Why You Should Grow Onions

If yous dear onions in your cooking, make room for them in your garden. They're a snap to abound and don't need lots of space, yielding even in pots. Learn the nuts of how to plant onions, and you might only exist able to strike them from your grocery listing for adept.

Beginning With the Right Onion

The secret to a great harvest of fatty onion bulbs is choosing the right onion for your region. Onions form bulbs in response to daylength, and they're sold every bit brusk day, long day or intermediate onions. Those categories are based on latitude.

  • Long mean solar day onions grow best at latitudes of 37 to 47 degrees (roughly Zones 6 and colder).
  • Short day onions grow best at latitudes of 25 to 35 degrees (Zones 7 and warmer).
  • Intermediate onions overlap the other regions, growing all-time at latitudes of 32 to 42 degrees (Zones 5 to half dozen).

Y'all tin grow any type of onion in any zone, only for best results, dig up an onion map online. You can detect them on virtually seed-seller sites.

Seeds, Sets or Seedlings? What's the Difference?

Seeds need the most time to yield an onion crop, and you'll need to starting time them indoors. Sow onion seeds indoors 10 weeks earlier the final average frost date for your region. Divide seedlings at planting fourth dimension.

Sets are mini onion bulbs that you plant half-an-inch deep. Many people abound onions from sets; they're widely available for sale. I drawback to sets is that the bulbs they produce don't usually abound as large. That'south because a ready is already one year former. Onions live for 2 years. In the outset year, they form bulbs; in the second, they form seeds. Sets are predisposed to shift into flowering style because they're already a year old. Sets are also more susceptible to illness. If yous're planting both sets and seedlings, place them in different parts of the garden.

Seedlings (above), besides called starts, are pocket-size onion plants that resemble a tiny dark-green onion. You tin buy these at local garden centers or home stores or club them from onion farmers online. Seedlings are in their first year of growth, then they're prepare to form bulbs.

Set up Your Soil

Give onions a spot in full sun with loose, crumbly soil high in organic matter. Enrich soil with compost or composted manure to increase the nutrients information technology contains. Onions grow best in mounded rows (4 inches loftier) or raised beds.

How to Plant Onions

Tuck onions into the garden iv to 6 weeks before your last average frost engagement. Plant onion sets 1/2-inch deep; seedlings, 1 inch deep. Avoid planting too deeply, which reduces the onion'southward ability to form a bulb.

Seedlings with the diameter of a pencil class the all-time bulbs. Grow larger and smaller ones equally green onions. Space onions iv inches apart for bulbs. If you desire to grow whatsoever as green onions, constitute them 2 inches apart, harvesting every other one to create that platonic 4-inch spacing for bulbs. It's okay to plant ones y'all'll pull as green onions deeper than 1 inch because yous don't want a bulb to grade. Planting deeper yields more of the juicy white stem.

Water Your Onions Well

Water bulbs after planting to settle soil. Onions often announced to grow very little at the first of the season. Exist patient and look. They will grow.

Keep Your Onions Well-Fed

Onions need different nutrients at different points in their growing wheel. Kickoff the growing season with a fertilizer that has a high middle number (phosphorus). Every three to four weeks after planting, feed them with a loftier-nitrogen product (start number higher). Many gardeners prefer using a water soluble fertilizer like fish emulsion to give onions the nitrogen they need. Stop fertilizing when bulbs start to class.

Pull Weeds

Clear all weeds prior to planting and go along them removed during the growing flavour. If you apply mulch to aid suppress weeds, pull it back from the onions as bulbs starting time to form.

Await for the Harvest

When onions are ready to harvest, the dark-green tops turn brownish and autumn over. On a sunny twenty-four hours, pull onions early in the morning. Allow them lay on the growing bed in the lord's day for 2 to three days. Cover the bulbs with the tops of another onion to forbid sunscald. Don't permit bulbs become wet at this point. Dew is okay; rain is not.

Cure the Crop

A properly cured onion stores the longest. Curing means the onion has dried thoroughly from the neck (where the stem meets the bulb) to the bulb surface. The onion skin becomes dry and papery. When tops are completely dry, they should pull right off the bulb. After curing your onions outdoors for a few days, move them indoors to a spot where they're protected from weather and have good air menses. Lay them on screens to end drying. When bulbs are completely dry, clip roots and either clip or braid tops.

Store for Winter

Place onions in a cool, dry area with good air period. Tuck bulbs into a mesh pocketbook to increase air exposure. In a absurd spot (45 F), onions shop from three to ten months. Sweeter onions commonly don't store besides, and so plan to eat those first.