Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

The recent but, alas, characteristically brief threads on actual homesteading 
were refreshing.  A couple of people in that exchange mentioned having 
difficulty with onions and I thought the idea was worth reviving.

Onions were mystifying for me for a long part of my gardening.  I wondered 
why I never got big bulbs from planting sets and where those softball sized 
onions came from.  The only advice I got long ago from a seedsman was to 
plant the 
*smallest* sets to get the biggest onions.  This turned out to be true, the 
1/4" to 1/2" sets consistently produced the biggest bulbs but even those 
scarecely got as big as a tennis ball at best.

Then one day it dawned on me, although it was hardly hidden from view, that 
onions are BIENNIALS.  When we plant the sets, we are planting them in their 
SECOND season of growth and the only thing on their oniony little minds is to 
go 
to seed.  If, upon awakening out of dormancy, the onion assesses itself and 
decides that it has enough reserves to send up a top and go to seed, it 
immediately goes about it.  You get a scallion with a 1" bulb, scarcely 
bigger than 
the set, and green tops .... and if you don't pull it and eat it  right away, 
it goes to seed.  The tiny set concludes that while it would prefer to go 
direclty to seed, it's odds aren't good of maturing any seed so it first puts 
on 
extra bulb reserves before making the final bolt.

The way to get big onions is to grow them in their FIRST season, not the 
second season.  This can be done by seed or purchased slips.  Realizing this 
I 
began to buy slips from an outfit in Texas (Dixondale Farms) and the first 
year I 
began to get 4" to 6" onions.  The third year UPS delayed the slips and most 
of them rotted in storage.  Then for several years after that the slips 
shipped from the warm late February in Texas to a cold early March in the 
Appalachians froze in late freezes.  After wondering why I was having bad 
luck with this 
arrangement, I realized rather the beginning I'd had unusual good luck.

But before that time I began planting my own onions, leeks, and shalots from 
seed.  The first year the plants grew up to the size of a pencil lead and 
would get no larger.  I threw them out.  The next year the same thing, little 
plants like hairs and for weeks in the flat they'd get no bigger.  But being 
reduced that year to just sets, I planted out my homegrown slips hand width 
apart 
in all directions to allow for weeding.  Weeks passed and I kept them weeded 
but they grew not a wit.  Then one day they just took off, grew massive tops, 
and made a whole crop of softball sized onions.

Then next year it was the same only I didn't waste their time in the 
greenhouse flats after they halted their growth, the went direclty into the 
garden.  
This year I'm buying no slips, few sets, and I've got a dozen flats of them 
in 
the greenhouse as we speak.

Onions grow one ring of onion for each leaf, and the size of the ring depends 
on the size of the leaf.

What makes an onion hot or mild is water.  The more water it takes up the 
milder, the drier it is, the hotter.

A slip or your own transplants can be easily fooled into thinking that 
another year has passed by chilling or changing their lighting and first year 
small 
slips will then try to bolt to seed.

It is very easy to save your own onion seed.  Just tie a small paper bag 
around the seed head after the blossoms fall.