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Growing Onions

Growing onions can be started from seed or they can be bought as transplants from the store for your vegetable garden. I bought mine as transplants (February 2009) from Home Depot.

Onions come in three different groups: day-long, day-medium and day short. Day short are they type I want to grow here in San Antonio since they are good for anything south of 30 degrees latitude.

Day-long and day-medium are for areas 38 to 55 degrees latitude.

This probably why I had so much trouble with mine this year. I was growing a day-long type.

Also onions should be planted in the fall and allowed to winter over in the ground and then be ready for harvesting in the spring. I will be ordering seeds from Johnny's.

The seeds can be started indoors or directly planted. I am a little late to start indoors for this year but will get some started in an indoor greenhouse for fall.

They like the soil to be between 6.0 and 6.8 for the pH balance. My soil is about 7.5 so it may be a little high.

Spacing is determined by how large you want them to grow and the variety. Follow the instructions on the package for the right spacing requirements.

There are sweet and hot varieties of onions. They come in variety of colors and shapes. Pick out the ones that will grow best in your area according to the seed catalog.

Here is a Latitude Map that will show what the latitude is in your area.

In the video below I am showing how to plant the bulb that I bought at my local store. I made a mis-statement when I said I had never seen onion seeds, just the transplants.
Not sure what I was thinking, but I have seen seeds for sale but I have never tried to plant them as seeds.

But for the Fall garden, we will try a few.

In the video below is an update of the onions we planted about ten days ago. They are doing very well.

In the picture below are my onions.

Onion Plants

We have harvested some small, but tasty ones. However they have not growing to the size I thought they should. There are probably two reasons for this. I did not water properly and they did not get enough sun.

One more thing in growing onions is the chance that I may not have planted the right kind of onion for my area, but also we did have a lot of temperature fluctuations. I did not pay attention to what I was getting when I planted them. I guess the moral of the story is do not trust the local store to sell the right thing.

The plants are ready for harvesting when the tops have fallen over.

Mine are ready to be harvested. What I will do is pull them up and let them sit there for three days. Then I will cut the roots and tops off, and store in a cool dry area.

Below are my onions. They turned to seed.

Onion

There are several reasons for this. One is the heat. I did not plant the right type for my area. I should have planted these growing onions in October.

To find out what and when to plant go to Fall Vegetable Garden.

In the pictures below are my plants that I harvested. They were a disappointment. Better luck in the Fall.

Onion