Depends a great deal on what type of onion you wish to grow. Sets, the small onion bulblets, are easy to start long day, storage onions. Tend to be pungent are used mostly for green onions. Other types, are easier to buy the plants and plant them at the appropraite time, Early spring for long day onions, November for short day onions.
You can also start onions from seed, just like any other plant and transplant your own. The most difficult is direct seeding.

If you want unusual varieties you will either have to do it from seed starting very early (I start mine in late Dec. for early spring planting) or buy onion plants (check out Dixondale Farms). Growing from seed is a bit of work and frequent trimming is required. Direct seeding with seeds is a very poor 7th choice. ;)

Sets (what you call baby onions) don't usually go on sale till early spring so I always buy a bag of them and refrigerate them to keep for fall planting for winter onions. They will work as green onions in my zone if planted in the spring but they are always only the usual plain varieties.

As farmerdilla said you also need to determine which type is best for your zone. Usually for zone 7 you need short day varieties tho some intermediate day varieties will work.

Dave

I grow onions from seeds, but I've never harvested any large ones since I tend to pull them all for "spring onions". Hoping to change that, I do have some growing in deep containers on my deck that I seeded in September. We've had a couple of light frosts, so I'll probably cover them with row cover fabric in hopes that they'll survive through the winter.

I do know that they do better if you have plenty of phosphorous like bone meal in the soil where the roots can reach it. It helps healthy bulb formation.

If you haven't already planted onion seeds for a spring harvest, I think you'd be better off to buy the onion sets and plant them in the very early spring. Since you're in zone 7, you might be able to grow short-season onions and definitely the day-light neutral ones.

Below is a link to seeds for a nice-looking day-neutral onion from Johnny's Seeds.

Here are all their onion products, seeds and sets. Many online seed vendors sell them both, so have fun looking for what you want!

Here is a link that might be useful: Candy Onion

The Candy were awesome here this year....not a long keeper though they are still in excellent shape yet this fall. They are likely a bit cheaper in a good garden center sold as bunches....April 1st here.

I live in zone 7 and have grown Candy (yellow)for several years. This year I added Superstar (white) and they both produced baseball to softball sized great tasting onions. They kept into November with only minimal loss. They also sold very well at the local farmers market. I grew them from Dixondale (high quality) slips and wouldn't do it any other way. Same thing next year.

Thanks for the help. But why are onions hard to direct seed?

I can only speak to long day onions, as we're a bit too far north for short day types, but my experience is that they are very easy to grow from seed. I usually start mine the first week of February or so (probably a bit earlier in your area). I use old plastic butter tubs or any container roughly 3-4 inches in diameter. Into this you can sow at least 20-30 seeds - really! They don't mind being crowded when they are young. A month later, it will look like a little pot of grass, but all the seedlings will be healthy and happy. Harden them off as usual outdoors. You can trim them if they start to flop over and squish one another. They will still look small and fragile when you transplant them, but they are a lot tougher than they look! Gently tease them apart from one another and plant them at the same depth they were in the pot. You should have 95% success rate or more at transplanting. Weed by hand until they are big enough that you can mulch them without burying them, then mulch with plenty of hay, straw, or whatever you like. It's best to topdress with organic fertilizer or cornmeal just before you apply the mulch.

We grow onions very successfully in this manner. Many of them are nearly twice the size of my fist! Copra and Redwing always seem to do well for me. Many of the best varieties can only be bought from seed, so it's well worth it to start your own.

-Diggity

Diggity - It isn't that they are difficult to grow from seed. The problem is when you try to direct seed them. Different thing. ;)

Keepitlow - We are talking bulbing onion not green salad onions here, right? First, the time when they have to be started in order to have time to develop bulbs isn't gardening weather in zone 7. The seeds would rot in the wet soil and if they germinated the young seedlings would be killed by frost. So they need to be started in a protected environment, get established and then be transplanted when the weather allows (late Feb. for me here).

And if you wait for the weather to improve to plant the seeds in the garden, the onions don't have time to develop bulbs before the day/dark day length changes. Development of onions is governed by the hours of darkness they are exposed to. Thus the different types - short-day, long-day, intermediate-day, and day neutral.

Onions are unique. As I suggested above, Dixondale Farms has a very detailed explanation of how onions grow and it is important to understand that part and how it is related to the equinox, day-length, etc. in order to understand why direct seeding only works in certain parts of the country and only with certain varieties. You really need to research all the info they provide there. ;) They will tell you what varieties (short-day) you can grow and when they need to be started from seed or when transplants can be planted.

