Time to plant the Onions and Shallots

One week later and the first of the onions are poking their heads up.. 2 so far this morning.  Shallots take a bit longer and those seeds were from last year, still waiting on my order for this year that will not be needed.. should have counted what I had from last year before placing the order.  From what I have read onion seeds are best if used in the first year. I typically only plant one seed per cell, when I plant 2 they always both germinate..  What is interesting is when I do get a failure, I rarely can get additional seeds to germinate in the cells that failed.  This leads me to believe it is not the seeds fault for the failure..

These will go outside.  I normally use 5" deep cells but last few years the root system just has not grown to fil it like the Spanish Onions I used grow did.  I hope these short one won't get root bound before it is warm enough to plant these.  I normally put them out in the begging of April as we don't get much frost here that onions car about after that  Will also plant Soft Neck Garlic in March so they have a month of 40 degree soil to be ready to grow when it warms up.
Last year I planted my onions and Shallots directly in Jan before the the ground froze.  They didn't do so well.  Most germinated but then one dry spell hot day and they get cooked as they are soo small.  These will go in and then the tomatoes, eggplant and peppers will get started. Hopefully by then my DIY bounty will be in full swing with lettuce and herbs.. 
I had considered the bounty seed starter deck, but once I moved to DIY that kind of went to the wayside.  I really have zero issue germinating seed, some people really have trouble but I guess I just have a good spot with enough afternoon sun and grow light that is just  works like nature intended.. The issues I do have is with edema once the plants are established and growing.  One thing I discovered after a lot of searching is that I had been using the wrong kind of grow light.  Adding white lite seemed to prevent this issue but I had experienced it for many years even when using florescent.  Cant see it too well in the photo but you can see some shriveled up dead leave that were from the edema.  The plants were fine once outside and despite the cold wet year produce fine up until I pulled them out in Nov.  Pruned at the 7' height this year for the first time..used to let then grow over and down. 

I use the Red plastic because it is supposed to help reflect the red light the plant like.. not sure how much of that I believe.. there have been studies...  The other reasons are I have drip irrigation every 12"  4 lines in each bed, so the plastic keeps things from drying out.  I added cutouts with filter material (blue and white stuff) to allow the rain water to get under.  If you just cut it open it kind of seals shut with dirt.  The other things it does is to help prevent weeds.. chickweed does not care and grows under it.. and finally the most useful thing it does is allows any tomatoes that fall to not rot in the dirt.  Been doing it for years with no ill effects.  For direct seed crops I don't use it.. peas, carrots, onions, garlic etc  Just the maters eggplant/peppers and sometime lima beans depending on when I plant them.  That photo was actually taken to show my wife how my outside feral cat Buddy is a slacker, letting the squirrel l flip him off as he sleeps..   One thing he could do for me is keep the squirrels out of the yard.. I think they pay him off or something!

UPDATE:  Forget the MOST important reason to use the red  plastic  mulch.. it heats the soil up so your plants will hit the dirt growing!  Tomatoes need soil at 70 degrees or higher to be happy.. the plastic on the raised bed will get the soil temp up with just a couple days of full sun.. 

I think that is their job! 
Wish he didn't have FIV (feline aids) and was not so aggressive with other cats, we would love to bring him in but with the 4 indoor cats we could never trust him not to mix it up and bite one of them.