selecting onion plants

[littleminnie]

Just out of curiosity, northern growers: what are your favorite onions from Dixondale? I always grow Walla Walla, a storage yellow and a red at least. I will not grow Seminis varieties so no Candy and whatever other one it is. I was just going to place my onion order and thought why not do a little conversing about it.
Why order plants? I think it is more cost effective than starting your own since they have to be started so early to get nice fat ones.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I buy onions from the nursery:

Walla Wall plants (two bundles, ~300 plants) These provide my first bulb harvest.
Utah Yellow Spanish sets (30 pounds) Harvested as greens and bulbs.
Red Burgermaster sets (~5 pounds) For a bit of variety as greens.
White onion sets (~3 pounds) For a bit less variety as greens. Prone to rotting in my garden.
Whatever else (plants) captures my imagination (A token)

I also plant Utah Yellow Spanish seeds which I raise myself. One of these days perhaps I'll figure out how to grow my own sets. I'll keep trying until I get the timing and the weeding right. I'd like to grow about 30 pounds of sets.

I also grow Egyptian Walking Onions, which I harvest as green onions starting in April and lasting until the yellow onions start producing harvestable greens.

Does anyone actually grow your own onion plants for transplant? Can you share details? Bundled onion plants from my nursery are very low cost. It gets pricey though to buy a half bushel of sets.

[templeton]

Whew, I'm relieved to hear you pro growers also buy sets. Never had much luck with onions from seed. They usually stay really small for ages.
T

[littleminnie]

I don't prefer sets. I have grown onions from seed but the seedlings are no bigger than my scallion seedlings- more like a chive than a pencil thick seedling like you buy. I have ordered plants from Irish Eyes for two years and had 2 horrible years. Before that I won blue ribbons at the state fair in onions. So I am ordering from Dixondale this year. They have a lot of choices and such great prices on bulk quantity. If I started that many by seed myself it would be a good 6 months and so many trays! So for $70 I am getting something like 1500 or more plants.
I am buying a jab seeder which can plant onion transplants through black plastic. This will be a good year!

[12540dumont]

For 5 years I purchases onion plants from 3 different sources, on year 6 ever single onion was diseased and failed to yield. It was a disaster. I had no onions for the market, not even enough for home use.

I spoke to Alan Kapuler about it. He was really the only one with knowledge who would speak to me. He told me that up in Oregon, a similar thing had happened, a grower with known disease problems had sent out seedlings. It was a disaster there as well.

His advice to me was to not purchase plants or sets, but to grow my own, even though they were more time consuming, I could be sure of the problems with disease.

Hence the GREAT onion trial. I have now been planting onion seeds spring and fall and planting them on the farm.

It was the first big CSA day today, and I'm beat, so I'll post more about this under the onion trial for those of you who are interested.

[oxbowfarm]

We grow our own seedlings, it can be a PITA. But as wimpy as they look they are surprisingly tough. I'm not sure how they get those onion seedlings so big and robust, but I have a policy of never buying in plant material due to bio-security concerns, especially if its coming from someplace like the Willamette Valley or the southeast. My mentor got a bad case of Rhyzoctonia that way.

One idea that I'm excited to try more is the multi-plant where you plant multiple seeds in a cell/pot/soil block and thin them to 4 plants then just transplant them out at much wider spacing, 1 foot in row or so. As they grow they push each other aside and you get a 4 onion clump from one transplanting step, and the wider spacing between clumps makes them easier to hoe. This does seem to work, I'm just working on getting adequate germinations in the blocks. I've had variable results germinating them. You might even be able to do this with Joseph's tube planter if you could come up with a paper pot of the right consistency to hold together at planting but be wimpy enough that the onion roots could break out, they don't seem as aggressive a rooter as a cabbage or a tomato. That's my main issue with the onion soil blocks, the onions don't make enough roots to knit the block together well.

[gray]

First off I am not super experienced at this. But what i have had success with is growing leeks from seed. I have beautiful leeks harvesting right now from seed I sowed last May? Approx. They grew most of summer in a flat.

They got nice and stout after a few months. They were very wispy early on. I made ten inch deep holes and set them in these with a little soil to hold the roots and let the holes fill gradually over time with water and rain.

I believe they and onions do well with high fertilizer and light. I started my leeks last year late enough to grow them outdoors in full sun. This means fall planting.

For spring I believe you would have to have use grow lights on them to get enough hours of direct light to get any size to them.

I know from growing TPS that light is the key to get stout plants, that dont remain wispy.

I bought onion sets from Dixondale this year and planted Feb 18. These were the nicest stoutest sets i have ever bought. There instructions emphasize high fertility during the leaf growing stage to get big bulbs. The more green you grow before the onion begins to bulb the more bulb you will get.

I have my own leek seed and will do my own for this fall again. I dont know if its worth the electricity to try grow lights on onions.

