Onions

One of the classes at Mother Earth News Fair was Perennial Onions. I don’t know about where you live but the onions in the grocery store have been really aggravating the last couple of years. They aren’t terribly expensive – I can usually get 3 pounds of plain yellow onions for about $2.29 but when I cut into them, it seems like the first 4 or 5 layers (way too many) are either all dry and shriveled up or else mushy and even sometimes moldy, and then the center is often bad too so I’m not getting nearly as much onion as I should be getting. I don’t ever remember getting such bad onions so maybe it’s a regional thing and they aren’t that way everywhere.

Therefore, since I use a lot of onions, I am determined to have good onions – not so much for the cost but for the quality. For the onions that make the large bulbs, there are short day, long day and day neutral varieties.  Short day varieties begin bulbing (making the large bottoms) when the days begin to have 10 – 12 hours of daylight. Long day onions need 14 – 15 hours of daylight. Short day varieties grow best in the south (zones 7 and warmer) and I’m guessing that’s because by the time we have 14 – 15 hours of daylight, it’s too hot for anything to survive and thrive. So, now is the time when most onions here are doing their best. Long day onions need 14 – 15 hours of daylight and they grow best in zones 6 and colder. Day neutral onions, which are recommended for zones 6 and 7.

Onions Planted in the Fall

I am told 1015 onions got their name because it’s best to plant them on October 15 (10-15). Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. Onions planted in the fall will grow nice green tops and then when we begin having 10 – 12 hours of daylight, the bottoms begin to form. If there are not already nice green tops, the bottoms are never going to form nice big bottoms. So, for me, onions planted in the fall grow their tops all winter and early spring and as soon as the days get longer, the bottoms start growing and it won’t be long til I’m having nice, big onions.

Here, we plant onion seeds in the fall for a spring crop and onion sets in very early spring or late winter for a fall crop of onions.

I was interested in learning about perennial onions. There are at least two types of what I would call perennial onions. One is the “Egyptian Walking Onion“. I have avoided planting these because in a garden, they will literally spread throughout the garden. They appear to grow like any other onion, until they being growing weird little “crowns” at the top and these produce very small little “bublets”, which will either fall to the ground or cause the onion blade to fall over and then the bublets will root. My grandmother grew these and they were everywhere!  I still have a bag of bublets that I picked up in her yard 20+ years ago. I should plant them and see if any of them grow. And if they don’t grow, I should throw them out . . don’t you think?  🙂

Here, where the ground is so hard unless worked almost daily, I am not sure they would be so invasive and I’m beginning to wonder if I really care if I have onions growing in with my corn and beans.

Multiplier Onions and Leeks

The other type onion I plant, which I have a hard time finding here, is multiplier onions. The bulb will rarely grow to larger than 2″ but planting one will yield 4 or 5 bulbs and I’ve had good luck leaving them in the ground, mulching them, and having them sprout back up in the spring. At the Mother Earth News Fair, I did buy 18 mulitiplier onions and 18 multiplier leeks. Since there’s no spot for them in the garden now, I planted them in cups so they can survive til I do have a spot for them.

In my opinion, onions are one of my best crops. They can be planted quite close together and as soon as the bulbs start getting large enough to harvest, I will “thin” them by using the ones in the middle, and that leaves the others to grow larger. Any that I leave behind will continue to produce green onions throughout the winter. It’s so nice to be able to go out and cut what I need instead of buying some pretty sad looking green onions in the store and have them get even sadder as they sit in my fridge for a week or so.