Do You Know Your Onions?

I love onions, I especially love them in my Mummy’s stovies. We always grow loads of them in our garden and now is the perfect time for planting them. So, I thought I’d help you grow loads too.

This ickle onion will grow nice & big, just like me!

Getting ready to grow

You can grow them from seed or from immature onions called sets. Sets are easier to grow but fewer varieties are available as sets. So if you want to grow something a bit more unusual then you’ll have to grow from seeds. Your sets might be marked as “heat treated”. This just means they’ve been sitting somewhere lovely and warm for up to 20 weeks (kinda like an extended holiday). Heat treatment makes for a bigger yield as the time the onions will grow before “bolting” and becoming unusable gets longer. So it’s a good idea for beginners to use heat treated sets.

Onions prefer open, sunny and light, free-draining soil. So you might need to dig in some organic matter to help drainage if your soil is really heavy. Don’t plant onions in freshly manured soil though as you’ll just end up with very pretty and luscious green leaves but small bulbs. They also don’t like acidic soil so you might need to add lime to planting area well before planting.

How to plant

If growing from seed, sow the seeds 1/2 an inch deep in rows that are 10-12 inch apart from late February to early April. Thin the weaker plants to 4 inch apart. If you’re using sets then you can plant these from mid March to Mid April. Place the pointed end of the sets down into the soil so only the bottom part is covered. Space the sets 4 inches apart with rows 10-12 inches apart.

Make sure you space them out nicely like me

Whilst growing

Water when weather is dry and give an occasional feed with a general liquid fertiliser. Stop feeding from July to help prevent onion neck rot during storage. By planting your onions in a grid you make weeding easier as you can just hoe in both directions. Like me, onions don’t like competition for water so weeding is essential.

What to look out for

Several yucky fungal diseases can cause problems:

Rust disease produces rusty spots on both sides of leaves and reduces crop growth. No cure so you need to lift and destroy the crop.

Onion white rot causes the leaves to turn yellow and wilt and bulbs will have white fuzzy growths. Again no cure, you need to lift and destroy the crop.

Onion fly also cause leaves to yellow and prevent bulbs from developing properly. The fly larvae live in the soil and burrow into the bulb roots. Discard any affected bulbs.

Onion downy mildew also causes the leaves to yellow from the tips down and white mould develops on the affected leaves. Remove and destroy any affected bulbs.

Onion neck rot can occur during storage. To help prevent it, stop feeding from July, keep watering and don’t let the bulbs get wet after harvesting.

Harvesting & storing

Lift the onions as soon as they reach a useable size (normally between July and September) to use immediately. If you wish to store them wait until the foliage dies down naturally and then 2-3 weeks later you can lift them. Ease the bulbs up onto the soil surface and allow to dry there for another 2-3 weeks. If weather is a bit wet, dry them in a well ventilated shed or greenhouse. Once the skins are completely dry they can be stored in a light, cool, well ventilated place.

Make sure you dry out your onions then store them

What varieties to try?

Mummy and Daddy like to grow Sturon brown onions and Red Barons are our red onion of choice. We also grow “Golden Gourmet” shallots. The brainy people at Which? have done a trial of load of different types of onions to see which grow the most and biggest onions.

“Centurion” was the best buy brown onion and “Fen Red” the best red onion. Both gave more than 3kg of onions from 30 sets. Other good options were “Autumn Gold”, Turbo and “Red Arrow”.

So let’s get planting so we can all make yummy stovies come the autumn!

Lulu xx

Growing Our Own

This time last year we were in a bit of a tizzy as we had just had Lulu and every minute was taken up with our new bundle. We just about managed to throw a few seed potatoes and onion sets into our veg patch and not a lot else. Whilst family life is still our central focus we have managed to spend a bit more time in the garden already this year and started to get Lulu used to horticultural life. This weekend we managed to get all of our veg sown, and miracle of miracles it happened the same weekend as Monty sowed his on Gardeners’ World. (1). So here’s what we are looking forward to from our modest veg patch this year as we are growing our own…

Lulu shows she’s willing to muck in and help

Potatoes: Last year we grew “Maris Peer” potatoes for the first time and we really loved their waxy texture and nutty taste. Perfect for boiling. So this year we stuck with what we love and gone with that again.
Onions: Nothing out of the ordinary here. “Sturon” as our white onion, Red Barons for our erm, red onion (!) and “Golden Gourmet” shallots.
Salad Leaves. Just a general packet of “Cut n Come Again”. We have left space for sowing another row in a few weeks too for some extra summer salads.
Wild Rocket. A lovely addition to the above in our salads, over pizzas, stirred into pastas etc.
Radish “French Breakfast”. Think we’ll leave the French to have these for breakfast but we will certainly enjoy them in salads. And they grow so quick! We have left space for succession planting on these too.
Spinach “Bordeaux”. We’ll use this in both salads and cooked.
Sweetcorn “Sweet F1”. We have never successfully grown sweetcorn before so this will be an interesting experiment for us.
Squash “Sunburst F1”. Another first for us so watch this space.
Turnip “Purple Top Milan”. We lovely the sweetness of baby turnips.
Beetroot “Boltardy”. A staple in the Burt household. Great for both cooking and pickling (2)
Leek “Musselburgh”. We love leeks for both soups and general cooking.
Spring Onion “White Lisbon”. Another great addition to salads.
Parsnip “Palace F1”. Another newbie for us. We we were running out of space so we have planted a few seeds in a pot to see what will come of it.
Pea “Ambassador”. A firm favourite and although we will get limited crops as they have just been planted into a couple of troughs we will enjoy what we do get.

Our newly sown veg beds

In addition to this weekend’s work, we have cherry tomato seedlings on our kitchen counter, gooseberry (3.) and raspberry plants (4.) already in place in the raised beds and some courgette and black kale plants being nurtured for us at a friend’s house. There’s also goodies tucked into the borders such as chives, fennel and rhubarb. So, hopefully in a few months our garden will be heaving with the weight of tasty fruit and veg. Wonderful! Just need to go sort out our herbs now. (5.)

Thanks for reading.

All at Vialii

If you need advice on planting veg or are interested in incorporating a “Grow Your Own” area into your garden please get in touch.

1. Only really because Monty, like the rest of country, was delayed by the awful Spring weather rather than us being organised but we will take it anyway! It will NEVER happen again!

2. Add a few of the shallots into the jar and a few peppercorns when pickling.

3. The gooseberry bush was a gift from our lovely neighbour who was getting rid of it.

4. We are hoping to get a decent crop of raspberries as Lulu LOVES them and is eating us out of house and home!

5.Our existing herbs are looking old and tired, a bit like the pots they live in. So our plan is to build some new pots from old pallets we have at our yard. Watch this space for a future blog on this subject…