ONIONS - basic data

[mnjrutherford]

I've been looking for a talk that was had a couple years ago regarding the onion life-cycle, how to collect viable seed from them in particular.

While I didn't find what I wanted, it did remind me of where I was in my learning process and where I wanted to go. So far, I'm keeping pace and that's a good feeling.

So, onions, seed saving... here's the question: How?

A couple months ago I planted out 2 different types of onion seed. They are now grown to about the green onion stage. The "scallion" from Kelly is most appealing to the local onion eaters. However, most interestingly, the "Blue Congo" from Cortona planted right next door is not. Fascinating.

How do I get the onions to make seed? Should I transplant them? Thin to a certain spacing and allow to make where they are?

Next, I also have onions from sets that are doing quite nicely. Because they are store bought sets, I'm not as interested in producing seed. I DO want them to get big and become keeping and eating onions. I vaguely recall being advised not to allow them to develop flowers as the process would cause them to stop working on bulb development. So, the first flush of flowers were all snapped off. Right? Wrong? Somewhere in between?

Thanks in advance!

[cortona]

uswualy we produce our onions seeds so that is wath we do we sow seeds around the 17/01(we sow it densely)we cover it with a cage and we just let it sprout and grow, in april we start to transplant in the final location starting with the better developped ones and wen the green part dye we harvest the onions and we let it sun dry for some day,after this we store our onions in a sheltered place so no freezing in winter, in spring (march/april) we replant the best ones, the ones that store the better, the ones that dont sprouts hearly in a block, around 15 to 20 bulbs in order to have a large enough population(more are as ever better)and we let it flower(onions are biennial) wen the seeds capsule start to dry we harvest the seedheads and we cleen the seeds, store it in a dry place far from light and heat and the cicle starts again in midwinter
hope my 20 cents help!

[woodsygardener]

My advice is limited to the only onion that has done well for me, Tokyo Long White. It is a perennial onion A. fistulosum. A fist. onions are called Welsh onions, bunch onions, spring onions, scallions, ... I maintain a bed of about 40 plants for seed purposes as onions are outbreeders and require a large number of plants to avoid inbreeding depression. They grow pollinator attractive flowers in the Spring and set many seeds that turn black and begin falling from the flower 'balls'. I harvest at that point and put them in open brown paper sacks to finish drying. I plant the seeds in August in a bed for the harvest the following spring. I trade or give away the rest of the seeds as onion seeds lose their viability after one year. They are so easy to grow that I'm trying 2 more A. fist. varieties this year: Crimson Forest and Deep Purple (one of my fav rock groups).

[mnjrutherford]

I'm really looking forward to going through the process. However, now I'm a bit curious since Cortona has said that the onions he grows are biennial. Woodsy grows and annual type...

Is it possible that garlic is biennial?

Cortona, yes indeed your "20 cents" has helped! Though, with such beautiful onions in the green stage I don't know how you can stand to wait 2 full years! I'm going to have to exercise a LOT of self control! ;o)

[raymondo]

Don't know about A. fistulosum but A. cepa, ordinary bulbing onions, are biennial. The bulb develops in the first season and seeds in the second. Lift the mature bulbs, just as you would for eating. Your best keepers should be the ones planted out the following year for seed. As already mentioned, onions are outbreeders so the more you have for seed purposes the better. Personally I'd go for as near to 40 as I could get, though many people seem happy with 20 or so plants. I get the most beautiful wasps on the onion flowers. My two favourites are the dark metallic blue ones and the glossy black ones with brilliant yellow markings.

I can't remember whether it was here or over on the SSE forum but someone had an easy method of cleaning onion seed. Basically, dump all your seed, after you've worried it out of the flower heads of course, into a bucket of water. Give it a stir. Let it rest a moment or two so that the good seed sinks. Pour off the top rubbish. Rinse and spread out to dry. I tried it with leeks. Fantastically easy and you're left with nice, almost chaff free seeds. Just don't leave them in water for too long. You don't want them absorbing water and germinating. The whole process should take just a couple of minutes.

[mnjrutherford]

OK... I've been playing with the idea of creating a "seeding bed" especially for biennials. Originally I had carrots in mind because I have actual experience taking them from seed to seed. However, I did want to plan for other things I was currently ignorant of.

My thought was to create a raised planter, maybe 4' x 10'? Lay down ag cloth, layer of pea gravel, top with potting soil/vermiculite (dish soap as wetting agent), pine needle mulch over the top for weed suppression.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

May 29, 2011 12:19:27 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

So, onions, seed saving... here's the question: How?

My strategy for producing onion seeds is that in the spring I sort any remaining large (2" to 4") onion bulbs that are left over from last summer. If they have sprouted already, or dehydrated, or rotted I toss them out, and only plant onions that are firm, and kept well over winter in my storage conditions.

They grow and produce a seed-head full of seeds. Eventually the seeds will turn from green to black, and the head will start to dry out and the seed pods will start splitting and dropping seeds. At that point I cut off the whole seed heads and put them somewhere dry to dehydrate for a few weeks or months. When I'm ready to process them I crush them in my hands to more or less fully release the seeds, and sieve them through a 1/4" mesh to remove the chaff while passing through mostly seeds. Then I winnow them in front of a box fan. (I'm looking forward to trying raymondo's water separation this fall.)

I plant seeds directly in the spring, as early as I can get into the garden. These produce medium sized ("2") onions by fall.

Because my growing season is so short, if I want larger bulbs I have to plant onion plants or bulbils. To grow bulbils: sometime after June 22nd, I plant the seed, harvesting bulbils about the time of the last frost. The tiny bulbils are stored overwinter in a dry place. They are planted in the spring to produce large onions by fall. Plants can also be started in the greenhouse in January. People in warmer climates can skip growing bulbils or transplants and still get large onions by fall.

Sometimes a small bulbil will try to produce a seed-head the first year. I pull those for eating as green onions. If the seed head is cut off, it damages the inside of the onion so that it will not store well. Might as well eat it as a green onion rather than tossing a large onion with a bag spot in the middle.

I plant my seed producing bulbs about 6" apart, but there's nothing special about that spacing, just a habit. I plant my bulb producing onions a little further apart than what I am expecting the diameter of the bulb to be.

[grunt]

Joseph: Your growing conditions are almost identical to mine, and I can grow decent sized onions direct seeding in the garden = just do the planting about mid April. If you don't mind hybrids, Copra does well, if you want OP, Australian brown is good, and Amish Bottle works well , but you won't get large onions from it = it doesn't get large, regardless.
And Raymondo's water trick works great = tried it myself this year, and it only took minutes to get clean seed.

[cortona]

i've tryed the raymondo sistem this year too and is realy easy and effective!
and the best thingh is that you not only obtain clean seeds but you rouge out the less vital seeds that doesent sink but float with the debris(and that is good because i can set aside onion seeds for two years and not producing seeds every year(probably i'm selecting for better storage ability)
so i can grow different variety for seeds.