Onions

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Onions
For quite a few years I purchased onion sets when I'd see them in the nursery. I tried the white ones, yellow and purple. I'd stick the little bulbs in the ground every fall and hope for "big" onions. It never happened no matter how long I left them in the ground. I had plenty of green onions but never any big, cut a huge slice for your hamburger, type onions. I gave up trying to grow slicing onions.

Instead, I planted scallions or white bunching onions from seed in the fall and used them much of the winter and into spring. I grew Egyptian walking onions for the novelty but still had to purchase my slicing and salsa making onions from the grocery store. Onions were illusive in this desert gardener's vegetable beds.

One hot summer day while perusing seed catalogs I stumbled onto onion seed and the difference between short-day and long-day varieties. The short day onions were for the southern states; the long day for the northern. What the heck, when fall rolled around I'd give onion growing one more try. I ordered a seed packet from Park Seed and before summer was officially over planted the seeds in a flat. When fall came around, the seedlings were transplanted into a couple of rows of the vegetable garden. Nothing extravagant, just enough to see what would happen.

Once the onion tops were well established over the winter the bulbs began to swell showing themselves above the surface of the soil.
Granex Hybrids in various sizes grown from seed. A short-day southern onion.
Egyptian walking onions form top setting bulbils. The bulbils can be dried and used to start new plants.
As the bulbils grow and increase in size and weight the stalk falls over and the bulbils can root where they come in contact with the soil.

All through the mild winter the onion foliage continued to grow. I probably should have fertilized but I didn't. The plants looked healthy and there were actually onions sticking through the surface of the soil. Real, grab in your hand onions. All sizes, too. Big, almost six-inch in diameter to smaller 2 or 3-inch diameter onions. In April the onions began to flower sending up a stalk. I snapped the flowers off wanting all the plants' growing energy to go to the bulb. Eventually the stalks fell over and I dug up the Granex hybrids to dry before the onions were cleaned and the tops and roots removed. By the time all the onions were harvested and dried I had about a 20 lb. box of onions. Some had mild damage where an onion maggot or other pest had nibbled a small hole in the bulb.

Next fall more short day onions will go into the garden including some red Granex to see if the onion growing success can be duplicated. (2000)