knowing your onions?

[BUFFS]

i sowed my ailsa craig seeds just after christmas and they sulked thru the cold spring and now its september and they are nowhere near ready for lifting,i know we are 3/4 weeks behind the south coast but i dont want to lose them to frost,is this a general problem or particular to the northern areas?

[polc1410]

Showing that I clearly don't know my onions but I thought onions were bi-annuals. So from seed you plant this year you don't harvest the bulb till net year.

Sets planted this easter are being harvested now. You can also plant sets now to harvest this time net year and get bigger bulbs.

Thats what I thought! Am I wrong?

[Kirk]

With the weather at the early part of the year everything seems to have ended up confused.

At a guess the onions made a start then got hit by the cold spell that stopped them and after theat they had to get going again. Seems to have happened to quite a few. What happens now depends on the weather yet again, but as it appears to be turning wet and cold I woiuld not like to suggest what to do.

I would have thought that they would be going over by now, and will not bulk up any more or nothing significant, your days will be getting rapidly shorter and onions are heavily dependant on the hours of daylight.

Yes they are bi-annual. The idea being seed grows, forms a nice big bulb (thats the time we eat them), by nature they would then hit winter (end of first year) and die back and the following spring (year 2) then sprout again and form a seed head. So they are bi-annual but we don't let them have 2 years.

We rip them out the ground, skin them, chop them up and fry them at the end of year 1.

[BUFFS]

they should have dried off ,mature,by now,they are not the overrwintering types,just oh so slow to ripen,melons are doing the same in the g/house,temp today is 10deg,i suppose i will have to compost them the same as last year,any "normal" summer we get 14/16 melons ,last year was too dark this year we had 3 weeks sun,so better,but no good,but we will just use the onions fresh and OH will blanche the rest down,i hope,they will be used,we dont do waste if it can be avoided..

[Aberdeenplotter]

Showing that I clearly don't know my onions but I thought onions were bi-annuals. So from seed you plant this year you don't harvest the bulb till net year.

Sets planted this easter are being harvested now. You can also plant sets now to harvest this time net year and get bigger bulbs.

Thats what I thought! Am I wrong?

Onions are bi-ennials, i.e. they grow in the first year(including producing an edible bulb) and produce a flowerhead in the second year.