Poor quality spring onions.

[cheops]

Hi all,
Am new to growing vegetables but in the Spring eagerly set out to grow a variety of vegetables. Generaly all is growing well but rather surprisingly the Spring onions [which I would have thought are easy to grow and mature quickly] are very thin, at best 4 to 5 inches high and some have yellowed tips. The lettuce in rows beside them are florishing and I have already harvested some of them. What on earth am i doing wrong - Help?

[Alice]

Hello Cheops and welcome to the Vine. Spring onions are not fast maturing, they do take some time, so yours are probably just par for the course.
I start mine early, about February, seeds sprinkled over 3" pots and grow them in the pots til I see the roots at the bottom, then plant out the whole pot. It gets them on a bit faster.
You might want to try that next year.
In the spring I also plant red onion sets. They grow on quite quickly and while I'm waiting for the spring onions I pull the immature red onions and use them. The stems get eaten too.

[cheops]

Thank you Alice. Some good advice - plant the spring onions early [in those little pots]. I just assumed when i sowed the lettuce and spring onion seeds at the same time last April- hey presto - they would grow at the same rate and soon i would have spring onions and lettuce on my plate. All i have is loads of lettuce ready and very immature spring onions not worth picking yet. lol. Will next year try those early red onion sets to solve that problem. Thanks again. By the way is it normal for some of my developping spring onions to have a yellow dried tip?

[Maf]

My first SOs germinated well and then sat looking like blades of grass for a couple of months before growing well once the weather warmed.

I've been sowing a short row every week for the past few months and they've gone great (we eat almost all the green bits aswell (unlike the supermarket SOs that taste so metalic))

There's still time to sow some quick croppers yet... give t a go!

[Demeter]

Glad it's not just me with slow spring onions!
My first sowing (from end of March) now look like they might be ready to pull in a couple of weeks but the second sowing still look like blades of grass!

[zazen999]

Hi
My trick with onions is:

Prepare a bed for them which consists of non weedy soil, mixed with coffee grounds. don't firm it in too tight.

Sow onions in pinches of 3 or 4 - leaving a good couple of inches between them.

Water with fine rose, and pretty much leave them for a couple of months.

by then, you should have some ready to be spring onions. Keep taking the largest from each batch - leaving one at each station to grow on. As they get bigger, you can take alternative ones, leaving others to grow on. Eventually, you'll have one about every 4 inches that gets to be a fully grown onion. I often don't pull any for springs, and leave them to grow together - they push themselves apart as they grow anyway.

Also, sow regularly to build up a good batch.

You'll soon have more onions at all different stages to pick and choose from. Springs for salads and larger ones for cooking.

[kentvegplot]

Also, you could start your SOs off in the Autumn (there are varieties which are good for over-wintering). They spend all winter looking pathetic, but then really get going early in the Spring. I tried this, sowing a few in a tunnel (so they had protection but no heat, the tunnel regularly hit -5 last winter) and was rewarded with a decent early crop. The second sowing is MUCH slower!

[moggssue]

My first SOs (sown mid March) are perfectly healthy specimens, pushing themselves out of the ground so presumably ready to be harvested, but are only the size of peas !! I guess the weather hasnt been too kind to them and am hoping for better from the later sowings.

I 'thought' yellowing tips was a sign they were ready to pull - but listen to those who've been growing for longer than me ceops!

[Winged one]

Mine are all still blade of grass-like and I sowed in March. Not donig well on them this year at all (will have to get OHto sow a few as his did great last year and he hasn't sown anything this year).

[Cutecumber]

SO's need very good drainage and do better when just damp (rather than soaking wet).

Lettuces need more constant moisture, so that might be why these are doing well.

SO's do very well in containers in light compost and good drainage. I'm on my third harvest this year having start in early February.

I used to worry about them as they grew so slowly - now I ignore them and they romp away on the quiet