Advice for first time onion grower?

[applestar]

I'm feeling a little bit proud of myself
The onion seedlings I grew from seeds are planted in the perimeter, the plants I bought (that I posted about earlier with photo) were planted in the prime location down the middle....


I have a second little raised bed like this too.

[TheWaterbug]

You can guess what's what by when they bulb. Find out if they're long day, intermediate day, or short day onions. The one's that bulb first are short days. IDK about the Texas and Georgia sweets, but most walla walla have been selected to overwinter and are short day.

Bonnie says that their Georgia Sweets are short day, the Texas Sweets are short day, and the Walla Wallas are long day.

In Los Angeles we're at 34 °N, just slightly above Atlanta (33 °N) and Dallas (32 °N), so I suppose I should be growing short day varieties instead of long day, but the store was selling all three kinds, so I figured I'd gamble with $3.68

Walla Walla is way up at 46 °N, so maybe the Home Depot shouldn't be selling Walla Wallas down here.

According to Dixondale I'm definitely in Short Day territory. Here's my onion patch at 122 days:


I'll call the 3 leftmost rows the "A" onions:


the middle 3 my "B" onions:


and the right 3 my "C" onions:


As can you can see, the As and Cs are both bulbing nicely, while the Bs have all gone to scapes. There are a few bulbs in there, but not many. I'm going to conclude that these are mismatched to my climate, which means they're probably the Walla Wallas. Which means that Home Depot ought not to be selling them in my area. But that's another conversation

The As are doing the best of the bunch. I have a 3.5" bulb here:



and a whole bunch of ~3 inchers in a row:



I'm guessing these would have grown bigger if I'd thinned them.

The Cs aren't quite as large.

How does one tell a Texas Sweet from a Georgia Sweet? Ah well; I'll probably buy from Dixondale instead of Home Depot next year anyway.

A lot of my onion plants have been knocked over, and I think that might be the dogs that the neighbors walk down the trail every morning or else the peafowl deciding to lie down for the night in the middle of my patch. It doesn't seem to hurt the onions too badly.

It's almost time for me to try making some French Onion Soup!

[TheWaterbug]

A lot of my onion plants have been knocked over, and I think that might be the dogs that the neighbors walk down the trail every morning or else the peafowl deciding to lie down for the night in the middle of my patch. It doesn't seem to hurt the onions too badly.

So now I'm reading that onions fall over when they're ready to harvest, but I'm also reading that they normally turn yellow or brown when they do this. Mine are still very green, which is what makes me think they got knocked over artificially.

Then again I'm at 122 days, and the Texas Sweet and Georgia Sweet are supposed to be 110 or 100 day varieties, so they should be harvestable right about now.

Do onions go bad or get over-ripe if they're left in the ground?

[PunkRotten]

They look good man. I am gonna start some from seed next Spring. I am gonna try a spicy red variety and hopefully a sweet variety that grows well over here.

[vinyl217]

Onions are looking good Waterbug, nice work. Now, as for harvesting...I wait until about 50% of the greens have browned and the bulbs have a nice skin. Then I bend the tops over and leave the bulbs in the ground a few more days. After that they get dug up and placed on a shelf to dry down for a couple more weeks prior to cutting the tops off and storing. If your onions are for fresh eating, I'd say your ready to start pulling and making some of that French Onion soup Also, as a side note, you can cut off those scapes and you may be able to force some of them to start bulbing. And, since the bulb is a swollen leaf base I always foliar feed my onions (and garlic as well) with fish emulsion once in April and again in mid May to boost the green growth.

[TheWaterbug]

A lot of my onion plants have been knocked over, and I think that might be the dogs that the neighbors walk down the trail every morning or else the peafowl deciding to lie down for the night in the middle of my patch. It doesn't seem to hurt the onions too badly.

OK, apparently I'm full of fertilizer.

Every day I go out and look, a few more have fallen over. So this is clearly The Beginning Of The End (tm) for this crop.

