Christian Cabal's Garland Garden: Onions

Growing Onions

This year was my first time seriously trying to grow onions. I say "seriously" because in the past I have buried store-bought onions that were sprouting leaves into the ground, and have pulled them up and split them later, and have then grown a few new bulbs from that.

But this year I decided to give it a serious try. As soon as they were available (around early February) I bought 2 bunches of onion plants from Home Depot. They were about pencil-wide small stalks. I planted them immediately. A few weeks later I noticed onion sets (miniature onions) at a local feed store, so I bought some of those too. I bought a variety, including white, yellow, and purple onions.

They came up quick, and were pretty unaffected by any cold we had. I planted two patches of them.

They got pretty big, and a few of the plants started to send up flower heads. I cut those stalks off because that can sap the energy off of the production of the bulb. But most just grew, and week by week I could see the width of the stalk growing, and a bulb starting to form.


These are almost ready to pick

When almost ready, the bulbs get bigger and seem to push themselves out of the ground. So half of the bulb is above the ground. And when ready to pick, the neck gets very soft and the greens just flop over.
I picked a few already but there are still a lot of them at various stages of development. None of the purple ones have formed any good sized bulbs yet...not sure why, but the yellow ones seem to be doing the best.