I saw those yesterday and thought about putting some in.

lots of sun... a fair amount of organic material... they likes fertilizer...

I always get the onion plants from Dixondale farms in Texas.
In Fl we need the short day variety and they have them. They
can ship now and I ordered mine for Dec. 24th. I have had
many the size of soft balls. Sweet Texas Granex and the one
little town in Georgia made a bazillion dollars calling them
Vidalia onions.

Fishead, thanks for the info. I just might try them out. :o)

Has anyone ever tried the intermediate-day onions? I'm giving a few a shot this year to see how they do. Hopefully, they will produce bulbs. If not, I'll have scallions. lol

Of course, I am also growing short-day yellow granex from seed as well.

The problem with the generic onion sets that many places sell is that they are long-day types which will make big pretty plants, but you'll be fortunate to get any bulbs at all.

Here in Florida if you want bulb onions to cure and store for later use you need to plant short-day types which are commonly called granex or Vidalia. Dixondale is a good source.

The first time I planted them as an experiment I put in a row of the generic yellow onions and a row of granex side by side. The granex gave me softball sized bulbs and the generics made big pretty plants that would have been great for scallions, but never got a bulb.

.....Alan.

The Texas Granex is hard to store/keep. You really have to put them out in the SUN and rotate and work on the tops. They are not a storage onion but if you work at it and get the tops to dry out without rotting they will keep for a
couple/few months. My favorite sandwich is an onion slice
sandwich with a little Tuna Fish for good measure.
My biggest problems have been weeds I lay down hay prior
to putting in the plants. You really need alot of nitrogen too.

i grew onion sets from lowes last year. they bulbed up great by the end of spring. even had some persist in the garden until this season. so, while alan's surely right about not trusting bigboxes, in this case, things worked out fine.

tah-dum. from last year:

Alan---Thanks for telling about your onion experiment. Last year I planted 3 rows of what I thought were yellow granex bulb sets. I took good care of them and they never bulbed. Since this was my second attempt at growing onions with no success I had given up...until yesterday. Ill-man gave me some of those red onion starts and now after seeing this picture, I am encouraged that I will get good results this time. Cute kids in a picture always make food look better!

Christine

Keep in mind that onions are heavy feeders and require even, consistent moisture. I keep mine mulched and fertilize them regularly.

Here's a photo of my 2006 crop.

The ones that have been pulled are the granex/vidalias. The unpulled row to the right of them are the generic onion sets that never bulbed. Big pretty plants but no significant bulbs. Could nearly have passed for leeks at that point though.

The row on the left is shallots in the foreground, elephant garlic in the middle, and just at the moment I can't recall what the end of that row was. All kept mulched, fertilized regularly, and watered.

Last year's onions bulbed well too, but I wasn't able to stay on top of them as well as I should have so most of those came in about tennis ball sized.

.....Alan.

Wow. I didn't know about short day onions. I'll check at my local Lowe's next week.

Alan, your 2006 garden's onion rows are noteworthy. I'm impressed! (I'm also curious about the row to the left that already went "set".)

Just for history's sake, my dad was an onion farmer. He didn't choose to plant granex (AKA "sweet" onions) due to the short shelf life. He had to play the commodity market to see which area (Tx, Ga, Fl, etc.) had a disaster so that he could sell when the market was up. You can't hold granex, but Vidallia onion growers had the greatest marketing ploy in the history of U.S. Agriculture in my humble opinion.

Dad never grew red onions, either, but those are some beauties pictured by anIllmanneredache! Yum!

(Yes, I snapped up some granex sets at Lowe's, couldn't resist.) Good luck to all...

(I'm also curious about the row to the left that already went "set".)

Those were shallots. Just ordinary ones that I bought from the grocery. Made big pretty plants with lots of divisions. I shouldn't have let them flower like that, but as I'd never seen a shallot plant before I let them go just to see what they were like. Next time I'll clip the blossoms to get bigger bulbs.

.....Alan.

Dear Alan,

I think you did the right thing with your shallots. Aren't shallots all about small bulbs? Thank you for sharing your pictures. I didn't even plant scallions or chives this year (feeling guilty).

You and your family are awesome gardeners, I've always enjoyed your posts.