All Year Gardening With Onions

All Year Gardening With Onions

Last weekend I planted about 60 onion sets of 'Hitech' F1 variety. The earth was ideally soft after recent showers. My onion bed is fairly open textured so a good firming with my fist around each set should prevent the birds from pulling them out - I hope.

Just when I thought I was done - another packet of onion sets arrived on my door mat. 'Hired' is the sister to 'Hitech'. 

My aim is to have onions available for cooking nearly every day of the year. So far I hope to have at least 2 per bulbs per week and more... 

But the problem is not the quantity. It is the keeping qualities of the onions. My choice are good keepers. Even so there will be gaps in the season. The answer...

Grow a range of onion types to fill the whole season. First up...

• Late season Leeks are being picked now and they can fill the gap from the last stored onions to the the first shallots,
• Shallots are planted in autumn and spring, and beat the late summer onions to your dinner plate. 
• Japanese onions are sown in late summer to overwinter and can be picked from around mid summer,
• Maincrop onions come in early and late varieties, but the late ones are usually good keepers,
• Winter hardy spring onions are sown from summer. They will fill in gaps when fresh onion flavour is needed,
• And of course summer spring onions sown in succession should always be available for salads and soups.

Add to that multi-sown onions in modules to build up the numbers. And nowadays there are varieties of onions to sow in succession that can grow either larger or be picked as salad onions. 

For more on gardening with seeds see my pages on garden seeds and starting seeds.

My onions have been heat treated to help prevent running to seed. But as a result the sets are dryer and take a little longer to grow. It's probably too late to order them now. But there's lots more for you to do...
See the-organic-gardener.com for help.