Onions bolting to early!

[tedln]

Just pick the male blooms after your sure pollination has happened on your female blooms. Some say after pollination has occurred, the male of all species, including Homo Sapien are useless. Remember some species of spiders eat the male after pollination.

Ted

[Tigerlilylynn]

Deep fry the boys after hand pollinating??

[Gary350]

My grandparents use to keep a small patch of onions about 4 ft square that they never harvested. It was for onion sets only. They harvested the onion sets and planted them in the garden. We use to harvest about 2 bushel baskets of onions every year. I can remember that tiny 4 ft square patch of onions was in the far corner of the garden from the time I was about 4 yrs old until after I graduated from college. That little patch supplies onion sets for 20 years.

I wish I had paid better attention how to grow an onion because I can not grow them. It may have something to do with this hot Tennessee climate.

[tedln]

Gary, I think that is a great idea. Did they never harvest any of the seed onions from the 4 sq. ft. onion seed bed? Did the same onions regrow tops every year and produce seed or did they simply leave seedlings in the bed and let them grow to seed? Did they do any soil prep to the bed each year to make it more receptive to the seed and possibly improve germination of the seedlings? It just seems to easy to simply let the same onions produce my seedlings year after year after year. Somehow the concept doesn't fit into my understanding of the life cycle of plants.

Ted

[garden5]

Deep fry the boys after hand pollinating??

I think you hit the nail on the head, Lynn (if I may call you that)! That's what I'll do.

I'm trying now to wrap my head around the idea of getting free onion starts for life > What climactic zone where your grand parents in, Gary? I'm thinking how this works is the onions go to seed and then the seeds grow into seedlings.

Around here, we have the sets in the ground before the existing plants even set seed, so this does perplex me. Your grandparents may have been in a different climate, or seedlings may have been able to catch up quickly to the sets since the seedlings sprouted and grew outdoors from day 1 and may have been hardier.

Could you remember what time of year the seedlings came up and when you moved them to the garden?

[Gary350]

Gary, I think that is a great idea. Did they never harvest any of the seed onions from the 4 sq. ft. onion seed bed? Did the same onions regrow tops every year and produce seed or did they simply leave seedlings in the bed and let them grow to seed? Did they do any soil prep to the bed each year to make it more receptive to the seed and possibly improve germination of the seedlings? It just seems to easy to simply let the same onions produce my seedlings year after year after year. Somehow the concept doesn't fit into my understanding of the life cycle of plants.

Ted

They never did anything to the soil I don't think they could there were too many onions in that small 4 ft spot. They harvested the tops to plant and the same onions grew new tops year after year for over 20 years. I use to mow the lawn and the lawn mower would throw a lot of grass clipping in the onion patch. In the fall the trees would dump a lot of leaved in the onion patch too. So the onions did get a limited amount of compost. My grandfather may have put a little fertilizer on them from time to time but I never saw him do it.

[Dixana]

Listen her you people! I already don't have enough room for everything I want to grow and now you've got me wanting to do onions
too!! bad influences, all of you

[tedln]

Okay Gary,

I think I understand now. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the same onions made a bloom bud at the top that evolved into a little ball of seedlings every year. Each seedling had a small green top when they were removed from the parent onion. The parent onions were not blooming and making seed which dropped to the ground and germinated. I've seen onions do that. I don't know if it is limited to certain species or varieties of onions or if all onions will do it.

Ted

[elementfiftyfour]

Not to side track the conversation about cooking and all but just to be sure, should I cut off the flowering bulb at the top of my onions to force them into creating an onion bulb at the base?

If I left the bloom alone will the onion not produce a bulb at all?







And my elephant garlic is also creating blooms. The small regular garlic isn't creating blooms though.

[tedln]

Not to side track the conversation about cooking and all but just to be sure, should I cut off the flowering bulb at the top of my onions to force them into creating an onion bulb at the base?

If I left the bloom alone will the onion not produce a bulb at all?

And my elephant garlic is also creating blooms. The small regular garlic isn't creating blooms though.

Hi Xenon,

Since last year was my first year to be a successful onion grower, I will let the onion experts speak up. I will say that I simply pull the onions and eat them when they start to "bolt". In my garden, the onions which are bolting have produced perfect size bulbs for eating as green onions so nothing is lost by eating them a little early. My understanding is that once the onion starts producing the flower bud, the bulb will get no larger. I think that is why the experts advise to separate the small seedlings from the large seedling when you are preparing to plant them. The large seedlings will probably bolt earlier. The small seedlings will require more time in the soil to grow and will probably produce a larger bulb before they bolt. I don't think cutting the bloom off of the stem will make any difference, but I'm not sure.

Ted