Ilene,

As you have already discovered, onions are the 'Goldilocks" of the gardening world. They will not grow and produce well if they get too hot, too cold, too wet or too dry. Thus, raising an onion crop successfully means that everything has to be 'just right'!

I raise onions most years, and have more success some years than others, because you cannot control the weather, and appropriate weather is the key to success with onions.

First of all, I have had the best success growing onions from plants/transplants that I purchase in bundles at either Lowe's or Home Depot in the late winter or online from someone like Dixondale Farms (an expensive option). I have never grown onion from seed although it is possible, just complicated. I have not had good success with onions grown from the little bulbs (often referred to as 'sets') that are sold in plastic or net bags in late winter to early spring.

Here's how I grow them.

I prepare my soil by adding compost, manure or whatever other soil amendments are needed in late fall to early winter. About a week or two before I plant, I till Dixondale Onion Food into the soil. Any vegetable fertilizer with a 1-2-1 ratio probably would work as well.

I buy my transplants as soon as I see them in the store, so I can take them home and store them in a cool, dark place where they will not dry out. I plant them in the Mid-January to mid-February timeframe, and the earlier the better. In your part of Oklahoma, you would probably plant them slightly later than I plant them down here.

I like to plant them 6" apart in rows 18" apart in raised beds. Before planting, I remove the string or rubber band that is holding the bundle of onions together. I cut off all but about 2 to 3" of dried leaved and I trim off the roots so they are about 1" long. I think that trimming off the excessive dried leaves and excessively long roots helps kick-start growth--that is why I do it that way. I plant them shallowly because onions that are planted too deeply in the soil tend to rot OR not grow well OR not grow well and eventually rot too.

To get the largest onions possible, you need to: (a) plant them as early as possible; (b) feed them; (c) water them a LOT--approx. 30" of water during their 4 to 5 month growing period, (d) plant the right variety; and (e) have as many green leaves as possible growing prior to the onset of bulbing. Why are the green leaves so important? Because you will get one 'layer' of onion for each green leaf, so the more leaves, the more onion you get.

You also have to plant onions that are classified as either short day-length or intermediate day-length. Those classified as long-day length grow well in the northern and northeastern states, but not here in the south-central plains.

Remember that the onions do their growing of the green leaves first. Once the day length reaches the right amount of hours per day (10-12 for short day, 12-14 for long day), the bulbs begin to form and their size will be based on how many green leaves the plants have at that time and how large those green leaves are.

Short day-length onions like 1015Y Texas Supersweet, White Bermuda, Southern Belle Red, Contessa or Yello Granex will give you mature bulbs about 100 to 110 days after the onion transplants begin to show green growth following planting in late winter.

Intermediate day-length onions like Superstar, Stockton Red or Candy will give you mature bulbs about 95 to 100 days after the transplants begin to show green growth following planting in late winter.

If you like exceptionally sweet onions, go with the intermediate day-length types or with Texas 1015Y. If you like onions that have more of a kick and less sweetness, go with the short day-length onions.

Onions will bolt, sending up flowers that will then form seedheads, as a reaction to ANY stress: being too cold, being too hot, having too much rain or having too little rain. Once an onion forms a stalk, it is 'done'. Removal of the stalk at that point generally does not encourage the onion to resume normal growth. In our climate, bolting most often occurs as a result of exposure to cold temps. so mulching the soil can help reduce bolting.

Growing onions from seed is possible, but complicated. You would have to plant purchased seed in October, probably in the mid to latter half of the month. After the seed sprouts and grows, you pull up the plants once they are a decent size but while the plant stems are smaller than the diameter of a pencil. You would dry the plants well so they don't mold or mildew or rot while in storage, and then store them in a dry, cool location like an unheated basement, root cellar or tornado shelter.

In late winter, you would plant the small plants in well-prepared soil about 6 to 8 weeks before the date of your average last spring frost. From that point on, you would grow them the same as you would grow purchased transplants.

