Welcome to my new gardening column on Gather! Each column will focus on some aspect of edible gardening, specifically heirloom and organic. From my large kitchen garden, I will cover such topics as: raised bed gardening (which is what I do now), seed starting strategies, natural pest control, companion planting, composting, organic fertilizers and soil amendments, and when to do what--and why. I'll tell you about my favorite gardening books and tools, and share tips and techniques that have worked for me. I'll discuss what I grow--and why and how I grow it. And I'll even try to talk you into cultivating some tasty edibles you've never considered growing--or even eating, for that matter. Regular features will include "Gardening On The Cheap" and "Now What Do I Do With It?" Please click here if you missed the introductory column.
I welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas, and questions, and I look forward to getting to know you and your gardens as they--and this column--bloom. I do hope you'll come grow with me. And now, let's take a lighthearted look at onions in the garden.
What food lover could survive without onions? They appear raw and cooked in zillions of dishes, and yet so often they are taken for granted. Even serious cooks rarely consider their onions. They are merely a pantry staple: good for storing, fairly cheap, and available all year round. But storebought onions can be disappointing, as they frequently have either no flavor or are unpleasantly strong (the latter I find to be especially true with red or purple onions). They can be soft and discolored and look as though they've been bashed around. Years ago I experienced a mind-boggling moment when I complained to the clerk in a supermarket produce section about the sad state of their onions. "That's because they're from last year's harvest," she explained. "They've been sitting in a warehouse for eight or nine months." No wonder they looked lousy.
As with all other vegetables, good onions are worth seeking out. Find them--hopefully organically grown--at a farmer's market or grocery store that buys locally and seasonally. Of course the best tasting onions of all are ones that you have grown yourself.
Onions in the garden are low maintenance and easy to grow. Anyone can produce a delicious crop as long as they follow my cardinal rule: Never ever start them from seed. Do not allow yourself to be seduced by the alluring names and tantalizing descriptions in seed catalogs (Red of Florence--very rare! Topeana Lunga--popular with Mediterranean chefs!) for you will only be disappointed in the end.
It only took me several growing seasons and at least two dozen packets of seeds to finally face the truth: This is never going to happen. Onions simply take too long to mature. But after years of harvesting what looked like a basket of cocktail onions, I refused to give up. Instead, I began to order fancy onion sets along with my seeds. (Onion sets are tiny onions grown in cramped quarters so that they are forced to mature while remaining small. When replanted in your garden, they will develop into full size onions.) Unfortunately this was another bad idea, as the sets always arrived far too late in the spring. I just ended up with pricier cocktail onions.
I now get my onion sets from three large bins at the local supermarket. These magically appear in front of the store each winter, always in the same reliable and thrilling varieties: White, Yellow, and Red. For less than two dollars, I can buy a couple of hundred and plant them whenever I want. It took me a while to get over the feeling that this was cheating, but I now realize that any onion in the garden is better than none at all--even if it comes from a bin at the supermarket. When buying onion sets, look for bulbs about the size of a dime.
If, despite my warnings, you truly feel that everything in your garden must be started from seed, including the onions, then I wish you luck--and suggest you start the seeds for next year's crop today.
Onions will do best in full sun and loose, fertile, well drained soil. Mix in compost or well rotted manure if you have it. Planting your onion crop consists of simply poking each little bulb about an inch into the ground. If, as I do, you garden by the moonsigns (a subject I will discuss in more detail another time), you will want to do your planting during a fertile day in the first quarter.
Refreshing little green shoots shoots will soon appear. If you are growing a large crop, mulch with grass clippings or hay, as onions do not compete well with weeds, and carefully weeding 100 feet of onion plants is not a fun thing to do. You can also side dress with compost at this time. If weeds are not a huge problem in your garden, a thick layer of compost will often act as an adequate barrier against weeds. Pull out or snip weeds at their base in smaller plantings (you want to avoid bothering the shallow onion roots when weeding.)
Diseases and pests rarely attack onions. I did know someone who was plagued by an onion-trashing rabbit, but this problem was remedied with a quick blast to the bunny and a delicious braised rabbit and baby onion dinner.
After several weeks you will have a bonus crop: you can snip some of the leaves and enjoy the best scallions you have ever tasted (although technically these are not true scallions). When flower stalks appear, pinch them off so the plant will send all of its energy into the bulb. Or you can allow them to bloom into what a friend calls "martian flowers" and just take whatever you get from the business end.
If you are like me and always cram too many onions into your plot, after several more weeks it will become painfully obvious that you are never going to get a four-inch wide onion in two inches of space. Do not despair, for this greediness is what creates your second bonus crop: your baby onions need to be thinned, which means that you will be able to take pleasure in an early harvest and still have plenty left for later.
Tiny slices of freshly picked spring onions are wonderful in absolutely any kind of salad. But to truly celebrate their delightful flavor, I urge you to try one of my very favorite recipes--Three Onion & Three Cheese Pizza. Click here to read all about it.
