Walking Onions, Catawissa? Red Top? Tree Onions?

[reed]

In an effort to cure my ignorance about onions I just read Kelly Winterton's Potato Onions Fact Booklet
 docs.google.com/document/d/1tlnAG6epHBAd4SLOA4zlHa3EnA7r0OaZy6NpNUpIgHA/edit and found it very interesting. On page eight he shows a picture of an onion with five of what he calls "eyes" inside ready to grow into five new plants. 

That picture looks exactly and I mean exactly like what I have seen lots of times in onions that have laid around in the storage bin for too long, even big store bought ones. I have even seen onions on store shelves that have been there too long and sprouted multiple growths.  So now I wonder, are a lot of onions actually descended from these potato onions?  Maybe those old varieties he speaks about of being lost are just hiding. 

From now on I'm gonna latch onto anything like that I come across and plant it. In fact I might go buy an assortment of grocery store onions and leave them laying on the floor in the spare room just to see what happens. Or maybe just plant them, I'v seen those multiple eyes often enough I don't think it will be hard to find some, then all that's left is to hope for seeds. 

[kazedwards]

Potato onions use to be the most common. Bulking onions didn't come around until after the 1900s. That's when they were selected for bolting and dividing in the second year. I want to say that most onions will divide if left alone long enough

[shoshannah]

Thanks for the link, Reed.  

[paquebot]

Reed, all that will happen is that the bulbs will send up as many flower stalks as there are "eyes". I've never had less than 3 nor more than 5. A Makó trio thus year was 5-5-4. Didn't keep track of the Amish bottle onions but they are usually 5. I did see somewhat of an exception this year but it was a whole new game. That was a second-year hybrid shallot which sent up a single stalk. Would not have mattered if it had sent up 10 stalks as there were no seeds produced.

Martin

[reed]

So, I can plant onions with multiple eyes but all I'm gonna get is multiple seed stalks, interesting. I'm not sure I ever saw multiple stalks but I'd say most onions I ever saw go to seed grew from a little spring planted set not from a big onion. I just never paid attention to any that got missed at harvest, until last year or two I'm sure I just discarded them anyway.

This year I had some just store bought sets that grew the seed stalk out from under. They split into two or three separate bulbs which I replanted not long ago. The sets were originally planted last fall for green onions and lived through winter so I'm hopeful they will live and bloom again, I'll save any seeds this time. Three out of about 50 plants did that and they are also the only ones that did not rot while hanging under the porch to cure.

Maybe they rotted because I let them bloom before harvesting? 

[paquebot]

Onions from seed are usually biennials. When first-year onions go to seed prematurely, it is usually a single stalk since there is no stored energy to support multiples. Of the common set onions, I find that the reds are more prone to dividing the first year. Usually they are Red Wethersfield.

Martin

[richardw]

Nov 5, 2016 18:57:37 GMT -5 paquebot said:

Reed, all that will happen is that the bulbs will send up as many flower stalks as there are "eyes". I've never had less than 3 nor more than 5. A Makó trio thus year was 5-5-4. Didn't keep track of the Amish bottle onions but they are usually 5. I did see somewhat of an exception this year but it was a whole new game. That was a second-year hybrid shallot which sent up a single stalk. Would not have mattered if it had sent up 10 stalks as there were no seeds produced.

Martin

Not always will a onion send up flower stalks. I grow seed from two onions -Pukekohe Long Keeper and Medbury Red, PLK will in its second year divide into anywhere from three to six and produce a flower stalk from each,Medbury Red on the other hand will still divide but wont produce a flower stalk on all of them, instead these go on a grow another onion of similar size to the parent, quite a handy trait really. 

[paquebot]

Richard, how they react to coming out of dormancy depends on variety. Anything that Reed finds in his supermarket will react exactly as I stated. For some varieties, it depends upon size of bulb. I've found that if the bottle onion bulb is 1" or less thick, it will only divide.

Martin

[reed]

Nov 6, 2016 10:15:57 GMT -5 paquebot said:

Onions from seed are usually biennials. When first-year onions go to seed prematurely, it is usually a single stalk since there is no stored energy to support multiples. Of the common set onions, I find that the reds are more prone to dividing the first year. Usually they are Red Wethersfield.

