Stay warm and safe everyone.

Andria

Onion sets are tiny dried onion bulbs and normally are sold bagged in much the same way that ornamental flower bulbs are sold. I don't like onion sets because they tend to be long-day varieties that won't grow at the latitude at which most of us live. I did see some bags of onion sets at Wal-mart a year or two ago that had the words "Southern Onion Variety!" or something similar on the bag, but I didn't recognize the variety so I am not sure that was a true statement.

Onions plants are sold in little bundles and each bundle contains about 60-80 plants. They usually begin appearing in stores in southern OK the first week in January and work their way north, making it into stores in northern OK around early Feb. although they might not make it to northwestern OK until slightly later since NW OK stays colder longer in spring.

If you are buying onion plants or sets, make sure you choose short-day or intermediate-day onions because long-day onions won't bulb up well here.

To learn more about onion daylength, check out the attached link from one of the best onion plant suppliers in the nation. (There's also a great Onion Growing Guide at that website.)

Dawn

Thanks!

Moni

Any onions sold as bundled plants in Oklahoma should be types that grow well here....I've only seen long daylength types sold here as bulb-like sets, not as bundled plants.

The original Granex was released in Texas in the early 1950s, I think, and is still sold today. There now are many named granex types sold for the south and they all grow well and produce, but not all are equally productive and disease resistant. The Grano types (like Texas 1015Y) are improved granex types and the improvement is mainly improved disease resistance, which in the case of onions generally means improved resistance to pinkrot.

When selecting onions to grow in Oklahoma, any granex, grano or bermuda type ought to grow just fine. It is the long daylength types that won't bulb up here. Another easy way to choose is to watch for the word 'sweet' or 'supersweet' in a variety name or in the variety description because those are the types that grow well in the south. (We can't grown the hotter or more pungent/more spicy onions here because they don't bulb up.)

The only downside to growing sweet or supersweet tyes is that they generally don't store for as long as they hotter and more pungent onion types. With proper curing, though, I've had them last easily 6 months in storage which is longer than average for sweet onions. For longer-term storage, I chop them or slice them and freeze them.

Onions are one of the easiest veggies to grow here. As long as you don't plant them in soil that stays too wet and as long as late, severe cold doesn't hit them they're a cinch to grow.

Dawn

I'm not surprised you see long daylength types at your latitude. I wish I had a ghost of a chance of growing them here. I tried growing Red Zepplin once, and it looked more like Red Torpedo, which wasn't exactly the look I was going for.

I need to get out the Johnny's catalog and see if any of the listed longday types would grow anywhere close to my latitude. I always want to grow things that "won't" or "don't" grow here.

Dawn

It is interesting that they didn't bulb up any better for you than the did for me...I was thinking maybe yours would have bulbed up a bit more.

I am going to do my best to get mine into the ground on the day they arrive but since it is so wet here, it may be more like making onion soup than planting onions. I think mine are due to ship on the 16th.

One year I bought onion plants on Jan. 1st down in Ft. Worth and planted them here 2 or 3 days later. It was a very warm and very dry winter which probably is why I got away with planting so early and not later losing them to bolting. I had huge onions that year. The winter weather has only been that warm and dry one January since then so I haven't attempted an extra-early planting since then, but it does give you huge onions.

Dawn