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southtown_gw

Help with onion bulbs, broccoli and califlower

southtown
11 years ago

I have never planted sweet onion bulbs, brocolli or califlower. Please tell me what you know and the weather is going to be nasty this weekend again with a possible chance of snow. I live in northeast Oklahoma. LOL

Thank you so much.

Comments (5)

  • oldbusy1
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    If your planting onion sets(small bulbs), they are most likely long day varieties. So they will not make large onion bulbs in our oklahoma. they do make good green onions for fresh eating.

    Personally, broccoli and cauliflower can be a hit or miss in the spring, especially cauliflower as it is kinda picky on our wild temperature swings. when the head starts to form , you want to pull the leaves up and cover it so it doesnt sunburn or be tempted to bolt and flower out.

    Brocolli is a little more forgiving but likes cool temps when forming the heads. usually does better for fall planting with less chances for bolting to seed . normally packman does good for me as it is a shorter day variety to maturity. but it is a hybrid so saving seeds may not produce true for next yrs planting. BROCCOLI LIKES LOST OF FERTILIZER. oops cap lock.

  • mulberryknob
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It is too late to start broccoli from seed for this year, but you can buy Bonnie plants almost anywhere garden transplants are sold. I've been seeing some nice looking plants. The day to maturity given on the label is from transplanting. Packman is 55 days. For years I have planted broccoli--my own plants started in midFeb--the first week of April and put them in the freezer on Memorial Day weekend. That's the plan for this year, too. Last year was so warm that I planted 4 week old transplants in midMarch rather than the usual 6 in early April and harvested in mid May instead of late May. The transplants I am seeing are so well developed that unless it turns incredibly hot, you should get a harvest if they are planted within the next two weeks--through the first week of April. Can't say about cauliflower as I don't grow it.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    ONIONS: The use of the term "sweet onion bulbs" worries me a little as that sounds like you bought dry sets sold as little bulbs in a bag? As busy1 mentioned, planting the small dried onion bulbs often sold as 'onion sets' often gives disappointing results in our climate. He mentioned the main reason, which is that they often are long day-length varieties that do not get the 14-16 hours of daily sunlight here that is needed to induce them to bulb up into large onions. If you already purchased them, look at the package and see if it states a variety name (you can google it to see if it is a short, intermediate or long day length variety) or if it says something like "southern type" or "southern variety". If so, the odds of success are a little better. However, with dry sets, if they were allowed to get too large before they were harvested, they often will grow for a brief while here in spring and they bolt and got to seed. This is why most of us buy bundles of small onion plants in mid-winter for planting. They most often are the right varieties for our climate and were harvested small enough that they won't bolt in our spring temperatures. If you haven't yet purchased the bulbs or if what you actually have is a bundle of young onion plants, then just plant them (I'll link an onion planting guide below), water them and watch them grow. For large onions, they need at least an inch of water a week, either rainfall or irrigation, and the more leaves they have at the time they start to bulb up, the bigger the bulbs will be. For really big onions, you need to have roughly 11-13 big healthy leaves before bulbing begins. Even smaller onions are still tasty and worth having though. You don't harvest them until the green leaves are turning yellowish-tan and falling over, which can happen in June or July depending on your location and your onion variety.

    BROCCOLI: I grow broccoli pretty much the same way Dorothy does, planting and harvesting about the same time. This year I did put some Packman plants in the ground a few weeks earlier than usual, but I have plenty more seedlings coming along just fine in the greenhouse and will do my main planting in latest March or earliest April depending on the weather. With all the cole crops, you need to get transplants into the ground as early as you reasonably can without subjecting them to temperatures that will kill them (for broccoli, that usually is around the mid-20s). Once the temperatures get too hot, they'll bolt, which means they will quickly flower instead of forming the large broccoli heads you want.

    As Dorothy said, it is too late to start broccoli from seed now, so you'd need to start with transplants. The kind of transplants you'd need would be 4 to 5 weeks old, would have maybe 3 to 4 or as many as 5 to 6 true leaves, would be a nice, healthy medium green and would be pest-free and have no obvious signs of disease. You wouldn't want transplants with obvious signs of stress like being so rootbound that roots are growing out of the bottom of the container or having yellowed leaves. Stressed transplants often bolt. Look on the undersides of the leaves before you buy the plants to make sure there are not any tiny green worms on them.

    The problem with starting broccoli from seed sown directly in the ground in our cold winter climate is that it is slow to germinate and grow in soil temps in February or early March when it ought to be planted, which gets it off to a slow start. Transplants will give you a harvest 3 to 5 weeks earlier than direct-sown seed most years, and since we barely can get a good harvest most years before the heat arrives, that 3 to 5 week difference is huge.

