This year, after doing a bunch of reading, I decided to grow onions from seed. They say that onions grown from seed perform better; grow a better bulbs, suffer less disease, and taste better. Plus, it is cheaper to buy seed than to buy sets. So, I decided to give it a go and do an onion experiment this year. I use onions in a lot of my cooking so I planted the whole seed packet of heirloom Giant Zittau Onions back in mid February. The Giant Zittau is a day length neutral yellow onion and is supposed to be a good keeper. (Day length length means that onion start bulbing based on the amount of daylight they get. Long-day onions needs 14 hours of day length and short-day onions need 10-12 hours.) I broadcast seeded (scattered them over seed starting mix) my onions in the bottom of a milk jug and in an old salad container and watched as they came up. The seed germinated well and soon I had oodles of green onion tops poking out of the soil.
About a week ago I noticed that the onions were getting pretty squished in their containers and were getting to be about 5-6 inches tall. After a bit of research I found that I would probably need to transplant my baby onion seedlings into individual cells to promote better root development. I filled a flat full of six-pack cells with potting soil and began the transfer.
I made sure that both the potting soil and the seed starting mix that my onions were in were moist. (If they weren’t moist if would be harder on the seedlings.) I gently dumped out the seedlings into my hand and then plopped them root-side down on the ground next to my flat.
Using an old pen, I poked a hole in each cell of the six-packs so that it would be ready to receive the onion.
I then gently removed each seedling from the pile and using the pen again, gently poked the long stringy roots into the dirt until they were all tucked in.
I put the onion in low enough to cover the white part at the bottom and patted the dirt securely around it.
About 1 1/2 hours later, I had successfully transplanted about 100 onion seedlings. I trimmed the tops to about 3 inches tall to help the onions put more energy into root development.
Yikes, it was way more tedious than I had expected. Perhaps this is the reason many people buy sets. I am interested to see how they do once put in the garden and if growing onions from seed is really worth it. Experimentation if part of gardening; always something new to try. Hopefully this experiment will turn out well. So far the seedlings look very healthy and although it was time consuming to transplant them, I hope they will continue to thrive.
Have you ever started onions from seed before? Any experiments going on in your garden this year?
This post is linked to Greenbacks Gal, Simple Lives Thursday, and Urban Farm Handbook Challenge.
11:30 am on April 12th, 2012
I’m experimenting with the garden in general. That is, can I actually be successful at it
. So far I’m doing decent since most of my seedlings have come up and are continuing to grow indoors. We’ll see how things go once I transplant them to the garden!
6:27 am on April 19th, 2012
I can not imagine transplanting 100 onion sets! That was a ton of work. I’m on year two of growing onions (Candy Apple Red this year) and have also always been told to buy sets. Can’t wait to see how your experiment turns out! Thanks for linking to Your Green Resource. I’m pinning and featuring it today!
6:35 am on April 19th, 2012
[...] Growing Onions from Seed by Green Bean Gardens [...]
5:43 pm on April 25th, 2012
You can start the seeds in cells so you don’t have to transplant the long rooted seedlings. Just let ‘em grow and transfer the cells to the garden after hardening up
8:03 pm on April 25th, 2012
Jessica, I was planning on going straight to the garden with my seedlings but it was a little too early in the spring to set them out but I may try just planting in cells next year if they turn out well.
9:40 am on May 2nd, 2012
This is my first year gardening, and I just planted my green onion seeds directly to my garden. Is it better to start them off as seedlings before planting?
3:15 pm on May 2nd, 2012
April, onions take a long time to mature and they recommend starting onion from seeds 10-12 weeks before your last frost date. You may still get onions if you just planted them but they may not get to full size.
1:21 pm on May 7th, 2012
I’m experimenting with onions too this year. I planted some indoors, but they were looking kinda sickly, so because we were having such a warm winter, I went ahead and transplanted them into the garden in about February. I also sowed some seeds with the transplants while I was at it. Some of the transplants survived, some didn’t, but considering how sickly they were looking (and the fact that I almost threw them out) and happy any of them survived. Right now, I have several onions growing in the garden. Good luck on your onions!
Lynn
8:31 pm on May 8th, 2012
Lynn, glad you got a few onions to come up. Mine all survived the transplant to the individual cells and are looking pretty happy thus far.
8:15 am on September 14th, 2012
[...] from the broadcasted containers into cells is a ton of work (see my post about how I did this here). Next year I will either start the seeds in larger containers so I don’t have a problem [...]