Onion experiment

[extremegardener]

Sept 24, 2011 16:58:10 GMT -5 canadamike said:

We have a though winter, like extremegardener, but over the years I have been pretty lucky with onions surviving in the ground, thanks to our usual snow cover. Years ago, I gave many KELSEA SWEET GIANT seedlings to a neighbour, she ended up to busy in her store to harvest the big onions in the fall, and they all survived beautifully, as expected here, giving loads of huge fat green onions in spring. The key is to harvest before the main stem gets woody and ready to flower. I do not think survival is to be much questioned in my area despite peaks of minus 40 , thanks to snow again. I usually get better onions from transplants, albeit a lil' smaller, but they keep much better than onion sets.

Over the years, I have had many great onions from leftovers of the previous season left in the ground. The key seemed to be spacing and weeds absence around them, or early weeding in spring.

I've done the same thing - I have 4 groups of aggregating yellow onions, each from really nice plants that overwintered from at least 10 years ago - some are probably Stutgarts. At this point they over winter consistently. Soon I'll have enough to eat some.

Potato onions, including true french shallots, are pretty good at this game...

They are by far an undervalued crop, as they offer a bountiful and easier crop almost all the time.

The bulbs might not be as cute as some perfectly round commmercial onions, but once in the mouth, who cares...One thing is sure, if I was left with only ONE choice of allium cepa to grow, it would be an aggregatum one ( potato etc..) they are workhorses...

I agree about the aggregators . For me they definitely seem to be the way to go. My problem has been finding sufficiently hardy ones, which is why I'm slowly creating my own.
I did get some really good potato onions from Stuart at A Few Good Plants - www.afewgoodplants.com/ . They seem totally hardy, make decent 2" bulbs and aggregate in 6s and more.