How to Grow Onions 🧅 | Learn from My Mistakes

Welcome to my garden. And today we're talking onions. So last fall I set out to grow a year's worth of onions. I had never really grown onions successfully before, so I was determined to do everything correctly so I could have a copious amount of onions to enjoy through the year. As a first time onion grower, I learned a ton of information this season, and I'm here to hopefully share that information with you so you can have a more successful onion crop. Your success in growing onions really depends on two things. The variety you pick and the timing. There are two main varieties of onions to grow either the short day varieties or the long day varieties. And this information is crucial for selecting your seeds. You might be wondering why is this so important? Think of America and split it down the middle. All of the Southern states are typically going to grow your short day varieties and all of the more Northern states are going to grow your long day varieties with a few intermediate varieties in between. I'm in Florida zone nine. The varieties best suited for my climate would be short day onion varieties. The big difference between long day and short day onion varieties is the amount of sun required in order to produce an onion bulb. Now with your short day onion varieties, they require anywhere from 10 to 12 hours of sun to form an onion bulb. With your long day onion varieties, they're going to require 14 to 16 hours of sun in the day to form an onion bulb. Picking the appropriate seeds based on where you live is crucial to onion growing success. For short day onions, you are going to start your seeds in the fall. Ideally you will want to start them in September and plant them out in the first week of October. Long day onions, however, are completely opposite. You would start those seeds at the end of winter and typically plant out your onion starts by April. As far as short day varieties, I'm growing, I'm growing the Texas Grano, which is a very popular option for short day varieties and the Violet Di Galmi or Violet Di Galmi. I don't know how to pronounce it exactly. I will put pictures of the seed packets on the screen for you. There are two main ways to start your onions from seeds or from sets. Now I started all my onions from seed utilizing a method called the dump method. You can also purchase onion sets. However, there are definitely some disadvantages to using onion sets. One, they're a lot more expensive and two, they're more susceptible to bolting prematurely because at the time of purchasing onion sets, they've grown to be about one inch in diameter. The person who is growing them chops the top off, sets them in a cool place and ships them off to you. The issue with this is the stress involved going from one place to another, one climate to another changes in temperatures can send signals to those onions that they are on their second season due to the onions being a biannual growing plant. Now this will encourage the onion plant to set out seeds and stop growing a bigger bulb. This does not always happen, but there's a higher chance of this happening when you are purchasing onion sets. Now I started my onions from seed and I think one of the biggest advantages is the cost. One seed packet can be anywhere from two to $4 and you're getting literally hundreds of seeds. Another advantage is the climate remains consistent. You're not taking them from one completely different climate, stressing them out, uprooting them and planting, planting them into a different climate. An important fact to know about onions is that they are on a two year biannual growing cycle. Now the first year is dedicated towards growing that onion bulb that we harvest. The second year, all its energy is dedicated towards bolting, producing a flower and going to seed. Ideal onion growing conditions would be in loose and loamy soil. You don't want hard compacted soil. This is going to prevent the onion from stretching out and growing big. Furthermore, I planted my onions in about three inches of compost, giving them ample amounts of nutrients. In addition to the compost and loose and loamy soil, you'll want to fertilize your onions about once a month. I did this using Alaskan fish fertilizer, which is my go-to fish fertilizer. Companion planting your onions can be a great organic way to protect your more susceptible plants from pests. Onions sit at the top three to four inches of soil with a very shallow root system. They also give off a very pungent odor or are actually considered toxic to some pests such as bunnies. Now this makes them ideal candidates for companion planting with plants such as tomatoes. I've also planted all my strawberries right next to my onion patch. And you can also plant many other sensitive crops such as peppers and carrots amongst onions. I planted literally two onions at an appropriate time. And those two onions are ready to harvest the way you'll know your onion is ready to harvest. If everything goes to plan, they're not bolting is when the green part of the onion starts to flop over. The outside becomes all papery, but the biggest indicator is when those heads start to flop over and die. That means that that onion is ready to harvest. This is a Texas Grano onion. And I feel like it's a really big moment for me because it's the first time I've ever harvested like an onion to classical stature. I've only ever grown them like an inch in diameter. So this is super cool to finally be able to grow an onion that I would consider to be like a grocery store quality onion. Look at that. I cannot wait to cook this thing up. That is so, so exciting. Oh my gosh. What like a feeling of accomplishment to grow something complicated or just grow something like this in your own yard. Very cool. As a first time onion grower, naturally I made lots of mistakes. Here's what they are and how I learned from them. Mistake number one was attempting to plant my onion seeds directly in the ground. Now this resulted in extremely poor germination. And when I say poor germination out of probably hundreds of seeds I planted in these rows, I am not kidding. I think only two of them germinated. I started those seeds directly in the ground in September, which is not the most ideal time to honestly try to start anything from seed out in the wild elements because the temperatures are extremely hot here in Florida. The weather