Bolting Onions.

[Gary350]

I am having a very large number of bolting onions this year. 15°f below average temperatures and rain every day and every night for several weeks. I will save a lot of seeds this year but not sure yet best way to save seeds on the plants. Plastic bags over the seed heads will be an oven in full sun. Paper bags will not work in all this rain. Some type of cloth bag will probably work best. ??? Watch the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QYBmf62VZc

[greenstubbs]

I would just let the flower get real mature to the point that you can see the seeds, or taking your finger and pinching out some seeds. They will eventually get to a point where they will just fall off easily. You can take a baggie and place over to shake and catch the seeds, but don't leave it on there. You can also cut the heads off when you start to see seeds and place into a container and let them dry out, but you'll wind up with a lot of flower trash in with the seeds. These are all seed that I captured. This bag is 12 years old and I'm sure these are all dead by now, just haven't tried to see how viable they are. But you get the idea. There's also a bag of red & white in with all these yellow seed. Good Luck

[Gary350]

Several other gardens in TN area all have bolting onions. Feb 85° for a week and March 81° for a week tricked onions into thinking that was summer already.

[imafan26]

The weather has been weird with all the super storms, extreme cold and heat, I am not surprised. I heard other people say that their garlic was also affected by the weather and pests.

I grow green onions, leeks, and chives and not bulbing onions so they don't actually bolt. My green onions are blooming now. That is strange enough since it is June. My green onions bloom because the weather is cold. Luckily, I figured out that it does not mean the end of the onions. They will still last awhile, they will just be fatter. I used to think that I had to pull the plants once they bloomed, but realized the younger onions bloomed as well. So now, unless the tops dry up, I just cut the blossoms off and treat them as perennials.

[Gary350]

When tops got large with 100s of white blossoms I watched them very close. I never saw any black seeds. I pulled 20 plants up with roots put them in long cardboard box to dry a month still no black seeds. I let some tops grow longer then pull them up to dry still no seeds. Every week I save more tops to dry still no black color seeds. Today I am trying to find seed but nothing black color. I break open the blossoms and no seeds. Blossom feels hard like a tiny seed but after breaking it open its gray color dry deed material.