Onion is one of the indispensable spices in many dishes of every family. Onions are considered one of the most loved spices to grow in every family.
Onions are very easy to grow and require little effort to fertilize, they can be planted in the ground or styrofoam containers everywhere. Therefore, many gardeners are very interested in stimulating the size of the onion during care.
One of the methods that many gardeners have heard about is cutting the tops of onion leaves while they are growing to stimulate larger onions in the future.
However, is this an effective method and has been verified by scientists in the field of agriculture. Cut onion tops while growing? Let’s find out the surprise of this problem.
Cut Onion Tops While Growing – Should Or Should Not?
True horticulturalists (university researchers and experts in the field of agricultural exchanges) disagree with the idea that cutting onions leads to an increase in bulb-size onions.
This is just information from gardeners passing on ways to increase the size of onions.
This misconception can be traced back to the fact that experts in the field of horticulture recommend pruning the leaves, and the first flowers of tomatoes, peppers, and fruit trees to reduce the energy supply to provide leaves and concentrates it to increase fruit size.
Pruning leaves and flowers early on fruit trees will help prevent the tree from dispersing too much energy and wasting it on leaves and tops. However, this concept is not true when you are trying to cut off the tops of onions while they are growing to stimulate the growth of onions.
In contrast, cutting the tops of onions when they are growing will make the onions smaller than normal size. The reason is that onions will not be provided with enough sugar that they need to grow when the leaves that are responsible for transporting the sugar have been cut.
When the onion leaves are removed they will not be able to transport sugar to the bulb and completely damage the nutrient supply system for the onion so the onion plant will die and stop growing completely.
Why Has The Concept Of Cutting Onion Tops While Growing So Popular?
This can depend on 2 common factors that you will easily encounter. The first reason is that pruning fruit trees is always beneficial in terms of fruit size, but they are often applied to leafy plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and pumpkins…
Onion plants are only small in size and have a small number of leaves, so completely cutting off the leaves of an onion plant is not a useful method.
The second reason is cutting the tops of onions to stimulate the ripening of onions faster in the days leading up to harvest or the final stage of onion planting.
Cutting off the tops of onions during harvesting a few days in advance will make the onion plants unable to take in sugar and nutrients as well as photosynthesis, which will make the onions ripen faster than usual.
So you can easily see gardeners cutting the tops of onions as they are growing in preparation for the harvest season and will get more ripe onions.
Both of these concepts are true but they need to be done at the right time and type of fruit crop. Therefore, you should not rely on notions from other plants, but need to understand how to grow onions and their properties.
On What Factors Does The Size Of An Onion Depend?
The size of the onion does not depend on whether the onion plant has few leaves or many leaves because these leaves are the tools that help the onion plant get nutrients to grow.
The growth of onions depends on the proper spacing between the onion plants. The amount of sunlight and the amount of water they receive each day is enough to have the most favorable growing conditions.
Therefore, you need to control the distance between the onions and plant them according to the standard distance stated on the package.
Remember to always remove weeds to prevent them from encroaching on the soil, nutrients, and light that keep the onions from reaching their standard size.
Conclusion
The concept of breaking the tops of onions while they are growing to increase the size of the onions is a misconception that many gardeners make.
Cutting the tops of onions during the growing period will disrupt the structure that transports sugars and nutrients to the onion and will cause the onion to shrink or stop growing.
Therefore, cutting the tops of onions when the plants are growing should only be done during the process of harvesting the bulbs. You can cut the tops of onions to make onions ripen faster by not getting sugar, nutrients, and photosynthesis from sunlight.
You should not cut the tops of onions while the plant is growing, but only cut the tops when the onions are almost ripe to help them ripen faster.
Don’t forget to join us to learn more about super easy and super fast methods of growing onions.