QUAIL SEEDS
  • Home
  • Shop
    • New for 2023
    • Plant for Spring >
      • Spring Vegetables
      • Spring Herbs & Flowers
      • Spring Grains
      • Seeds that Need Winter Cold
    • Vegetable Seeds >
      • Arugula
      • Beans
      • Beets
      • Broccoli and Cima di Rapa
      • Cabbage
      • Carrots & Roots
      • Celery
      • Chard
      • Corn
      • Cucumber
      • Eggplant
      • Fast, Fresh Food
      • Fennel
      • Greens
      • Kale and Collards
      • Lettuce
      • Melons
      • Oil Crops
      • Okra
      • Open-Source Seeds (OSSI)
      • Onions and Leeks
      • Peas
      • Peppers
      • Spinach
      • Squash & Pumpkins
      • Sunflowers
      • Tomatoes
      • Tomatillos/Husk Cherries
      • Turnips and Rutabagas
    • Perennial Vegetables >
      • Perennial Vegetable Seeds
      • About Perennial Vegetables
    • Pollinator and Pest Control Plants >
      • Pollinator and Pest Control Mixes
      • Plants for Pollinators
    • Flower Seeds
    • Herb Seeds >
      • Medicinal and Historic Herbs
      • Culinary Herbs (and teas)
      • Herb Collections
    • Seed Collections
    • Grains >
      • Heirloom Wheat Barley Oats & Rye
      • Gluten-Free Grains
    • Cover Crops >
      • Cover Crop Mixes
      • Cover Crops that are Food Crops
      • Decorative Cover Crops
    • Start these Indoors
    • Open Source (OSSI)
    • People behind the Seeds >
      • Carol Deppe Varieties
      • Jonathan Spero Varieties
      • Frank Morton Varieties
    • Companion Plants
    • Recipes >
      • Tomato Recipes
      • Preserving and Fermenting
    • Plant for Summer
    • Plant for Fall >
      • Fall Vegetables
      • Fall Salad Greens
      • ltalian Fall Specialties
      • Herbs and Flowers for Fall
  • About Us.
    • Our Story
    • Shipping Info
    • Contact
  • Blog
  • HOW-TO

Two Tips to Beat the Ticking Clock

2/16/2019

3 Comments

 
Picture
Onions. One of the great frustrations of gardening. You plant seeds and they turn out puny. You plant sets and they bolt to flower or rot or something. Not worth it, people say.

But really, it's not rocket science, or magic. It's just knowing two things:
  1. Onion bulbs aren't roots. They are bundles of swollen leaves.
  2. Onions (and grains) mature when days reach a certain length​

So, Tip #1: 
You always hear that rich soil, manure, nitrogen, etc isn't good for root crops like carrots or beets. Remember that onions aren't roots.  The bulb is made from the bases of the leaves. The roots grow out of the base of the bulb. So, think of them as a leafy green and fertilize accordingly.  I've seen even very experienced gardeners starve their onions (and potatoes, too) because of the word "root". Bulbs and tubers LOVE nitrogen.  

and, Tip #2:
An onion grows and makes leaves until the day length reaches a certain number of hours. Then, it stops making leaves. The existing leaves start to swell up. The bottom of each leaf eventually swells so much it becomes a ring of the onion. Each onion variety has a specific number of daylight hours that will cue this process.

So, if you sow onion seed now, it has time to make a big plant before the days get long. It can make lots of leaves. Lots of leaves = lots of onion rings.  If you start them later, they will be still small when the magic date arrives. And, if the soil gets really warm before they get those long days, they will forget bulbing entirely and make a flower instead. 

Short-day varieties, start to bulb when they get 10-12 hours of sunlight. For intermediates it's 12-15, for long-day varieties it's 14-16 hours of light per day. The line between short and long day varieties runs from Washington DC to San Francisco, with intermediate areas being close to that line.

Grains like Wheat and Barley are day-length-sensitive too. The plants will grow bigger and make more leaves and stems while the days are short. As the days lengthen, the plants get ready to bloom and then to mature seeds (grain).  Harvest is just after the longest days of the year.

