Hi Auther, I try to never be too busy to answer a question. (It always is good to have an excuse to take a break and sit down at the computer for a minute, isn't it?)

Candy onions are stupendous and wonderful. I have grown Texas 1015Y Supersweets ever since they were introduced a couple of decades back (I guess it has been longer than a couple of decades now, but that is my story and I'm sticking to it), and I love TX 1015Y. For me, it is a "must grow" every single year. Candy certainly is every bit as sweet and, to my taste buds, it tastes sweeter. Since individual taste buds vary, your results might be different. Candy does make bigger bulbs than 1015Y when I grow them side by side in the same year. Until this year, Candy had given me the largest onions I've ever grown. While I don't grow specifically for size (since flavor and shelf life are more important), I cannot help but be wowed by the larger-than-softball onions that Candy gives me in all but the driest years. Even in dry years, with irrigation, they produce really large, if not huge, onions.

If I only could grow one variety in a given year, I'd grow Candy one year and TX1015Y the next and then would alternate them annually in that manner until I could find a way to enlarge the garden enough to let me grow them both.

People here who know me would tell you that it is impossible for me to exercise the self-discipline to plant only one variety of any single thing, and they'd be right.....so I generally grow from 5 to 9 onion varieties each year.

When someone asks me for my favorite tomato variety, I about have a nervous breakdown trying to narrow my list of favorites down to 10, 25 or 50. Naming only one favorite variety of anything is beyond me.

One way to grow six onion varieties without buying six bundles of onions so that you can compare them to each other in the same year is to buy two of the sampler bundles that Dixondale Farms sells. Each sampler has 3 varieties in it. I grow both the Short Day Sampler and the Intermediate Day Sampler, and I even have toyed with the idea of buying the Long Day Sampler and trying those even though they are unlikely to bulb up well as far south as I am. Wouldn't it be fun to plant them and find that they did bulb up well enough to be worth growing this far south?

This year I grew some new varieties from Dixondale and was supremely pleased with them. See there? That is why I cannot grow only one.

And, because someone will read that comment and ask, the two new varieties I grew from Dixondale in 2014 were Highlander and Red River and both of them got just as large as any of the short-day or intermediate-day varieties that I grew. I truly was astounded by their size, especially given that we were in drought all year, including prior to onion-planting time, and the plants didn't get nearly as much water as they would have liked. In fact, Highlander produced onions larger than Candy and TX1015Y this year. I do believe one reason for that might be that Highlander is a later variety and it grew at least 3 weeks longer, and those 3 weeks were a period of very high rainfall (finally!) in my county. It might be that Candy and TX1015Y would have been just as large as Highlander if they'd gotten that much rain too, but they'd already been harvested and were drying/curing on tables on the patio before all that rain began falling.

Highlander and Red River are classified as Long-Day types, but they are early-to-mature compared to other Long-Day types, so they did perfectly well way down here in southcentral OK. I am roughly 9 miles north of the TX-OK border in the I-35 area, so if those two long day types of varieties will grow well for me this far south, I imagine they'd grow well for anybody anywhere in OK. The most exciting thing about Red River is that it stores for a longer period of time than the other reds that we can grow here in OK, so that's a lovely bonus and its flavor is superb.

Like you, I am always planning ahead for next year too....more than anyone here likely would believe. I normally have all my seeds for next year bought before Thanksgiving. Of course, when seed catalogs arrive with new offerings, sometimes I have to try a few of those new ones too, so I guess I should say my plan is always to have all my seeds purchased before Thanksgiving, but the reality is that the seed catalogs with their new selections "force" me to buy more seeds in December and January. That's my story and I'm sticking to it as well. Anyone who has ever whiled away a cold winter day sitting on the sofa with a cup of hot cocoa, tea or coffee and a stack of gardening catalogs knows exactly what I mean. They make you lose your mind and order seeds you don't need and don't have room for, and then you have to figure out how to reconfigure the garden so you can squeeze in a dozen new things.

I'm going to link Dixondale's website because they have superb descriptions of each variety they sell and lots of terrific photos too. Don't let the price per bundle discourage you from buying from them. Normally, SeedMama puts together a group order from Dixondale for forum members and when you order a whole lot of bundles of onions, the price per bundle drops substantially.

A very wonderful man named Bill P. (now deceased), who used to post on GardenWeb as Gone Fishin', convinced me to try Dixondale Onions ordered directly from the company back in the early 2000s and assured me that they were worth the money. Like every other single thing he ever said, he was 1000% correct about that.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Dixondale Farms

I had read your post from a while back and noticed that you said you liked the Candy variety is the reason I ask. My family went nut's over the 1015Y the first time I planted it and I had some of the biggest bulbs I had ever grown, not that I was trying for big size bulbs it just came with the onion. This year I had just planted my 1015Y's a week or so before the Polar Vortex and they all froze, I was afraid it had killed them but when it moderated they began to start growing but I think it hurt them as they didn't make as big as they had been and a few never did really come out it. Also the dry weather we had here all winter and spring didn't help. Like you I already have every thing I plan to put in the garden next spring but I have a limit to how big I go as I am just not able to take care much more. I have to work at it in stages. My garden is not a self sustaining work it just helps to stretch the grocery money a little. We eat a lot out of the garden through the summer and can as much as possible to help through the winter. We freeze a lot also. I don't know how you are able to take care of as much as you describe in your post, where do you get the energy? I worry about the young people today who can't or wont find the time to grow at least a little garden and very few know how to. It is becoming a thing of the past. I always tried to find time to grow a little something when my children were growing up, sometimes I would be so tired I didn't feel like doing much but I would get out when I came home and try to do what I could. When I was growing up we lived out of my Mother & Grandmother's garden, they would can every thing we ate through the winter. They never bought very little at the grocery store, maybe a little coffee, tea, sugar, flour, salt and that was about it.
I really enjoy reading your helpful gardening tips, keep up the good work.

Dawn is the original energizer bunny. LOL