Some onions last longer in storage than others. I store some dry in net bags in my tornado shelter and I chop or slice others and freeze them in zip-lock bags, which preserves them well and makes cooking with them easy.

If you have any other onion questions, let me know.

By the way, if you want to plant leeks, they also are most easily grown from transplants, although they are easier than onions to grow from seed.

And, if you want to plant garlic, it is best planted in the fall.

Dawn

Oops! We went to a fire (just across the street from our house) while I was in the middle of typing my response and I forgot to answer all your questions, so here goes:

You probably are planting a LITTLE late, but I'm not sure....it depends on your last average freeze date.

You probably should not plant in October unless you are going do it the way I described earlier where you pull up the darn things and store them for the winter, which basically means you are raising your own transplants for the following spring. October planting and overwintering the plants in the ground works great in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, but not in our climate. Here, if you plant in the ground in October, your young plants are likely to freeze or rot during the course of the winter.

If you are using the word 'sets' to decribe tiny bulb-like onions sold in plastic or net bags, then all I can say is they have never worked well for me. Why would someone sell those here at that time frame? Probably because that is when inexperienced gardeners are looking for them and asking for them. If you are using the word 'set' to describe bundles of tiny onion plants, then Atwoods is selling them late, but all retailers tend to hang on to them forever on the chance that someone will buy them. I would hope they would have the plants in the store no later than 6 weeks before your last freeze.

When do you harvest the onions? In general, onions will follow a predictable growth pattern:

1. New green growth emerges from tiny transplants.
2. Green growth enlarges and grows for a couple of months.
3. The appropriate day-length eventually induces bulbing, at which time you won't be seeing much if any new green growth.
4. Bulbs will form and enlarge to the size 'pre-determined' by how much you have fed and watered them, as well as by how many green leaves they have.
5. When the bulbs have gotten as large as they are going to be, the foliage will turn yellowish-brown and begin to fall over. At this point, it it time to harvest. The onions will not increase in size or quality if left in the ground beyond this point. Here in southern Oklahoma, depending on when I planted the onions and also depending on the weather, I will be harvesting onions anytime from late May to late July.

I hope this info helps. :)

Dawn

I would just like to add, Onions also like very loose soil after they are planted & while they are growing.
I know in my soil, this is not easy to do, esp when the packing spring rains hit.
Dawn gave you some wonderful information, I even learned about onions.

Wow, thanks Dawn and kirts! Lots of good information here. It looks to me like I might be better off buying onions, at least as long as I have a full-time job. I'm saving this information though 'cause I'm HOPING to be able to be retired by next growing season and maybe being home every day will allow me to take better care of things.

So I guess if the onions (with no tops) aren't doing any growing underground, I might as well dig them up and use them.

I don't know if what I'm calling 'sets' are actually transplants or not. I get them at Atwoods, there are usually 50 or so all rubber-banded together. Some of them are really very small. My mother always called them 'onion sets', but it might be that was just her terminology... sort of like how my dad always used to say "purtnear plum", meaning "almost". ;)

Ilene,

I always think of set as those things that look like tiny onions and which are sold loose in bags. I think of bundled onion plants as plants or transplants.

Onions really aren't hard or time-consuming to grow if you get them planted at the right time, keep 'em watered and mulched, and have some cooperation from the weather. Oh, man, that whole 'cooperation from the weather' thing might be a problem, mightn't it?

I second Kirts' recommendation that loose soil is best. Also, I forgot to add that they grow best in full sun. You CAN interplant them with other plants. I often interplant mine with flowers and herbs, but onions that are interplanted usually will not get as large as those that are grown in a bed dedicated solely to them.

Dawn

Okay Dawn, maybe you can start coaching the rest of us on starting onions! I wanted to dig this thread up and get it active again, since it's "about time," isn't it?

George
Tahlequah, OK

Hi George!

It is about time and I am getting excited! I am SO ready to play in the dirt.

