The bulb is only as good as the roots nobody sees
onions and garlic are strange crops. everything we care about — the bulb, the flavor, the yield — happens underground, but the root systems that build it are famously shallow and inefficient. they're not great at reaching out for nutrients or water the way deeper-rooted crops are.
which means most of what looks like a "nutrient problem" is actually a root problem wearing a costume.
some things that tend to help:
encouraging root proliferation early, before bulb initiation even starts
leaning on natural inputs like seaweed extract and leonardite rather than just piling on synthetic nutrients
thinking of root mass as surface area — more roots, more access to what's already in your soil
it's part of why we lean on things like nutri diamond in our own onion and garlic beds — it's less about force-feeding the plant and more about giving it a better foundation to feed itself.
the bulb gets all the attention. the roots do all the work.