    CAULIFLOWER: Although cauliflower is in the same family as broccoli, it is pickier about its growing conditions. While broccoli prefers cooler temperatures in order to give the best yield, cauliflower absolutely demands cooler temps. Once again, you would look for transplants similar to those described above for broccoli. However, you'd need to get them earlier in the year and get them into the ground as early as possible because you want for your cauliflower to finish maturing before your daytime temperatures are regularly exceeding 75 degrees. That's extremely difficult to achieve in our climate, where we usually get too hot too early and it is the reason that cauliflower is more successful here as a fall crop than as a spring crop.

    Would I plant cauliflower right now as a spring crop? No. However, I did plant it a month ago. Even then, I did so knowing that, at best, I have a 50% chance of getting a good cauliflower harvest here in spring. In fall, the chance goes up to about a 75% chance. Cauliflower not only is less tolerant than broccoli of hot weather in spring but also is less tolerant of cold weather in fall.

    Since you're further north in OK than I am, you still might be able to get a cauliflower harvest from plants put into the ground now, but I wouldn't waste the space for it planted this late if my garden space was limited. The question is this: do you think that your area will stay below 75 degrees for the next two months? If not, understand that the earlier your weather heats up in April-May, the less likely it is that your cauliflower plants will produce a crop worth eating, if it produces a crop at all. Cauliflower heads that form and mature in hot weather (when they form at all) often have loosely formed curds of poor quality.

    If you are new to growing both broccoli and cauliflower, understand this about them: they love cool weather but can give you buttonheads (heads literally the size of a button) if exposed to temperatures below 40 degrees for a prolonged period of time. They don't like the heat, and it can make them flower almost as soon as small heads form, long before they can form the larger heads you're hoping for. Too much heat makes cauliflower heads loose and low quality. Too many cold temps early in their life can cause them to give you button heads or to bolt and you cannot control what temperatures they're exposed to once you have them in the ground. With broccoli and cauliflower, you need to have the luck of the Irish on your side in terms of temperatures, and then you have to watch them carefully for the caterpillars that love to devour the leaves of your plants.

    If planting them in summer for a fall harvest, you have to get them in the ground in August when it is hot so they can produce well in fall before the weather gets too cold.

    I don't know how experienced you are with vegetable gardening, but if I was relatively new to growing vegetables, cauliflower isn't something I'd plant this late in the cool season unless I had plenty of space and didn't mind devoting space to something that might produce no edible yield. While the window of opportunity for planting broccoli is still open, it is slamming shut for cauliflower unless we are going to have a really long, cool, wet spring.

    I usually grow cauliflower only in fall when I grow it at all, but this spring seemed destined to stay cool for a while, so I purchased transplants as soon as they arrived in the stores here and planted them as soon thereafter as I could. I think mine have been in the ground about 3 or 4 weeks now, and still there is absolutely no guarantee I got them into the ground early enough to guarantee a good harvest...or any harvest at all. Three to four weeks is not a very long period of time for most plants, but with cauliflower it is a significant period of time in spring.

    I don't know what your forecast is like for the next few days, but if your air temperatures are forecast to drop below the mid-20s, you'll need to cover up any broccoli or cauliflower plants you have in the ground so they don't suffer freeze damage. If you have snow, sleet, freezing rain or a wintery mix in the forecast and the plants are not yet in the ground, I would keep them inside a shed or garage if it stays above freezing and not plant them until after this storm system passes. If you don't have a shed or garage, you can keep them in a cooler spot indoors. You just don't want for them to be too warm inside for too long and then have to go back out into pretty cool March temperatures next week.

    With all cool-season crops in our climate, the window of opportunity to plant them with the assurance you'll likely get a good harvest is fairly brief. With warm-season crops, we have a longer time period during which to plant most edible crops. Some years, and 2011 and 2012 fall into this category although I think 2011 was worse than 2012, we get too hot too early in spring for many of the cool-season crops to give us much of a harvest. Broccoli and cauliflower, along with cool-season peas, are affected more by early hot weather than some other cool-season crops. I usually get a good harvest of potatoes and onions, for example, even in the years when it gets too hot too early for sugar snap peas and broccoli. Both cauliflower and brussels sprouts produce much better in fall than in spring when they often produce nothing at all. If your space is limited, I'd save the cauliflower for fall if you haven't already purchased plants. If you want to grow broccoli and cauliflower next spring from seed, sow the seed indoors so you'll have 5 to 6 week old transplants at the right planting time for your area. Then, cross your fingers and just hope the weather cooperates.

    Dawn

  • southtown
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank you all so much for all the great information. I sure appreciate.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    You're welcome. I meant to post an onion-growing guide and forgot to link it yesterday. It is linked below.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Onion Planting/Growing Guide

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