is very inconsistent. We can have many days of no rain than a few days of like extreme hurricane force rain. So suffice to say it was definitely not the most ideal germinating environment. By then it had been a few weeks of me holding out hopes that my onions were going to germinate and wasting a ton of time. I then started doing some research and I found a video of a gentleman who tried to germinate onions a few different ways and the way that was the most successful for him was dumping an entire amount of seeds, a ton of seeds in a little container. Now I decided, you know what, let's just give that a shot. And I dumped almost an entire seed packet in a stainless steel tray that was about a one inch deep and I had the entire tray completely loaded with onions. And now I refer to this method as the dump method. So while that was very exciting to have an entire sheet tray full of onion starts that were a few weeks old by then, I was definitely behind the ball and I didn't get my actual onions planted out until the second week of November. Now that's problematic because at that point I'm very late in the game. The two onions that germinated from my direct seed sowing endeavor actually are the only two onions to have formed a sizable bulb and look most classically like a good success. So those few extra weeks of time in the garden made a dramatic difference in comparison to the entire rest of my onion crops. So as somebody who has a very go with the flow gardening style, doesn't typically like to follow the rules very much to an extent. I've realized that when it comes to onions, I've got to follow some of the rules and now I know how crucial the timing is. Next August I'm going to get my onion seeds started and I will plan to get them transplanted out no later than the first day of October. The next biggest mistake I made when growing my onions is I have tons of bolted onions all over the place. This is going to happen for a few different reasons, but first of all, what is having a bolted onion? What does that mean? Onions are biannual plants. The first year is focused on making the bulb. The second year is focused on going to seed and putting all their energy towards that. Once your onions start to form a flower head, the actual bulb will no longer grow. So you'll want to harvest those onions as soon as possible because you are risking them starting to rot or turn woody. They're no longer going to grow. They're going to focus on producing seeds. This can happen for a variety of different reasons. Inconsistent watering, which I'm definitely guilty at. I would probably go like five days or so without watering my onions, assuming, Hey, they look good over there. I don't need to travel all the way to this part of the garden and water them. Things I've learned from that is next year I'm going to install drip irrigation to have more consistent watering. Onions do like to have well-drained moist soil. They don't want to be absolutely saturated with water, but they also like consistently moist soil. So I definitely failed on that front. Another reason my onions have started to bolt is due to inconsistent temperatures. Now this is going to stress the plant out and it's going to make them bolt prematurely. We had some nights that were in the 40 degrees followed by the very next day, 80 plus degree temperatures. And this has pretty much been how the weather patterns been through February and all of March. These onions really didn't stand a chance, honestly, with the extremely wild ups and downs of our climate when it came to super hot days and really cold nights. While the temperatures are completely out of my hands, I could have better set myself up for success starting my onions earlier, no later than the first week of October. So they could have grown through a more consistent weather period because nearing the month of February towards March, the weather is typically all over the place. Had I gotten my onions started earlier, they would have been ready to harvest earlier and not been susceptible to this crazy weather pattern. My onions have bolted. What to do now? First, you can actually chop the bolted part off the onion. This will buy you just a little bit of time. If you're not ready to harvest and use that onion right away, you don't want to keep them in there much longer though. They will start to rot. Just know they are not going to grow any larger once this flower head starts to form. Another thing you can do is leave that onion in the ground, allow those seeds to grow and harvest the seeds so you don't have to buy seeds next year. But if they have bolted like this onion, your safest bet is just to harvest it. So you've got a bolted onion. What now? Is it trash? Can you eat this thing? I'm here to answer that question. No, it is not trash. You can still eat your bolted onion just as you would a typical onion. The key difference is you cannot cure and store a bolted onion. These have to be eaten right away. Now you'll want to either preserve them or use them in a dish. You can freeze dry them, which I don't have a freeze dryer, so I'm not going to be doing that method. You can chop them up and freeze them into little cubes to later add to recipes. You can dehydrate them, which can be done in an oven or actually in a dehydrator. If you have a dehydrator, once your onions are dehydrated, you can choose to grind them up and then have your own homemade onion powder, which is really exciting. So the key takeaway with the harvesting a bolted onion is you just have to use it up right away or it's going to go bad. I feel really good about the failures I did this season. I will say there was a lot to have learned. I went from being super overwhelmed by just the idea of short day versus long day. What does this biannual growing season mean? What, what do all these things mean? I honestly thought it was really complicated, but now after getting into it, I know next year I'm going to be a lot more prepared with my timing. So if you are intimidated by growing onions or really anything for that matter, just give it a go. Allow yourself to fail and know that the next season is going to be much better, which is what I'm telling myself right now. So if you are new here, definitely consider subscribing. If you are interested in learning more about things or watching me fail, all that different type of stuff. Thank you so much for watching. And until next time.