Thinning and gapping is a routine farm management practice that’s crucial in having a healthy crop that can result in a good yield. Unfortunately most farmers overlook it, especially onion farmers.I don’t know if it’s because of the labour requirements of carrying out these management practice in onions that scares farmers or what. But truth of the matter is only a few farmers follow through with it.
Before we go any further let us remind ourselves what thinning and gapping is for the benefit of those who don’t know or have forgotten, and afterwards we can highlight some of the benefits of carrying out these practices.
Thinning is a farm management practice where you reduce the crop population to have a certain number, or to achieve a desirable spacing. Meanwhile gapping is the opposite of thinning where you plant or replant seedlings or seeds where they failed to grow to increase the crop population. And why do we do these?
To the benefits. We have already mentioned one during our definition: to manage crop population. The other benefits being to reduce the competition for water, nutrients and sunlight among the crops; for facilitating easier spraying, among others.
This applies to all crops including onions. If you need a first growing onion crop, then you can’t ignore these practices. By not thinning your onions you risk having slow growing, small sized onions that are undesirable and sometimes, bad-shaped such as conjoined onions. And by not gapping your onions you end up with a small harvest with lots of wasted resources. For instance if you don’t carry out gapping it means there are drip holes that would be without a crop and water and other resources would be wasted. Weeds will no doubt occupy that space.
So what’s the right way and time for carrying out this two crucial practices in onion farming?
If you are scared of extra costs in terms of labour, then make sure it’s done during first weeding, which is the right time since the crop is yet to form bulbs and the roots are still shallow. Explain to the labourers and supervise as they do the weeding. Show them how to pull out the excess seedlings and transplant them where there are none. And as a farmer during transplanting from the nursery, ensure you have a few seedlings left in the nursery for the gapping purpose.
These two important practices which are usually ignored will ensure you have a quality and bountiful yield without having wasted resources while producing it. Hope this helps.