Ezzirah,

If you mean overwintering them in the ground, we're too cold here and they'll bolt in late winter or early spring. Some people have luck with it in zones 8B and warmer zones, but not so much in 8a or any colder zone, and it can be iffy in zone 8b and even in zone 9 if an extra-cold cold front hits them. That's why you cannot find clear instructions on how to do it here--because it generally cannot be done in our climate.

If you mean raising them from seed, pulling them at a certain point and 'overwintering' them as dry transplants held until the proper spring planting time, then all you have to do is google and find a document that tells you how to raise onions from seed. Then, when they reach the right size (not yet as large in diameter as as pencil), you pull them, dry them and store them. I imagine it would be hard to store them without them going bad unless you have a root cellar, tornado shelter or fairly dry basement.

If you wanted to raise them in the fall in a cold frame and then try to overwinter them, that might be doable and maybe Jay can tell you about that since he has a cold frame. The cold frame might keep them from bolting because of cold temps, but they still might bolt because it would let them get too hot on some sunny winter days unless the cold frame has an auto-vent that pops it open when temps reach a certain level.

Most of the growing areas where our purchased onion transplants come from are in areas like Brownsville, TX, in the Rio Grande Valley, where they are zone 9B and generally stay warm enough all winter (but also cool enough) that having the onions bolt is not an issue.

Dawn

dratz! I was scared of that.

Is it too late to start onions from seed now?

(and here I just bought these seeds!!! dratz!)

I don't know. I've never tried to overwinter them. I was thinking about this as I was typing my initial response, and my feeling was that if I was going to do it, I'd start them earlier rather than later.

In Texas' Rio Grande Valley areas, they normally plant their onions in October, I believe, and those are the same onions many of us later buy as transplants.

Onion Trivia: Where did the Texas 1015Y get its' name? When they were growing a lot of different granex strains of onions in an effort to develop those idea for the Rio Grande Valley, each different one was labeled with its best planting date followed by A, B, C, D, etc. So, the 1015Y is planted on/near October 15th in the Rio Grande Valley, and it was the "Y" strain out of the Texas ones tested during those years. They've since tried to rename it Texas Supersweet, with some success, but those of us who've grown it since the very first season it was released to home gardeners have always referred to it as Texas 1015Y because we grew it under that name for many years before they started trying to change the name.

So, if they start them October 15th in zone 9B in far south Texas, I'd start them between August 15th and September 15th here, planting them in flats. Because the green tops will get too long to manage easily in flats, you clip them repeatedly to keep them a reasonable length.