Dave

Since onions can be sown very early many varieties will have enough time to mature if direct sown. Many wholesale growers have been basically doing that by sowing in cold frames from which they pull masses of seedlings for others to plant.

However the poor competition of onion plants with both themselves and weeds makes direct seeding a poor choice. Usually you will do as much damage to the onions as to the invading weeds during a weeding operation. For that reason I find that transplanting 6-8 week old seedlings through plastic mulch gives the onions a better chance at maturing undisturbed.

When comparing starting your own seed vs. purchasing seedlings you probably should try both to see which you prefer. Onion seed doesn't store well unless you keep them in a freezer. However seed can be purchased at a fraction or the cost of plants. Since you usualy get ~7500 seeds/oz. you will have lots of seedlings from a purchased oz. of seed. If you don't flat seed too thick you can get reasonably nice seedlings with relatively little effort. The larger the seedling, the better transplant success. Ideally I like pencil thick transplants to transplant thru plastic.

I've grown red onions (Mars) from seed 2 years running. They are incredibly easy to grow and give me huge onions, a pound apiece. I start the seed the same time I start tomato seed, about 8 weeks before setting out.

This year I started some 2 weeks earlier too, and set them out a few weeks earlier, but couldn't tell the difference come harvest time from the ones set out May 24th.

I gave some extra plants to a friend who has always planted sets and he was amazed at the difference.

Go for it. The nice thing is they are so hardy, that just a couple weeks after they sprout, you can leave the plants outside in the pots almost the entire time.

The problem I find with ordering from Dixondale is that they send you second-year plants. It's no wonder then that many of them will bolt.

Are you planting short day onions in the springtime? They are supposed to bulb in March. when delayed due to spring planting they will bolt like crazy.

Or planting them in a high latitude like OR. Mail-order plants are definitely not second-year, otherwise they would be a bulb.

Yeah barkeater can get away with it up north - totally different onion growing country and rules than in zone 7. Down south it won't work. Sorry.

And pnbrown is right on tcstoehr - you are not getting 2nd year plants from Dixondale. You are getting plants grown from seed and started in late Nov. thru Dec. You are planting the wrong type for your zone or at the wrong time of year. Sorry.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Grow Onions

I grow onions from seed very successfully every year in zone 7b north Alabama.

1. Start seed on or about the first day of January. The objective is to have onion plants smaller than a pencil lead in about 2 months. If you use larger transplants, the resulting onion bulbs will be measurably smaller. Even though posters above say to use pencil size plants, if you do direct comparison, you will find that smaller transplants make larger bulbs. I once set out transplants that were not much bigger than hair. They made the biggest onions I've ever harvested.

2. Use only day neutral or short day varieties. No matter what the literature says, long day onions do NOT do well in zone 7 or areas further south. SuperStar is slightly better performing than Candy, but both do very well. Walla Walla and Ailsa Craig both do pretty well also. I used to grow Kelsae Giant and regularly harvested softball size and larger onions.

3. Transplant into very fertile loose soil with lots of organic matter. You can grow onions with commercial fertilizer, but they will never be as large or as tasty as those grown in fertile organic soil. The soil should be well worked to a depth of at least 12 inches.

4. Onions tend to grow roots down and out roughly in an umbrella shape. If the soil surface gets hot during the day, the onion plant is stressed which reduces size and pushes root growth away from the surface. Use something like wood chips or peat moss on the soil surface to control the heat. This will allow the roots to use more of the soil profile.

5. Harvest onions promptly. Day neutral varieties in particular are very susceptible to diseases. If you harvest promptly and either can or freeze them, you can have onions year round. I am using frozen onions that were put up back in July. They are fine for soup, beans, chicken & dressing, etc.

DarJones

If you are going to transplant in spring use day neutral or long day onions. While the short day onions will make, they do bolt badly when spring planted. They were developed to grow in the winter months for April harvest. Walla Walla and other long day sweet Spanish types do well in zone 7 and are just as tasty as the the short day Granex types.

>> And pnbrown is right on tcstoehr - you are not getting 2nd year plants from Dixondale.
>> You are getting plants grown from seed and started in late Nov. thru Dec.
>> You are planting the wrong type for your zone or at the wrong time of year. Sorry.

Well, I'm quite willing to admit I'm wrong on any of this. I'm mostly interested in getting to the truth of the matter. Is Copra not a long-day onion appropriate for Portland, OR? And I planted them upon arrival exactly as the Dixondale folks told me to, shipping and planting date based on my ZIP code.

