Can We Talk About Onions?

[so lucky]

Several of you mentioned you are starting onions this week. Are you talking about onion seed? For green onions, or dry onions? What kind? How long till germination? Do you transplant directly into the garden? When? (Do I ask too many questions?)

 

[digitS']

Too many questions, too little time . . . I'm gonna take something to settle my stomach and see if I've got 1 or 2 or 3 answers - from my perspective on things onion .

I have planted all sorts of onion seed, So Lucky. It is all in the greenhouse where nothing has froze for several days. That should change here after tomorrow so I will pull those flats off the shelf and cover them. It will take that seed quite a few days to get started.

There is seed for Tokyo White & Gallop bunching onions. Seed for Walla Walla, Utah, and Ovation. Those are all classed as "sweet" but Ovation isn't all that sweet and IS a good keeper. There's also seed in the mix for Esteem. I don't know if it is a sweet or what - despite growing it last year. Problem last year was I sowed the seed in the garden - right beside the melons. The vines overran the Esteem onions. That wasn't very polite but I baby the melons. The Esteem had too tough of a growing season even to bulb up!

I forgot the leek seed in my early seed orders. There will be a new leek - Summer. I've got Lancelot coming from Johnny's. In with them I think I should go ahead with new bunching onion seed from AgroHaitai - it is called . . . Siji. It is supposed to be very quick and small. I don't care about quick - I've got sooooo many onions to harvest as scallions! What I'm curious about is if it can hold its quality and small size right thru the season. Gallop does well but it is easy to mistake those Tokyo Whites for leeks by September! They are a little too, too much!

Steve
edited to include the reds: Red Beret bulbing and Lilia bunching along with White Gem bunching and Sierra Blanca bulbing and Candy. Is it just the name that makes them popular? Did i put them where they had too much shade the one other time I grew them? Another chance.

 

[journey11]

I'm starting my evergreen bunching onions. I put them all in a clam-shell container of seed starter soil together and baby them in there until they are about 4" tall, then I cut them out in little square plugs of a few multiple onions and stick them in rows in the garden. One of these days I am going to start regular onions from seed...but for now I just buy those sets at the feed store.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I just bought the sets and stuck them in the garden yesterday. Some will be green onions and some dry.

I have put the sets in the garden in the fall, usually mid to late September and overwintered them to get green onions a little earlier, but I find more of those bolt if let them go to dried onions. Now I just put them out as early as I can in the "spring".

 

[digitS']

I enjoy having the Texas plant starts to set out early but have a hard time justifying buying them. Mostly, it is about bragging. It isn't a very good reason but some of those would be my largest bulbs of the year! Oh, I might buy some yet . . .

I do buy dry sets to plant out. That is easy to justify since those will be so early as scallions and keep so well as mature bulbs. They are not, however, the best in either category. In my opinion, they are a little too pungent. It probably relates to their good keeping qualities.

IMO, the best green onions are the Sweets but harvesting them for that purpose is only a couple of weeks. Of course, you can continue to use them as they begin to bulb but the non-bulbing, bunching onions are really coming into their own by then!

They all have their usefulness and place throughout the year. I still have those Ovation "sweets" in the basement. Easily, there would be the bulbs from sets down there if I hadn't used them all as scallions early last year. The garden center has just got those sets back on their selves.

Yep, I will be putting some of those out with the shallots (oh, yeah!) & the earliest sowing of spinach seed. The little seedlings that have not yet shown up in my greenhouse will be ready to transplant out of their flats soon after. I don't need to push them out too early, tho'.

It would be wonderful for me if everything had as long a season.

Steve

 

[PhilaGardener]

In place of scallions/bunching onions, I switched over to Egyptian Top Onions a few years ago. I have a permanent bed where they produce year after year. They just stay in the ground and I cut/pull as needed, and the top sets are large enough to use as pearl onions.

For storage onions, I'm trying Kelly Winterton's Potato/Multiplier Onion line for the first time this year. Just started seed in a few days ago. High hopes for these so I won't have to buy new sets every year. We'll see how that turns out!

 

[canesisters]

I have those too, we call them Walking Onions. I pulled most of them up last year and saved the little ones to replant. Need to get them in that raised bed out front ASAP. (thanks for the reminder)

So Lucky - with these, you get little mini-onions at the TOP of the green part. You can use them like pearl onions or you can plant them to start a new plant. Mine have a VERY strong onion smell but a pretty mild taste.

 

[buckabucka]

I'm just starting my onions now (storage varieties) from seed. I germinate them in a sprouter, put 2 or 3 sprouts in each cell, and grow them under lights. They will need to be trimmed back to 6" on occasion.

In late April, I will transplant them outdoors, with a floating row cover to protect them from heavy frost. The cover will come off in May. We try to grow all our own onions, although this year we have already run out.

We do not have a proper place to store our onions, but by next fall, we will have a basement under our house! Our house has been on posts for years and we are very excited about this extra space.

 

[so lucky]

Wow, information overload! That's what I get for asking so many questions.
We don't use any green onions. Don't know why, just never have cared for them, but I use "storage" onions daily, sometimes several times a day.
So if I plant a good keeping variety now indoors, should I be able to put them out in the garden in early April, and leave them till mid-late summer? Do you all take the short day-long day factors into consideration? (Oops, more questions)

 

[Ridgerunner]

Where we are, we’re right on the border of the long day – short day debate. Both work. I’ve never planted them in April; I plant as early in the spring as I can, as soon as the ground is dry enough to work.


Something else for information overload. Each green petal on the onion becomes a layer on the bulb. You want the onion to have as many healthy green petals as it can. They are also heavy nitrogen feeders. So they need as much growing time as they can get to grow those petals before they start to bulb up. You are probably not going to get really big onions if you wait until April, maybe just pearl onion size. You won’t know until you try.


I started some from seeds in place in the garden years ago. Those became pearl onions. I planted those pearl onions back in the garden in the fall and they made some really nice onions the next spring.


I don’t have a good place to store onions, so I chop them and freeze them in a vacuum bag. I keep one bag of frozen onions in a zip-loc type bag and use them as I need them, frozen chopped onions on demand. They will be frozen into a solid lump in the vacuum bag, but I have a hammer and the top of a 2x4 shelf support in the garage that makes a real handy place to break those chopped onions apart before they go in the zip-loc.