Nice onion!

This is my first year growing from seed. I started with regular bunching onions, and am amazed how slowly they grow in general. My tomato and pepper plants are growing inches every night, and the little onions are still chillin' doing practically nothing. But another month may make a difference.

Kim

That is a beautiful onion plant!! I hope they continue to grow for you and you have no troubles later in the season :o)

Catherine

I find onions and leeks the most fun to grow from seed. I really think it is because they are slow growing. I fuss over them for months. Mine were started the first week of February and here it is May and I am still fussing, Ha ha. This is the year of the Allium in my garden. Whats that, well experiment time, different seed starting with different onions. Different plan spacings in the garden. Winter sowing of different cultivars. Timing of starts and all the fun that goes with all that. Two garlic types 2 leek types 4 onion types and one bunching onion type . I have some loss of course, but no shortage of onion!
Kim I planted my onions a day or two after our post It frosted but no harm to my onions.

I agree - onions are fun to grow! I can't wait to try out even more varieties next year, now that I have a better idea of how to grow them. I'm definitely going to give planting garlic a try this fall as well.

Thanks for the good wishes Catherine! And good luck with your onions Kim :)

Deirdre

In zone 8 you should grow onions frpm seeds in the fall and let them overwinter.
I, personally, experimented it last fall and now they are doing fine.
In places with long cool growing season you can start them in early spring.

NOTE. Onios, from seeds or sets, soulbe sowed/planted real shallow, NOT DEEP.
I plant them on raised row and remove the soil from around them
when they start forming bulbs.

Cyrus,

I am in zone 8, but located in Vancouver (49th parallel) where the days are very long in the summer, and very short in the winter. I was told that since the onion I'm growing is a long day variety, that I don't need to overwinter, and that it will actually do better from a spring planting. Would you agree? Incidentally, I was thinking of overwintering a short day variety starting this August.

Deebs

I read that commercial onions in CA are direct sown mid-oct, so I did that last year and so far my onions look great. I'm at 37.7', so I have short, long and intermediate onions and will see which works best. So far short day onions like granex are nearing baseball size and the intermediates are just starting to bulb.

I started most of the seed in 4" pots, but some I sowed in the ground. I found that the in-ground plants were 3x the diameter of the pot raised ones at transplant time.

I've found onions, garlic and leeks to be much less work than summer crops because they grow when we get natural rainfall and they grow relatively slowly. That means much less watering, weeding, harvesting, ect.

The farther north you go, the more rapidly day-length increases in the spring. I have about 50 days between 12h and 14h, but Vancouver only has about 30. It is probably also cooler in Vancouver during this time, so a short day onion up there will have less time to bulb as well as a slower metabolism due to the cold, both of which will work against it producing a large bulb. It may even be cold enough at the beginning of this period to induce the onion to bolt. Fortunately, onions are always edible whether or not they bulb or bolt.

I have total beginner's luck. I swear, I just throw those seeds on the ground, tap them down a little and they pop up in a couple of weeks. They've been my easiest thing to grow. I don't do anything special, fertilize or anything! Perhaps it's the weather in Arizona or something. I started some in November in a shady area, others in January in a full sun area and I have so many that I'm having to thin constantly. Also have great luck with chives and the garlic did great this year too.
I'm clueless about the short-day long-day thing. I know I'm in a short-day region but beyond that I don't know much. I also haven't tried producing large type onions yet so time will tell.

I am also a newbie when it comes to alliums.

As I understand the terms SHORT DAY, LONG DAY is this.

Because onions are basically cool crops, they need to be done when it gets hot
or will not do well if it is cold FOREVER.
For example in AZ, z9, you will need to grow them when the days are short,
that is late fall to early/mid spring. Then the days are shorter than nights AND NOT SO HOT.
So in AZ and GA we have to grow the varieties that do better during short days.
If you are grdening in MI, NY, MN then you have to grow them from early spring to late summer/early fall, when the days are long. So then you have to
choose and grow the varieties that do best during long days.

Then, of course, there are zones that are more flexible. There you can grow PERHAPS ANY KIND or medium day versions.

cyrus

PS: To my understanding, SD, LD has nothing to do with the latitudes. It so happens that most LONG DAY zones are also in higher latitudes.

From what I've read, short day onions begin producing bulbs when the day is ~12 hours long and getting longer, and finish when it is ~14 hours long. The 12 hour point is always on the equinox, ~March 22, and the 14 hour point varies with latitude, moving closer to March 22 as you go north.

Long day onions on the other hand bulb roughly between 14 and 16 hours. Below 30 degrees latitude (Florida and South Texas), the day is never longer than 14 hours, so long day onions never get the trigger to bulb. In practice you need to be above 35' latitude to have enough days longer than 14 hours to get decent onion bulbs out of long day onions.

Intermediate day onions bulb around 13-15 hours.

In practice the onions are not so precise, some seed companies will give the day-lengths for bulbing of a different seed, and it may vary by up to an hour or two. When an onion is recommended between two latitudes, it's really an indirect way of stating its day-length needs that is easier to figure out.

I'm at 37.7' latitude, so pretty close to the long day/short day border, but I'm also near the Pacific ocean, so winter and spring temperatures are warm enough for short day onions to grow. So I've planted long, short and intermediate day type onions to see how they all do. All of them grow identically until bulbing starts, now the short day onions have bulbs larger than golf-balls and the intermediate day onions are starting to swell. The current day length is 14.2 hours, and the longest day for me will be 14.6 hours on the summer solstice, June 21.

How interesting onions are! I think that I too will try a fall planting of all the different day lengths and see what does best for me. I love a good challenge.