Below is a letter directly from Dixondale that surprised the heck out of me. It says right in there that when you plant the starts that they send you, they begin their second season. Which means alot of them will bolt, no? But it also says they can be "tricked" into believing they are in their second season, which a cold PNW Spring would likely do to a Texas transplant.

So, I'm forced to believe one of two things, Either Dixondale is sending out second year plants, which I no longer think is true. Or when Dixondale ships from Texas to Oregon, the drop in temperatures makes the plants believe they have hit a second winter. Either case leads to bolting, and in the latter case Dixondale should not be shipping plants to the PNW, or at least warn their customers that their onions will surely bolt.
I mean, how ridiculous is this. They ship to Portland, OR in mid February, while admitting that temperatures below 45 degrees may trigger bolting. We get temperatures substantially below 45 degrees during Feb, March, April and May.

--BeginLetter
"Onions and other commercially cultivated alliums are biennial plants, which means that it usually takes them two growing seasons to go from seed to seed. The first season is when we take it from a seed to a transplant. When you plant the plant, it begins its second season. Given a certain set of environmental conditions, onions can be tricked into believing they have gone through two growing cycles during their first year. Instead of finishing with a well-cured bulb, ready for the market, a seed stalk can develop prematurely, causing onions to be unmarketable. While it is impossible to control the weather, planting at the correct time for the variety in question is the most important factor to limit premature bolting. Over-fertilizing can also contribute to bolting - if onions are too vigorous, too early in their development, bolting can result. Onions bolt as a reaction to cold weather stress. Temperatures under 45F may cause the onion to bolt when the plant has five or more leaves. Some onions are more or less susceptible to bolting than others and the process is not completely understood. Unfortunately once the onion does bolt, the quality of the onion bulb deteriorates rapidly and it should be harvested and eaten as quickly as possible."
--EndLetter

The above letter was pulled from the GardenWeb Alliums forum at:

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/allium/msg072246263782.html

Well, one thing is that you can tell the grower of the starts when to ship, based on your experience, rather than have them tell you. It might well be that february is too early to be setting out onion plants in your region. I don't have any direct experience in the PNW but that seems awfully early to put out spring-sown starts. So one can tell them not to ship until such-and-such a week in march, or whatever seems best.

Another possibility is that Dixondale is starting some long-day varieties too early, perhaps for logistical reasons of convenience on their end. I have bought started long-day plants from Texas growers (not dixondale) on numerous occasions and not had bolting problems. If starting your own from seed is not an option perhaps trying a different grower or a different variety..........

I have planted Texas onions shipped through the mail about April 10th and they do fine. I now buy the bunches from a garden center about April 1st or so. They stock Candy always and usually Walla Walla and perhaps Super Star or 1015 Y. All these grow well without bolting. Well, the Candy this year did bolt one out of about 70. The Candy were HUGE this year and are still keeping marvelously yet. I found this year that the plants lingered on much longer before they fully died down....so I am glad I am not an early harvester of onions.

Below are leeks (2 planter boxes with darker spindly plants) and Granex 33 onions (short day). These were seeded in late September and early October and are ready for transplant to the garden.

{{gwi:18649}}

I also use those 4" by 4" by 4' long plastic planters for onion, leek, and shallot seed. Works great. I start them off in Feb for setting out in late April.

The roots are fairly easily untangled under running water.

Grandad,

Where did you get the Granex 33 seeds?

tomatomike, every year around mid-January the local retailers begin to set up their Burpee seed racks. I've seen them at Lowes, Home Depot and WalMart. I bought my seeds at WalMart very early this year.

Note - all of the above retailers in our area will begin sending their seed racks back to the vendor. This starts around late May. So I purchase both spring and fall vegetable seeds early in the year while they are available.

I'm new to posting here, and I realize this may be a bit after the fact, but I believe I can clear up the mystery of the bolting sets that toescher was encountering. If my research is right, there are 3 options to start onions at home- seeds, sets, and transplants. Sets are little bulbs- which is to say a small bulb that was formed during a growing season, then allowed to die back and cure. By definition they are 2nd season onions when you later put them in your garden. If you want THIS year's plants (in other words, plants that someone else started from seed in the winter) you need to order transplants. Who knew onions were so complicated? :)

Sunni

Here is interesting story about this

You need to learn about onions to grow them.
Look at
http://www.dixondalefarms.com/
click on Learn option near the top
and then look at the online guides, Downloadable Guides
(PDFs) and Frequently Asked Questions. Look at the catalog and learn all you can. Several questions are answered in detail in the guides.