I grew them this year, but from starts I got from Dixondale.

Cippolini are theoretically long day-length varieties that won't do well in the south. Kentucky is technically intermediate day-length.

I planted the starts in mid-March. If I were going to start with seed, here, it would be in January. Your conditions aren't all that different than mine, and I would guess a January 1 seed set for transplant in early to mid-March would work out for you.

It will be interesting to see how your experiences compare to mine.

When I set the plants my thinking was that they would bulb, but the bulbs would be small. Bzzt! Wrong! Thanks for playing! My crop was incredible, with most bulbs considerably larger than you expect cippolini to be. Certainly larger than those sold by Melissas and other commercial sources.

Somewhere in the back pages I have a report on this.

Only downside, of course, is that cippolini do not store well. So expect to use them up within three months of harvest, or you'll lose whatever is left.

I'm not in the south but have grown borretana (sp?) cippolini onions. Our hours of sunlight are longer here, (Our summers have sunsets around/after 9pm) but they may still grow well for you if you time them right.

I start my seeds indoors about 12 weeks before last frost date, so around the 3rd week of January. Maybe you can find your last frost date and count back 4 months sooner. Keep in mind, here, we sometimes have a foot or more of snow on the ground in March & April and can't really plant as early. If my ground was snow free and not frozen, I'd start my seeds even sooner than mid-late January.

I think what would matter to your success would be to get them in the ground early enough while the days continue to get longer (between the winter solstice and summer solstice-- maybe even the spring solstice for you because weather is warmer there) and have enough growing days before the summer solstice.

I don't know if less hrs/day of sunlight x more days would act similar to longer days but less of them, maybe someone can comment on this. I think I'm north of 42 degrees here. Maybe Brook can comment on the growing periods--vegetation vs. bulbing, and around when bulbing starts increasing the most, and somebody please comment on if more affected by # of days old, # of hrs/day, or the solstice decline of hours.

Mark

Mark, the number of days, per se, is almost irrelevent.

What counts is the number of daily hours of sunlight during the critical bulbing period. Bulbing takes place relatively quickly; depending on variety it can be anywhere from about 2 weeks to a month. So what's important is what happens during that month.

Up north, in the long-day-length areas, you average 16 hours per day. In the south, in the short-day-length areas, they average a scant 12 hours.

Doesn't sound like much difference when expressed that way. But it's a 33.33333333333% difference. In otherwords, notherners get a third more daylight. And that can have a drastic effect on bulbing.

The question is, how far can we push the envelope. My experiement this year indicated that in the mid-south, at least, some long-day-length varieties can produce well. I'll be continuing that experiement this year with other varieties to see what happens.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see how Mickey does so much further south than me.

Well, my grandfather always told me, "Just keep planting." Today I ordered some cippolini starts from Dixondale to try in our garden in Tennessee. Not sure exactly when they will ship, but I asked for as soon as possible. Will track this planting and report back on how they do. We're in that area of 6b that dips down in the center. Probably not too different sunlight-wise from north Georgia.

{{gwi:368070}}

Becky

I'll be continuing my experiments this season. My intention is to again plant cippolini (because we love 'em). Plus I want to try the new Red Bull, which is said to be a long-storing red. And I'll grow Copra, to see how that does in our conditions.

Becky, please let us know how things work out for you.