Martin

One of the ones I replanted was red or redish, it actually got more red laying on the floor in the spare room for a couple months. I looked up Red Wethersfield and found a picture at Baker Creek they don't look anything like it. It was not near that red and is kind of oblong. The others I saved and planted are white, they got a little dry and withered but the red ones stayed very firm . I suspect you are right that they are nothing special but still it will be fun to see. 

[paquebot]

Reed, since you don't think that you have Red Wethersfield, what variety do you think it is? You planted sets and that's the variety that you're going to get. (One of the biggest supplier of onion sets is Dutch Valley Growers and that's their only red.) Of the 3 different-colored sets, Red Wethersfield is probably closest to dividing types due to its age. That one was developed over 150 years ago and is one of the oldest seed type that I know of. It's one of very few onions which can go from seed to mature bulb in one season or suspend growth and later resume it without bolting. But after saying all that, I'd say that white ones are just as quick to divide. And if you want to know what the white one is, if you bought it as a set it is almost certainly White Ebenezer.

Martin

[richardw]

Pukekohe Long Keeper and Medbury Red go from seed to mature bulb in one season

[reed]

I don't have any clue what they might be. The woman came home one day last fall with a bunch of sets she wanted me to plant for green onions and I had space so I planted them all but half or more didn't get harvested green. I suspect she got them from the greenhouse near her job cause I remember they were in little paper sacks not packaged so they must have been from a bulk bin.

[templeton]

had a quick stroll around my topset onion growout bed yesterday, and it looks like I've got a topsetter out of Green Mountain. I was flat out busy yesterday, but i think i noticed it was developing big bulbs as well. will report back when i confirm it.
T

[paquebot]

Richard and Reed, the vast majority of bulbing onion varieties are seed-to-bulb in one season. That's the first half of their 2-year cycle. There are a exceptions which will grow seed-to-seed in one go depending upon day length. For example, the Amish bottle onions will grow seed-to-seed in Central California, at the edge of Short Day zone. They will only go seed-to-bulb here but not attain maximum size. Size comes about in the second year but only when planted as sets.

Any onion bulb bought in an American supermarket is s seed-to-bulb variety. The bulk of them are hybrids which are not available in garden quantities. Seed from any of those would more than likely result in a very interesting assortment, some worthy of replicating. There have been good results such as Clear Dawn, for example, which is a stabilized Copra.

A small percentage of varieties are able to suspend their growth when small and resume it the following season without thinking that the first year's growth has been fulfilled. Those are the set onions. When purchased, they are merely red, white, or yellow without a variety name. Combined, they have only 4 names. They are Red Wethersfield, White Ebenezer, Yellow Ebenezer. or Stuttgarter. Until perhaps 20 years ago, those could be found in seed racks in the northern part of the country. I don't think that any company has either of the Ebenezer seeds in gardener quantities anymore. They are strictly for the commercial set growers. As for how to produce them, I believe that it's been covered elsewhere on HG.

If anyone wishes to doubt my statement about Red Wethersfield's varied bulb shape, look at what is depicted in the SSE catalog. Ball, flat, and pointed all in the same bundle. That variety's history goes back to at least 1834 so there's not much that hasn't been learned about it. Still can be fun to rediscover what was common knowledge 100 years ago.

Martin

[reed]

Nov 7, 2016 20:12:55 GMT -5 paquebot said:

 The bulk of them are hybrids which are not available in garden quantities. Seed from any of those would more than likely result in a very interesting assortment, some worthy of replicating. 

That sounds very interesting, now I want to just plant anything, get the seeds and see what comes from them. 

I should have taken pictures of the ones I replanted, I'll do that when they mature next year assuming they live through which I think they probably will. I don't known about onions, I didn't even know they are biannual. And I don't know how long, short or intermediate day relates to my climate. Got lots to learn. 

The picture on Seeds of Change site www.seedsofchange.com/quickfacts.aspx?c=12072&cat=758#ad-image-ProductDetail1_aFirstImage look most like the ones I planted except they were not that dark colored.