting, nitrogen fertilizers are applied. After the same period of time - potassium-phosphorus.

How to grow at home before winter

For winter planting of Sturon, it is necessary to study when to plant it and what are the optimal sowing dates, suitable growing conditions, required soil and fertilizers, and what growing methods are available.

Optimal sowing dates

Since Sturon is not afraid of frost, its seeds can be sown in the soil as soon as it thaws to a depth of 5–7 cm. In the central zone of the Russian Federation, this is often the second ten days of April. However, if spring has come early, then the seeds should be planted even in the first days of April.

It is better to plant onion sets selected for planting in the fall 2–3 weeks before the arrival of stable frosts. This is usually the period from the end of September to the first ten days of October. When planting in spring, this may be a period 1–2 weeks after the end of the morning frost. Basically it occurs from mid-April to the first days of May.

Growing conditions

The optimal conditions for cultivating onions of this variety are as follows:

• temperature - +18...+22°С;
• humidity - not lower than 80% at a depth of 40–50 cm;
• the area must be flood-free, unshaded, sunny and dry;
• when sowing in regions with low rainfall and low aquifers, it is better to cultivate the vegetable on a flat area;
• in places with excessive humidity, it is better to sow onions in specially formed beds;
• the most suitable predecessors for this crop are cucumbers, cabbage or radishes.

Soil and fertilizers

This vegetable crop likes nutritious soil, and therefore, before planting, it is necessary to add humus or chicken manure to future beds, and also fertilize it three times during the growth of the plantings, using both organic and mineral fertilizers. It is worth noting that at the end of the growing season, nitrogenous fertilizers will create inconvenience for the ripening of the bulbs, since onions quickly absorb nitrates.

Did you know? According to the UN, onions are grown in 175 countries around the world, which is twice the number of countries where wheat is grown (the record holder for crop volume).

Suitable soil for onions is loose, loamy and fertile. If you plant a vegetable in soil poor in nutrients, the bulbs will not be able to grow to the desired volume. Sturon also grows poorly in acidic soils. In addition, to plant a vegetable, it is necessary to clear the area under the beds of dry grass and weeds.

Growing methods

There are 2 ways to breed Sturon onions: growing from seeds, as well as planting sets. It is worth noting that the winter growing method is only possible when planting seedlings.

Growing from seeds

Seeds are generally planted in April. Before planting the seeds, they need to be moistened in warm water to which a few drops of the drug “Epin” have been added. Next, wrap it in a small piece of gauze and place it on a windowsill that is illuminated by the sun's rays. As soon as the gauze dries, it should be moistened so that the growth processes are started.

Seeds germinate in 2–4 days, after which they can be placed in the ground. For sowing, you need to make furrows in the soil approximately 1.5–2 cm deep. The optimal distance between the grooves is 20–30 cm. After the nigella has been sown, the grooves should be sprinkled with peat or humus to a level of 2 cm. The crops should be moistened occasionally.

Planting sets

As already mentioned, you can plant onion sets both before the arrival of winter cold and at the beginning of spring. To do this, select whole, undamaged bulbs without traces of rot and mold. An indicator of quality seedlings is a dry rustle.

Before planting, onion sets should be soaked in a solution of copper sulfate or potassium permanganate (how long to soak?) (in both cases - in a ratio of 1 g per 1 liter of water) or in salt water (1 tablespoon of salt per 1 liter of water). Then rinse the bulbs under running water, and after that you can plant them in the ground. The holes need to be dug to a depth of 3 cm, the distance between them is at least 10 cm, and preferably 20–30 cm.

Care

Maintenance is no problem. It is enough to water the plant in a timely manner, and after watering, loosen the soil. It is also worth remembering about fertilizing. For nitrogen, it is best to take an infusion of bird droppings or mullein; potassium nitrate is also suitable. For the second fertilizer, nitroammophoska is used. The third is carried out during the formation of the bulbs - a tablespoon of saltpeter, double superphosphate and potassium sulfate per 10 liters of water.

Diseases and pests that can affect the plant deserve special mention:

1. Downy mildew. Characterized by the appearance of growing spots on the leaves. The disease can destroy entire plantings due to its rapid spread. The affected onion is removed, the rest is treated with Fitosporin or Fitoplus.
2. Neck rot appears during crop storage. It is enough just to remove the affected bulbs in a timely manner.
3. Onion mosaic depletes the plant and reduces the size of the fruit. It is almost impossible to fight her.
4. Among pests, Sturon is afraid of nematodes. Drugs such as Mercaptophos and Phosfamide help with it.

Harvesting begins in August. Some plants ripen earlier, so you need to monitor the state of affairs in the garden. If the tops turn yellow and lie on the ground, and the head is covered with yellow scales, you can harvest the onion. It is worth noting that 2 weeks before harvesting, watering completely stops.

No need to keep the heads in the ground. This will reduce their shelf life during the winter. After harvesting, the onions are sorted and arranged by size, allowed to dry and ripen. Store at a temperature of 1-4 degrees and humidity 80%.

Harvest and storage

The harvest is harvested in the second half of July. Yellowed feathers serve as a signal for collection. Cleaning is carried out in the morning, in clear weather. The turnip dug out of the ground is left on the site until the evening.

Storage conditions

After drying, the onions are placed in a dry, well-ventilated area. Lay out in no more than one layer or tie into bundles for hanging. After the tops dry, they are cut off or braided. Long roots are trimmed carefully without damaging the bulb. The optimal temperature for long-term storage is 2-4℃.

Reviews

Tamara Ignatievna, 55 years old : I thought for a long time about what onion to plant on my plot. I chose Sturon. Of course, I had a hard time landing, but it was definitely worth it. The fruits are large and have a great pungent taste. It’s ideal for salads, and I cook many dishes with it. The family is delighted. I keep the harvest all winter and spring, but we usually eat it up very quickly. I think we need to plant more this year.

Natalya Polish, 36 years old : I grow Sturon for sale. I have my own farm. This variety is the fastest to buy. They even place orders for it. And no wonder - the onions are tasty, spicy, aromatic. I use it myself in seaming. The preservation turns out great.

Olga Mikhalchuk, 61 years old : I like Sturon because he never gets sick. It also tolerates even the most severe frosts. One spring we were suddenly hit by cold weather, and I thought the onions would die. And it has grown, and the fruits are so large and tasty. The only negative is that it must be grown in a two-year crop.

Tips for choosing planting material

When cultivating Sturon onions, great attention should be paid to the choice of planting material, since this is one of the keys to reaping a good harvest.
This variety can be grown from one planting material for several years in a row. It should be taken into account that in the second year the fruits will be large. In order for the Sturon onion (a description of the variety, reviews and more can be found in the article) to produce a large harvest, it is best to grow it on loose types of soil with high fertility. On acidic soils, the yield and quality of onions will be significantly worse.

If you have not grown this type of onion before, you can buy seed material at any specialized store. When choosing sets, it is best to use small, strong onions, the size of which is about two centimeters. A set that has begun to rot or has been affected by some disease should not be planted, as it simply will not germinate. If the bulbs have sprouted, they are also not suitable for sowing.

Diseases and pests