[littleminnie]

I always do my own leek seedlings but I grow much fewer of them than onions. For onions it would be too many trays to equal nearly 2000 onions! PLus planting those little 'chivelike' things would be a PITA. Up to 2000 little hairs instead of up to 2000 little sticks.

Interesting idea about the 4 together. I think that would work. Onion family seedlings never root up so I just grow them in an open tray

You have all the soil left in the tray after planting which is weird. I sprinkle it on them.

[raymondo]

I've tried onions from seeds the last two years. In the first year, from about 400 seeds sown I got four plants. Last year, much better germination but the onions were all small. I'm trying again this year and will be sowing towards the end of the month, around the autumn equinox which is also when I plant garlic.
It may be fertility levels. After reading the above posts I'll try a well fertilised bed this year.

[ferdzy]

We've grown onions from seeds for a few years and have not found them too difficult. A few things to note:

1) Seed must be FRESH. First year, great, second year, poor, third year none is generally the rule. The definitioin of poor will vary from variety to variety. We planted Amish Bottle from last year and have one feeble little seedling. Red Marble, Yellow Cipollini, maybe 10% (seed from last year). Ailsa Craig, probably about 30% in this its second year. On the other hand Red Tropeano and Early Yellow Globe germinated at about 50% or more - good enough to use. We did buy some seeds this year that did not germinate at all. Seller told us their supplier had tested 85% germination in November. Something obviously happened between November and now...

2.) Best germination we've had has been achieved by soaking seed for 8 to 12 hours, changing water every few hours, then putting them in a coffee filter or paper towel (unbleached) inside a plastic baggie and setting in a warm place. Plant in trays when just starting to sprout. This will also save you from filling up trays with non-viable seed.

3.) Start 'em early. We will plant ours out early to mid May, we started them 2 weeks ago. They are easy seedlings but slow.

4.) You can crowd them somewhat as seedlings, then plonk them in a small tub of water and untangle them gently when they get planted out. This will also save space and doesn't seem to set them back much, as long as you don't overdo it in terms of crowding them. Use some judgement! Run your hands gently over them every day to give them some exercise (and help them not be too weedy.)

5) I don't find them too much worse to plant out than sets, but then I'm not farming, just back-yard gardening. No doubt small inconveniences pile up when the number being planted goes from a couple hundred to a couple thousand. But still, poke small hole, drop in, move on.

6.) Did I read somewhere that the amount of chilling young onions get affects what they do later? I know day-length is an issue, and you will need to buy appropriate seeds/sets and even then see which ones are happiest for you. I have had more variable results from growing from seed than growing from sets, both smaller onions and much larger ones too. Mind you we throw in a few sets late if there is room, otherwise it's from seed.

Because of the very short storage ability for onion seed I'd like to get into saving my own.

[templeton]

I'm a big fan of leeks - esp in home garden. So much so, that I don't really bother with onions anymore. Leeks are dogs, onions are cats.
Leeks are always there, happy to see you whenever you're in the backyard, need a regular feed and drink but usually happy to hang out with their leeky little buddies, love some attention but can get by without it,
Onions - ya feed 'em, cuddle them when they're young, keep them warm and feed them special food, then they get a bit older, and suddenly - gone - no notice, just when you thought you were going to get some payoff for all that early attention - leaving a bare patch in the garden, and an empty, I've been ripped off feeling in your heart....I've even thought of looking in the garden beds of the retirement village across the road, to see if they've been adopted by some more caring old folks...

But seriously, leeks are my allium - no fuss, no day length issues, sit around all year in the garden until late spring before they go to seed, even then if you get them early can use the young flower spikes like rocambole garlic shoots.
you get lots of seed off the heads, and the variety I've been growing - just some generic leek in punnets from the garden centre - has kept me going for a few years from self sown seedlings, and the little pups that come up from the base of spent flowering adults - this can happen some months after a lazy gardener has just let the flower heads fall over and rot, and then miraculously up come the little baby leek sets from where the base of the old parent plant was, just in time for replanting.
T

[12540dumont]

Well, I do love the no fussiness of leeks. But, I can only have them in the fridge for about 3 weeks.

These red onions in the front of this photo that are drying, I had these this week. They were harvested on August 1.

What I truly love about leeks, is that I can give them a quick trim and rinse, bundle them in 4's, stick a rubber band around them and plunk them in the CSA Box.

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[swamper]

Ailsa Craig grew much larger and better for me than Walla Walla last year, and the best part is their delicious flavor.

[richardw]

Well i must have a good onion grow climate or something because i find the onion even the reds onions very reliable and easy to grow,but i do grow from my own seed which would be over 20 generations by now so maybe this helps,the NZ breed old strain "Pukekohe Long Keeper" is even more dependable again and as the name suggests a wonderfully keeper that can store up to 18 months

[richardw]

Holly - how much do you sell a bundle of 4's for,my 13 year old son grows them and sells at my dads front gate in town for $3 per 10