I am planning to go outside after lunch and till up my "onion bed", add some home-made compost and chopped, partially decomposed leaves, and get the bed prepared for planting. Then, as soon as I see transplants available locally, I will buy them and plant them. After that, it is mostly a matter of mulching them, or covering them with blankets if snow or VERY cold weather is forecast.

I am a LITTLE concerned about thrips. It is not uncommon to have thrips on your onions, and they usually don't do a lot of harm to them. However, there is a recent thread on the Growing Tomatoes forum about Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus and the possibility/probability that onion thrips help spread it. Since TSWV is edging closer and closer to us (reportedly already in Oklahoma, though not tremendously widespread yet), reading the posts on that thread made me a little nervous about planting onions near my tomatoes. Still, I guess I will not be overly concerned until TSWV rears its' ugly head here. I've never had it in my garden, but have had the curly top virus once (about three years ago) and it is very frustrating to deal with a new virus for which there are few controls. As much as I love to interplant (EVERY row of my garden is thickly interplanted with veggies, herbs, and flowers), I will have to watch carefully for onion thrips as carriers of TSWV. I guess if it ever becomes an issue, I would (sadly) sacrifice the onions to save the tomatoes.

I think this year I am mostly going to grow 1015Ys. Last year I planted 8 or 9 different kinds, but got the best results and flavors from the Texas Supersweet 1015Ys, so may just plant them this year.

What kind of onions are you going to plant?

Dawn

I will be planting Yellow of Parma, since we want a good storage onion. I may still have some seed of Yellow Pear, which is a multiplier which can be raised from seed. But I only had a limited amount of seed and it flopped twice now. I didn't have your info on growing onions, here in OK, and planted them too late. Plus, Yellow Pear is not able to handle freezing soil, like other multipliers I've grown, so I lost the few plants which did survive.

I plan on starting my Yellow of Parma from seed, right away, since I have the space under lights and they grow quickly. I'll put them out in February, when I get back from teaching in Mexico. (I teach classes in a Bible Institute in the state of Hidalgo.)

Do any of you have recommendations on onions for fresh salsa?

I do not like onions much, but I do like them in my tex-mex food. Last year I grew just a few to put in my fresh salsa, but they did very poorly in my heavy soil in all the rain.

This year I would like to grow some sweet ones similar to the ones in my favorite restaurant salsas. The ones I like seem to be red, but I suspect growing and harvesting conditions have as much to do with it as variety.

I have a couple of really good transplant sources near me in Bixby. Any suggestions on variety?

Thank you,

Scott

Scott,

Any of the red bermuda type onions would give you the sweeter taste that you prefer. There are several different names under which the red bermuda types are sold, but often they are merely shipped and sold out of crates labeled "Red Bermuda" or "Red Granex", which is actually a type of onion and not a variety.

If the supplier from who you purchase your transplants does have the transplants labeled with the variety name, look for Stockton Sweet Red or Southern Belle Red. These are sweet, short-day types. They will taste incredibly good, but only store for a couple of months. If you want a sweet red that will store for a little longer, you could try one of the intermediate-day type sweet reds like Red Burgermeister.

You probably should avoid long-day types like Red Bull or Red Zeppelin since they don't bulb up well in our climate and are not as sweet as the short and intermediate day type. They do, however, store for up to 8 months, so they are the types you see in the grocery stores much of the year.

Onions CAN grow in heavier soils, but will benefit from having 2 to 3" of organic material tilled into the heavy soil to promote good drainage of water and good growth/proper size-up of the onions. Onions grown in heavier unimproved soils are prone to rot and disease. The one good thing about heavy clay soil is that it is fertile because it tends to be full of minerals. As for last year's rains......nothing grew as well as it would in a normal year. If we have less soggy weather this year, onions might do just fine in your soil.

I've linked the Dixondale Farms website because it is a wealth of information even if you do not purchase their products. And, for the record, I do not work for Dixondale Farms or benefit from recommending them as an onion source....I just think their website is really helpful. :)

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dixondale Onion Farms website

Dawn,

Thank you very much for the advice. That helped a lot.

Scott