Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Onions and sets

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Owsley lucy <boulderbelt AT embarqmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Onions and sets
  • Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:48:56 -0400

We have grown them by thickly direct seeding onions in April and not thinning them out. It is also good not to weed them too much because you want very small onions. out of 2 50'x 4' beds we got about 5 pounds of sets and another 2 bushels of pearl onions.

We cure the set onions like the bigger ones and than keep them in a cold barn over winter. if they start to sprout in winter than they are put in a fridge and that usually stops them from going too far.

In April we plant them.

For big onions we start the seeds in 6" nursery pots in early January, about 75 to 100 seeds per pot, if you go thicker they will damp off in droves. they grow inside until the end of Feb and than are put out in a cold frame to harden off. We transplant Mid march through the beginning of May. We use the pots instead of soil blocks of cells so the seedlings have room to grow good roots and get bigger than blades of grass.

I have tried direct seeding and thinning out over about 5 weeks and using the thinnings as scallions/green onions. Use sweet onions for this. Yellow storage (hot) onions will be way too hot for most people and you will get few return customers. i did have the problem of not having a good enough market for the thinnings so the bed did not get thinned out as it should have for big onions so got a lot of smallish onions in the end. And this is why i stick with starting from seed early in the year and transplanting in early spring.

I have also had good luck with starting seed in the ground in a cold frame or hoop house (unheated). We started them in November and got them covered and they did really well all winter. In April we dug them up and moved them to where we wanted them that year. 



Lucy Goodman
Boulder Belt Eco-Farm
Eaton, OH







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page