Do you have to understand all this? No. Just understand that you need to start onions now. They can be indoors or in a greenhouse, but they need soil that is 60 degrees or so. They are little bitty things for the first couple of months, so if you sow a couple of pots with onion seed, about 1/2" apart in the pots, you can add them to your tomato and pepper starts without much trouble. Grains should be started directly in the garden--they love cold mud--as soon as the soil can be worked and planted.

3 Comments
Blythe link
2/16/2019 10:03:01 am

This is the most common-sense explanation of growing onions & grains that I've read. I have long said a similar thing about garlic: treat it like a leafy green in the spring and feed it nitrogen, which will give the plant a robust start. Later, stop the fertilizer and let it focus on making bulbs. Each leaf is a wrapper around the bulb. Makes sense with grains, too. If we understand how the plants respond to the changing daylength and what they need to do to produce offspring before the frosts come, we can better understand how to maximize their potential. With your permission, I'd like to link to your article in my newsletter. Thank you!

Reply
Gabriele
3/16/2022 12:03:01 am

I love your explanation that onions are just swollen laves and therefore need to be fertilized like leafy vegs!
I've noticed that onions can't handle competition for nutrients at all, so I weed religiously and never interplant them with anything else.
Got 'Mill creek' and Walla Walla' going right now -

Reply
Kimberly Clark
2/14/2023 07:44:30 pm

I agree with Blythe’s comment. This is an excellent general summary of how to grow onions and it is what I have been looking for. Thank you for taking the time to explain it all at a simple, fundamental level. It makes sense now.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Jamie Chevalier lives and gardens on a river in the Coast Range of Northern California. She has gardened professionally in Alaska and California, as well as living in a remote cabin, commercial fishing, and working with seeds.  She is the proprietor of Quail Seeds.

      Sign up for Monthly Garden Tips
      (We don't share your information with anyone.)

    Subscribe to Newsletter

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    September 2020
    August 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    September 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    December 2017

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Shop
    • New for 2023
    • Plant for Spring >
      • Spring Vegetables
      • Spring Herbs & Flowers
      • Spring Grains
      • Seeds that Need Winter Cold
    • Vegetable Seeds >
      • Arugula
      • Beans
      • Beets
      • Broccoli and Cima di Rapa
      • Cabbage
      • Carrots & Roots
      • Celery
      • Chard
      • Corn
      • Cucumber
      • Eggplant
      • Fast, Fresh Food
      • Fennel
      • Greens
      • Kale and Collards
      • Lettuce
      • Melons
      • Oil Crops
      • Okra
      • Open-Source Seeds (OSSI)
      • Onions and Leeks
      • Peas
      • Peppers
      • Spinach
      • Squash & Pumpkins
      • Sunflowers
      • Tomatoes
      • Tomatillos/Husk Cherries
      • Turnips and Rutabagas
    • Perennial Vegetables >
      • Perennial Vegetable Seeds
      • About Perennial Vegetables
    • Pollinator and Pest Control Plants >
      • Pollinator and Pest Control Mixes
      • Plants for Pollinators
    • Flower Seeds
    • Herb Seeds >
      • Medicinal and Historic Herbs
      • Culinary Herbs (and teas)
      • Herb Collections
    • Seed Collections
    • Grains >
      • Heirloom Wheat Barley Oats & Rye
      • Gluten-Free Grains
    • Cover Crops >
      • Cover Crop Mixes
      • Cover Crops that are Food Crops
      • Decorative Cover Crops
    • Start these Indoors
    • Open Source (OSSI)
    • People behind the Seeds >
      • Carol Deppe Varieties
      • Jonathan Spero Varieties
      • Frank Morton Varieties
    • Companion Plants
    • Recipes >
      • Tomato Recipes
      • Preserving and Fermenting
    • Plant for Summer
    • Plant for Fall >
      • Fall Vegetables
      • Fall Salad Greens
      • ltalian Fall Specialties
      • Herbs and Flowers for Fall
  • About Us.
    • Our Story
    • Shipping Info
    • Contact
  • Blog
  • HOW-TO