10 July 2009

Set/Seed

I've only ever grown maincrop onions from sets before and last year's onion crop was non-existent, thanks to my sets rotting in the soil. This year I grew onions from seed, sowing Early Yellow Globe and Sweet Utah seeds in January indoors. By early April I'd transferred them to the greenhouse:


They went into the soil of the upper vegetable garden (which is drier and warmer than the lower garden where I'd put the sets last year) on April the 14th.

The bed has required a lot of weeding, as onions don't block out much light to suppress weeds, but that would have been the case if I'd grown them from sets, too. I'm really pleased with the way they've come on. I pulled the first onion yesterday and most of these will go into winter storage in the cellar. I hope that it will be a while before I have to buy any in the stores. I'll definitely be growing onions from seed again next year - it wasn't nearly as hard as I'd thought it would be.

4 comments:

Tatyana@MySecretGarden said...

Hi Amanda! I never tried to grow onions from seeds. I think I might try it next year.

Kevin Ashley said...

We grew spring onions from seed this year and got some good ones without undue effort. But they've died quite suddenly in the past week or so - perhaps because it is now summer :-)

Anonymous said...

I decided this past week to grow onions from seed as well this Fall. Thanks for the extra encouragement, and they look great!

Kim said...

Thanks for letting us know growing onions from seed isn't that hard. I can't find sets here in the fall, but I can find seeds in the spring. Next year, I'll give it a try.