Is there any benefit to waiting another week or so for them all to fall over? Or should I just pull them and dry them this weekend? It's supposed to be in the low to mid 80s.

Or should I just leave them in the ground and pick them as I need them? If I leave them in the ground, should I stop watering them?

[TheWaterbug]

As can you can see, the As and Cs are both bulbing nicely, while the Bs have all gone to scapes. There are a few bulbs in there, but not many. I'm going to conclude that these are mismatched to my climate, which means they're probably the Walla Wallas. Which means that Home Depot ought not to be selling them in my area. But that's another conversation

Well, now this is weird.

Quite a few of my "B" onions are actually bulbing, but I didn't know it because the bulbs are underneath the soil. While my A and C onions pushed their bulbs nearly all the way out, my Bs are buried. I dug a few this weekend, and this is pretty typical:



There's a scape that fell off before I took the picture. But the stalks are very firm and upright, and most have scapes. And then there are bulbs underground that vary from 2" in diameter all the way up to 4-5", though most are in the 2-3" range.

Notably, the B bulbs are completely white, and they're much flatter than the A and C types, with some of them having almost a bagel-like shape.

Any opinions on what this means?

[jal_ut]

Don't get in a big hurry to pull them. Let them fall over and wait until the top actually gets dry before pulling them. They will keep better if you do this. Of course you can pull some to eat at any time.

[rainbowgardener]

Do onions have scapes? My onions just make the typical allium spherical fluffy flowers at the top of a straight stem. Firm upright stems and scapes sounds more like garlic. Onions usually have hollow stems.

[SOB]

The bottom of that actually looks like garlic if you ask me. I also have to agree with Rainbow but I have always used the word scapes to refer to the curly seed head that develops on garlic, not the seed bulbs that develop on onion. I could be wrong though…

OK…the definition of scape is “A long, leafless flower stalk coming directly from a root”

I noticed last year that the onions that I planted too deep bulbed in a skinnier/taller fashion then the ones I planted shallower. Those tended to bulb out of the ground. I read somewhere that onions like to stretch their shoulders, meaning the top of the bulbs out of the ground. Maybe you put the Bs in the ground a little further.

[benali]

You've got a lot of advice here and probably don't need mine. Nevertheless, I've had a lot of fun growing onions so I'd like to tell you what I do.

1. I'm in a heavy black dirt region (midwest), so I turn up the dirt... and don't plant the onions in it! Instead I put a lot of compost mixed with a few leaves on top of the dirt, and grow the onions in that. They expand to a full size and are clean and easy to pick out. (If you grow them directly in the dirt here, they don't expand very big because the dirt is just too heavy and solid).

2. Onions are one of the few vegetables that can take care of themselves in the cold. So I let some over-winter, and am able to pick some green onions and bulbs out in the fall, spring, and even the winter. I plant a few new bulbs all year long, rather than just a single planting at one time in the year. It's fun to have an all-year-round fresh green. Kale's about the only other veggie I know of around here have that provides a fresh veggie outside the regular vegetable growing season.

Good luck and best wishes.

[TheWaterbug]

Don't get in a big hurry to pull them. Let them fall over and wait until the top actually gets dry before pulling them. They will keep better if you do this. Of course you can pull some to eat at any time.

I'd been neglecting that part of the garden for so long that it was getting overrun by grass. I also needed to give Jr. something to do while I tilled the pumpkin patch, so I had him pull all the A and C onions

They'd pushed themselves out of the soil, so they were really easy to harvest. Jr. basically just picked them up.

The Bs are still in the ground, with scapes standing straight up, so I'll consider what to do about those when I get back from my trip, 11 days hence.

So the As and Cs are drying on a table under the partial shade of a trellisy thingy:



I also had him pull the garlic:



I hope I got the timing on these right. Most of them had half their leaves go brown, but a few of them were still mostly green. The bulbs looked nice and plump.