Onions 2023.

[Jungle Jane]

I buy the red sets in the garden centre,I got electric variety in the autumn,the variety might vary depending where you live,what they grow for stock near you. I hadn’t seen electric variety in the GC for a few years,they were good when I grew them last time. Never noticed a label saying heat treated,they say on the pack plant autumn or spring

[Sweet savory]

Just sowed a tray of zebrune shallots in the GH. Although looking at the weather forecast I may bring them indoors until germinated.
With regard to taste I grew Long Red Florence last year and the 2 or 3 (!) that made it to maturity did taste noticeably sweet when roasted. Am hoping zebrune will be similar.
The onions sown in January have been in the unheated GH for a few weeks now and looking ok so far.

[annie8]

I am growing onions for the first time. Two types that I sowed in autumn. They are looking healthy and really seem to be thickening up in the last month. When do they actually swell into a bulb though? At the moment they look more like garlic or thin leeks than onions.

[Martin H]

They look very healthy, Annie. You will see the bulbs starting to swell soon now, certainly by early June.

[annie8]

Good. Is it worth adding a bit more fertiliser at this point. I have chicken pellets or lime. Or have seaweed and tomato feed?

[Sweet savory]

Snapped a flower stalk off one of my autumn sown onions yesterday. Fingers crossed no more go the same way. I have not been watering them (no rain here since early May) and am a bit loathe to start now as they have been swelling up nicely and leaves still a good green.

[annie8]

About 20 of mine have bolted, so maybe a quarter, but nearly all the red onions. White ones looking largely ok.

[annie8]

Will check if they were heated and get that type next time. First time growing onions so a bit of a learning curve.

[MelanieSW]

About half of mine (white onions) have bolted too with the dry weather. I've snapped off the flowerstalks and guess I will chop and freeze once harvested.

[Sweet savory]

Today I harvested the autumn sown onions as the stalks had flopped over. They are a reasonable size, look decent and are drying in the garage. I would have left them a week or so longer but am going away so decided to go for it.
The main crop onions and shallots are having a weekly soak as the weather is currently not obliging.

[annie8]

My white autumn sown onions are now flopping over. Do they look ready to lift?

[annie8]

Lifted them today along with the red ones that haven’t bolted. Quite pleased with the overall harvest given that I haven’t grown onions before.

[smallblueplanet]

We stopped growing ordinary onions after a bout of 'rust' (or something similarly bad, can't remember). And we've never really had a decent crop of spring onions before, but we tried the purple ones this year - Lilia. They can be 'dual purpose' apparently, if you let them get really big I suppose. Anyway they are great, very tasty we've eaten most of them, some quite big ones. The pic is of a few clumps that are left. They were sown a pinch of seeds into a small cell to start them off and then planted out when they were about 10cm high.

[annie8]

Am slowly working my way through the onions that I lifted and stored in the garage. Have to say I am going to grow them again, I do think they taste fresher than shop bought, particularly raw and am finding it really handy to pop into the garage and cut one off. As others say you can get a lot of onions in a pretty small space so think I will go for them again. I’ll plant the autumn sown ones as it fills a bed that could otherwise be empty then they can be lifted and I could use the bed again for other crops. This year I am using it for a mixed bed of extra plants I didn’t have space for elsewhere - so some sweetcorn, cauliflowers, broccoli and a pumpkin.

[ameno]

I do think they taste fresher than shop bought, particularly raw

The main difference I find between my homegrown onions and shop bought ones is pungency. When cutting them up, in particular, my homegrown ones are like teargas. I'll get halfway through cutting up the first onion and my eyes will be on fire and I can barely keep them open because of the pain. That doesn't happen to me with shop bought ones.
I think it must be my soil, as I get it no matter what variety I grow. Apparently onions get more or less pungent based on the sulphur content of the soil they are grown in, so I guess mine must be fairly high in sulphur (despite being neutral pH, not acidic).