Figuring Out Onions

row of storage onions

Every year I learn many things in the garden, but usually I also have one large leap forward. The first year I discovered radishes. Last year was more a kitchen discovery: carrot top pesto, which answered the question of what to do with carrot tops.

One thing that has eluded me thus far is how to work with onions. I know that sounds silly. The very first year I gardened out here, the only crop I lost completely was my onions, which were eaten from below by something and basically disappeared one day. I still don’t know what that was about.

newly planted onions

But that’s not the issue. Onions are ridiculously easy to grow. But I still found myself at the end of summer “using up” most of my onions in pickling and late summer eating and having hardly any for storage. I thought my problem was not having enough space to grow them, but now I’m thinking my problem is not planting onions in a way that provides a more continuous harvest for summer eating and still results in a supply of storage onions.

So in previous years, I’ve just planted a long row of onions (60-80) and then in late July/early August when the stems fall over I’ve harvested them, cured them on a bedspring in one of the barns, and used them up in September and October. I have never had a garden onion in February.

I also saw this really great video on Youtube about how to have continuous scallions. This guy grew them in a large planter and showed a pot crammed full with them. He explained you just cut what you need and they’ll grow back. He said they naturally multiplied. Like chives spreading. Another blog said not to pull what you use but cut them off with all the roots and a scrap of the bottom still in the ground and that will grow back.

So I bought a packet of green onions/scallion seeds and planted them in a planter. And seriously, it took them the whole season and they still just looked like blades of grass. Maybe if I’d brought them inside and tended to them all winter, or left it to see what happened then next spring, they might have come up and developed enough to eat. That is not my way, living from season to season, so I dumped the pot.

scallions

This year I started some in a planter under the grow lights much earlier, then transferred them out to the garden early. But I also stuck in some of the smallest seed onions I bought in the bed. They’re all thickening and growing and voila, spring onions.

I’ve kept sticking in seed onions, including in part of the bed where the beans froze and I didn’t feel like planting more beans. And you know, they can just grow there as long as they want and I’ll pick them when I’m need some.

I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to learn about spring onions from seed onions, not onion seed. It seems sorta obvious now. And seed onions are the cheapest thing ever.

I’m going to try the planter thing, too, from seed, once the greenhouse is up and running. I noticed that some scallion seeds I planted last year in a raised bed at work came up as full fledged scallions this year (though they’re going to flower quickly, it being the second year of a biannual plant). I’m thinking even if they die off in Jan/Feb, they will come back, or something will come back, in the spring. We’ll see. I could also bring them inside the coldest months and keep harvesting!!

shallots

I have my little dedicated space for shallots, and my row of what I hope will be true keeper onions, and I have found a way to grow what I hope are 60-80 more small-medium sized onions I can use in pickling and during the prime months of summer.

Continuous onions without significantly more garden space? That is something worth mastering.