If you would like to be notified via e-mail when I publish a new article or column on Gather, please click on the "Subscribe To Author" link at the top of this article. Thanks.
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 15
My wife and I are organic backyard gardeners. We believe in the smaller vegi with the bigger flavor. Your column is tons of fun for us to read.
You've got it figured out. NO ONIONS FROM SEEDS EVER AGAIN! : )
If your onions do get to the mature stage (when the tops start falling over) and you want to store them, you will need to "cure" them first This simply means pulling them up so that the sun can reach the bulbs. Let them cure right there in the garden for about a week. If rain is expected, move them to a porch or open shed or other covered airy spot. You want the tops and papery skin on the bulbs to be dry and crinkly. Snip off all but about an inch of the tops and store the onions in a cool, dry place. Good luck!
Hi George,
The flavor of homegrown vegetables is absolutely unsurpassed, as you well know. So glad you are enjoying the column. I look forward to helpful input from you two.
Hi Catherine,
Three cheers for you for having apartment window boxes. I'm sure we can turn them into edible bounty if you'd like. And of course you never know when you might end up with a full fledged garden! Thanks for taking the time to write. : )
Hi Amy,
Thank goodness indeed. I told you those seed descriptions are hard to resist. I've just added some more info about other good cover/companion crops and fertilizing into the body of the article for you. A quick recap here: beets, carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, and early lettuce will all do well among your onions and help to shade out weeds. Have fun!
I know one reason for growingonionsfrom seed :) Onion sprouts!
Great article :)
The reason I stuck it out with the seeds was because I had mentors who showed me that the right varieties grown in our climate (Minnesota--brrr!) would taste better and store better than starts. They've never proven hard to grow and I enjoy giving them infrequent "haricuts" when the young leaves get tall enough to reach the lights above them.
I use soil blocks, which may be unfamiliar to some home gardeners. A block maker is shoved into potting soil that is quite moist. The soil blocks are dispensed into a plastic flat and seeds are planted into them.
This method allows me to plant my onions in a way that's recommended by Eliot Coleman, who's written many books about organic gardening. He recommends growing onions in groups of 3-5. So I can sow several onion seeds in each soil block and plant them out all together. They push away from each other as they grow. One huge advantage to this method is that the blocks of onion groups are planted 4-5 inches apart and that makes hoeing and weeding between them so much easier than a row of onions only an inch or two apart from each other.
Copra are the yellow storage onions I grow and Mars are the reds. I've never been able to find them in sets and they always store longer than onions grown from sets anyway. I just had to throw my experience out there in case anyone has already ordered onion seed. In my experience, it's been a bountiful harvest!
Onion sprouts. Great idea! : )
Hi Carol,
Well thank goodness somebody out there is able to grow a fabulous crop of onions from seed. Thanks so much for sharing your methods.
A wonderful article, thank you for sharing!
I was in the store the other day and bought a bag of onions and it occured to me that it's the only fresh vegetable that I buy in quantity.It's the only thing I use enough of to finish before it begins going bad.
Sorry to hit you with such an involved question. I’m really pleased you’re sharing your expertise here. Thanks.
Thanks!
Please accept my apologies for not responding to you sooner. I never know what's going to happen on the farm and keep me from Gather! : )
Hi Jessie,
There's nothing like freshly picked onions and the smell of good dirt!
Hi Gisela,
I think you should be able to grow onions in the Pheonix area. It's certainly worth a try. Just don't start them from seed! : )
Hi Carol,
Yeah, I thought I was going to avoid the whole furniture moving/seed starting paraphernalia in the house thing since I have a large greenhouse, but I got such an early start this year it's too cold out there! My flats of lettuce seeds turned to little dirtcicles. I know have 6 flats of seeds tucked under lights that hang from the bottom shelf of my studio bookshelves. What we'll do for those homegrown veggies!
Hi Kevin,
I absolutely love cooking with onions. That's why I got so frustrated not being able to grow them. It made me so mad having to buy them all year long. Though at least organic onions are relatively inexpensive if you catch them at the right time. And they're very tasty.
Hi Charles,
Hmmmm. Those bulbils developed because you didn't snip the tops of the onions when they began to sprout--this process, as I mentioned, sends all the plant's energy into the bulb underground. I'm no onion expert, but I don't think all onions produce bulbils--some produce more like flowers with very small ones. I do think you can plant them, though, but I don't think you will get "regular" large onions. I was once given some little dried bulbils that I was told were "Egyptian Walking Onions" and that they should be planted and would grow into a scallion type creature. They sounded very intriguing, but unfortunately they never actually made it into the ground.
LOL, was that any help at all? : )
Hi Amy,
I think the Florida planting charts are (obviously) taking your very mild climate into account. I don't think that would just apply to planting onion seeds. I would think that you could actually probably grow two onion crops a year. You should be fine starting them now (or soon). It's not like they need a burst of cold weather first or anything to get going. And it's also not as if they can't tolerate heat. I say go for it, and then experiment this fall, too!