When I transplanted my onion seedlings a few weeks ago, I had no compost
ready to use and only a small bag of manure - I was going away and didn't
want to leave them, nor did I have much time to do anything and so I tried
something.
I remebered digging deep trenches for onions and leeks for my dad and
filling them with all kinds of stuff like manure, compost, newspaper and
anything else that was at hand, my only gripe was that onions seemed to me
to send roots straight down from the bulb, therefore a trench was mostly
wasted.
I got a length of 4" plastic drainpipe about 4ft long and rammed it into the
ground to about 20 inches, lifted out a core of soil and filled the hole
with a rich mixture of horse dung, compost and all manner of other goodies
and planted the onions in that, they seem to be going like the proverbial
clappers, and it only took ten minutes instead of a few hours....has anyone
else tried anything similar to this?

I remember reading years ago about specimen carrot growers using plastic
drainpipes filled with soft sandy soil and whatever other nutrients the
carrots needed to reach maximum length....

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If God had intended us to drink beer, He would have given us stomachs.