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PunkRotten
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When will onions be ready for harvest?

Hi,

So I am in southern California and I planted a bunch of onions from seed last year around OCT/NOV. I planted a variety called Candy and another called Red Bottle. Well, I got a huge jungle of onion plants. I did thin some of it but more needs to be thinned. Given that I direct seeded these into the ground when should bulbs be ready? I want to thin it all out before bulbs start to really form because I don't want the bulbs to be affected in some way. Thanks

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jal_ut
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Onions are edible at any stage of their development. As you thin use the green onions.

I don't know how large your bulbs will get there from the fall planting, but when the plants have ran their course, the tops fall over. You can wait a couple of weeks after the tops fall, then pull the onions and let the bulbs dry some before storing.

Perhaps someone in the area will chime in with a suggested time frame?

valley
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I'll chime in jal-ut, you said it perfectly, wish I'd said that.

Richard

gumbo2176
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I planted sets late in October of last year and my onions are not really forming bulbs but are like giant scallions for the most part. Some have formed small bulbs, but unlike prior years, the bulbs are much smaller this time around. I pulled 30 of the 250 or so I planted and chopped them up for a friend to use that makes some of the best sausage I've ever tasted and I wound up with 2 one gallon bags of tops and 1 gallon bag of the bottoms.

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feldon30
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PunkRotten wrote:Hi,

So I am in southern California and I planted a bunch of onions from seed last year around OCT/NOV. I planted a variety called Candy and another called Red Bottle. Well, I got a huge jungle of onion plants. I did thin some of it but more needs to be thinned. Given that I direct seeded these into the ground when should bulbs be ready? I want to thin it all out before bulbs start to really form because I don't want the bulbs to be affected in some way. Thanks
Generally, you thickly sow onion seeds indoors, and then when they are a little bigger I guess about a month later, you plant them outside with 4-6 inch spacing so they can bulb up. The fact they've been in for 7 months and not bulbed up yet tells me they may be too close together and/or haven't "switched gears". I'm not saying you won't get a crop, but onions need a lot of space and I think they need some kind of catalyst (ie transplanting) to transition from vegetative growth to bulbing up.

If you just want to directly plant onions in the ground without starting seeds indoors, I might look into buying onion sets. Your local nursery might have them. If not, Dixondale Farms is a good website.

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jal_ut
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To get a big onion here I must start with small plants

Image

or sets.

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I can buy these plants or sets at the local garden store.

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jal_ut
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If you wish, you might take some of the thinnings and transplant them to a row with about six inches between plants and let them grow for large onions. See how that works in your area.

Onions are day length sensitive and tend to bulb when the days are of the right length for the variety to bulb. That is why in the South Short Day Onions are used since we want them bulb up early in the season before the days get long and HOT! In the North, we plant Long Day Onions since we can't get them going as early and the days will be long by the time the onions reach bulbing size.

gumbo2176
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jal_ut wrote:To get a big onion here I must start with small plants

Image

or sets.

Image

I can buy these plants or sets at the local garden store.

I bought mine as sets last fall and planted them with 6 inches of space all around and so far I've not gotten any real bulbing onions but more of what I know as Spring Onions with small bulbs about the size of a small plum and thick stalks about the size of a leek with very impressive green tops. They were gotten from a local nursery that specializes in plants indigenous to this area and the years prior I got very nice size onions using these same sets.

I guess it's just like everything else you plant------------some good years, some great years and some so-so years. Can't win them all.

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I looked up candy. it is an intermediate day onion that will bulb up when daylight reaches 12-14 hours. They can get large, up to 6 inches and take 110 days to mature. The will not do well in the south like Florida, Texas or Southern CaliforniaT

I suspect Punk may be a little south and maybe a short day onion that only needs 10-12 hours of daylight might work better. They were probably not thinned soon enough and since the tops were huge, maybe a little too much nitrogen grew greens at the expense of bulbs.

You need enough nitrogen in the beginning to get a good head of greens going, but then you need to know when to back off to encourage the bulbs to grow. Onions should be fertilized about every three weeks or so until they start to bulb up and then stop fertilizing. When the onions are bulbing up they need enough water. Remember the bulbs are mostly water.

I use three specialty fertilizers 1) citrus food for almost everything. It contains micros 2) Orchid food (mostly slow release nutricote) 3) bulb food for root crops. Everything else- sulfate of ammonia, my soil tests high in everything else, so I just have to side dress with sulfate of ammonia at flowering, first fruit and every month thereafter and I need very little. Two of my gardens are alkaline(pH 7.4 and 7.8) and one is acidic (pH 6.4). I just grow different things in each place. The sulfur will help to bring down the pH in the alkaline gardens and compost will raise the acidic garden.

I plant onions from seeds in a community pot and transplant the seedlings out to 3-4 inch spacing after they are about 4 inches tall. I don't have the space to let the onions grow in situ. I can plant something else for a couple of months more that way.

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jal_ut
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gumbo2176, don't despair yet. You may still get some bulbs from those as long as the green growth is still standing up and looking good. Give it some time.

gumbo2176
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jal_ut wrote:gumbo2176, don't despair yet. You may still get some bulbs from those as long as the green growth is still standing up and looking good. Give it some time.

I still have well over 200 of them still in the ground, so I'm not giving up on them yet. However, they are taking up a lot of one row I have left to plant some summer crops in, so it's now a bit of a trade-off between them and some soybeans I'd like to put in for Edamame.



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