Growing Onions from seed

[catjac1975]

Catjac, those are stones on top the soil and all the way down to the pre-Iceage valley floor! I could show you the boulders that have been dug out of that garden. What remains, is inconsequential by comparison .

Weed-free? Well, not really. One reason that I sow seed indoors is so that I can hit that ground repeatedly to kill emerging weeds before the plants go in. Onions especially are very poor competitors and the weeds will crowd them down to nothing . . . Keep them weed-free as best you can, and they can grow a lot.

This Ovation onion (might be one in the picture above) is only 9 oz but . . . maybe it shrunk a little after sitting 5 months on a basement shelf . There's no question that the Walla Walla that I sometimes buy as plants from Texas become larger after their season in my garden than the Walla Walla that will be started from seed in my greenhouse in a couple of weeks. Those TX plants aren't very expensive but I can sure grow lots of onions from a big packet of seed .

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Fu7VDxX0xXU/TyWKVQM8c3I/AAAAAAAABcQ/-JspBMSzW6U/s512/DSC00388.JPG

Steve

Thanks for all the info-your soil is so different than any I have ever seen. Love all the photos. What do you mean hit it? Till it or use herbicides? I use grass clipping to keep down the weeds. Weeding onions is my most difficult and annoying job. Like painting a bridge.....

 

[digitS']

Over the course of about a month - I'll probably go over that ground first with a spading fork. Then, I'll till it. After that, I'm very likely to "hit it" with a 4-prong cultivator. Somewhere along in there, I've worked in some organic fertilizer.



No, I don't use herbicides in the vegetable gardens. That's out. I'm not even willing to do that in the permanent paths.

Once or twice, after the transplants have gone in, I will have to park myself on an up-turned bucket or something and pull weeds out of the onions. Finger & thumb work . . .

digitS'

 

[catjac1975]

Over the course of about a month - I'll probably go over that ground first with a spading fork. Then, I'll till it. After that, I'm very likely to "hit it" with a 4-prong cultivator. Somewhere along in there, I've worked in some organic fertilizer.



No, I don't use herbicides in the vegetable gardens. That's out. I'm not even willing to do that in the permanent paths.

Once or twice, after the transplants have gone in, I will have to park myself on an up-turned bucket or something and pull weeds out of the onions. Finger & thumb work . . .

digitS'

Yea onions are the worst to weed. try grass clippings as mulch-I use it to keep down the weeds on difficult to weed crops.
Well you photos look great with all that weeding.

 

[texas75563]

I saved some onion heads last summer for the seeds. I put them on a shelf on the porch. I guess the wind blew a lot of the seeds out in the yard. I've dug up several hundred onion plants out of the yard. I planted around 300 in the garden. I have at least that many more to plant. Majority of ones still left to plant are just sprouts. 2 to 3 inches long. I put them all together in 2 pots and covered with potting soil. Let them grow some more before planting them in the garden.

 

[hoodat]

Lately I've been planting red shallots from seed. I get a single bulb the first season and them replant that for multiple large bulbs the second go around. I usually get around four large bulbs back for every one I plant. Shallots are easy to grow but expensive in the stores.

 

[so lucky]

I just used the last of last year's onions yesterday in meatloaf. I grew from plants, "Candy" variety. I think the seller got them from Dixondale Farms. They are crisp and mild, and are reported to be a "day neutral" variety, which means they can be planted in a wider range of circumstances. I don't fully understand the "short day, long day" types. I just know I plan to plant Candy again this spring. None of them went to seed; the tops fell over and browned.

 

[digitS']

Ha! So Lucky, you aren't the only one who has trouble remembering the difference between: short-day & long-day!

I used to have to look it up aaalll the time! Finally, I remember it has to do with the "growing season." We have long-day varieties in the north because we have long summer days! If we are far enuf north, we might have days that never end .

Most of our bulbing onions were long-day. Europe is further north than many of us think. Rome, Italy is probably further north than you are So Lucky!

Coming up with short-day varieties must have been a modern sort of thing . . . I mean, what were we talking about - Beirut, Lebanon? North Africa?

Anyway, a day-neutral or an "intermediate" is probably the best choice for Missouri. Day length is the "trigger" for the onion to begin bulbing. I once grew the sweet onion variety that made Vidalia, Georgia famous. That was kind of a mistake. The plants began to form bulbs so early, they were only ping pong ball size . . . if that.

Steve

 

[so lucky]

Strange to think that Rome is farther north than SE Missouri. I know it snowed there recently, but have you ever see a movie that takes place in Italy when they had to wear coats and wool caps? No! Like it's always May or June there. Kinda like it's always drizzling in London. :/ But I digress...Thanks for the onion info.