I do! I was already there for actual home improvement needs.

It was just an observation.

Perhaps it is just a local issue. The big box stores around here already have the onion plants bunches available as well as the cabbages and other cold season vegetable plants. It is planting time for all those here now - with plans for protection if needed.

Other plants can be purchased now for potting up indoors or GH to get an earlier start on them and then transplanting out later.

Dave

It may very well be regional :-)) We are still 6-8 weeks out before things like onion sets, potatoes or cool season veggie starts are available. Or even recommended to be planted anywhere other than in a greenhouse!! But seeds are available just about everywhere here, as are asparagus crowns and bare root fruit trees and cane fruits. And that's because it makes no difference to them what the soil or air temp is, as long as they are planted while still fully dormant.

Dave, despite our similar Zone ratings, I think your AVERAGE temps are higher, allowing you to plant. Our average high and low are still 43/22 here.

Onion SEEDS?

Onions are sold as seeds, sets or starts :-)

Onions grow best from seed.

I'll say it again. USDA zone ratings are a measure of winter survival, and don't necessarily pertain to spring, summer, and fall crops. The Sunset ratings, while kind of confusing, are much more accurate for most of the gardening season.

Now, our growing season is pretty long, but all the seeds here appear at the beginning of the season. Boom. Tomatoes, peppers, and everything else in January. Why not? Nothing is going to happen to them sitting on the store shelves that wouldn't happen to them in storage.

Some of us don't even have nurseries! Even our local Farmers' Coop doesn't sell onion seeds. Onion sets are what are the tradition, and thus what are sold.

- Tn. Farmers' Coop is, as its name implies, the statewide cooperative
that serves Tennessee's farming community. Overall, it's a pretty good
resource for a variety of garden products, but is geared more to farming
than to gardening. They are less expensive on some things, but more
expensive on others... as well as limited on choices. They mostly just
sell the most popular products, and our county has many more livestock farms
than produce.

Just 2 weeks ago I went to Lowes, Home Depot, and the Farmers' Coop looking for onion seeds. The Coop didn't yet have any seeds stocked (just some closeout corn and watermelon from last year.) They also did not yet have any onion sets available, nor did they know for sure what varieties they would carry. Their headquarters sends them their spring inventory when the time comes (they didn't know when that time would be.)

Both Home Depot, and Lowes had a couple of choices of seeds, but there was NO info on long, short, or intermediate day on the seed packs!??? Yes, I brought it to their attention, but the workers had no power to influence what is sold, besides it was Burpee and Ferry-Morse's short-sighted idiocy. And to really bring the point home, some of the varieties were long day, and some were short day!!?? - Yes, I made the clerks search the varieties on the internet lol... explaining that we are in the intermediate region, and just one of the varieties (Walla Walla) was even appropriate for being able to reach decent size in our area.

I should note that Tennessee (especially my region) is directly in the middle of the long day, short day divide. We can grow almost any onion, but only the few varieties which do well in pure intermediate day-length conditions will reach optimum size. This may well explain why only sets are sold in the local Coop, as well as why green onions are much more popular *in these parts* than bulbing/storage onions.

So, if you have a nursery in your area, be glad, and frequent their selection as much as your circumstances allow, but remember... not everyone has the same resources available to them. Even Southern Exposure had limited options for pure intermediate onion seeds.

I hit our local Southern States Co-op today for a bag of layer feed and they had just put up their complete seed selection along with Burpees brand. No potatoes there yet, or onions that I recall. I'm 90% there on the seeds.

FWIW, Johnny’s has the most extensive collection of intermediate day onion varieties I’ve seen for any online/mail-order.

Onion seeds are not a big seller, but Burpee usually has at least one on their seed racks usually a Sweet Spanish type. These are Golden Grande from a Burpee seed rack several years ago. Long day but not extremely. will grow here, but don't bulb until mid June. Summers get too hot here.

My local Home Depot started putting out some seed racks, I picked up onion seed a week ago and they just stated germinating. They also have sets.

I’ve been trying to find my Sunset zone.

At one point years ago, I saw a map that included the whole US, but I’ll be damned if I can find it now. Sunset’s website only breaks it down by state by Western states, doesn’t go anywhere east of the Rockies.

Here you go. This is sunset zones for the whole US

http://www.plantsearchonline.com/zones.htm

Most stores aren't stocked yet that I know of, and I don't imagine they would be until at least March. Certainly way too early. Even seed starting can't be started until at least mid Feb. here, most not until March, onions/leeks an exception. I've started mine about 1/22. And they're pretty happy now. If planting under cover, that's a different story however!

That's a fair point. Sunset climate zones are used mainly by those in the west. This very screwy Sunset web page, entitled "Find your U.S. Sunset climate zone" doesn't help you find it ... anywhere! I too thought I once saw it laid out for the U.S., but I can't find it either. It should be said that, once you get east of the Rockies, gardening conditions are pretty much all about latitude. Very much not so out west. The USDA zones might be instructive for eastern summer gardening, but they don't work at all out west.

It would be interesting to understand how the IECC zones (for building energy efficiency requirements) relate to gardening. https://energycode.pnl.gov/EnergyCodeReqs/. I suspect they're a lot more instructive than the USDA zones.

FWIW, for summer gardening, the American Horticultural Society "Heat Zone" map is great. The AHS sells the map, but you can get a nice copy here.

There is a breeding project where they are working on restoring onions to be able to set true onion seed and true garlic seed. Similar to true potato seed. Also working on true sweet potato seed.

Onions DO set true seed, Keen!

That would really be something if they could get onions to set true garlic seed? ;-p

"Onions DO set true seed, Keen!"

That isn't what was said above.

There is a research project underway to attempt to get them to do so but in most cases it is unsuccessful. Typical garden onions (the Cepa group) are biennial. So according to most seed-saving guides, to get true seeds you have to replant onions from the previous year in year 2 and then bag the flower heads to prevent crossing. Those that are just allowed to over-winter into year 2 seldom produce true seed because of insect-vectored pollination.

Dave

For me, references to "true potato, true garlic, and true sweet potato seed" mean producing actual seed to use in growing future crops instead of using potato tubers, garlic cloves, and sweet potato slips. It's a bit different than true to type non-crossed seed from crops normally grown from seed. There was a lot of discussion here of true potato seed (TPS) a few years back.

[https://www.houzz.com/discussions/have-true-potato-seed-tps-dsvw-vd~1445082[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/have-true-potato-seed-tps-dsvw-vd~1445082)

True garlic seed is being worked on by some people who are finding that removing the bulbils on the scape early on may allow some of the small flowers on the scape to develop and sometimes set seed. As I recall, some types of garlic may do this with your help and others do not. It seems like germination of the true seeds was very low.

https://goingtoseed.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/true-garlic-seed-update/

People working on the true potato seed and true garlic seed are looking to have the genetic variability that seed would give over the clonal sameness of tubers and cloves. So any cross pollination that would likely occur would be okay.

And how did this thread get to this topic? ...Maybe all the talk of availability of onion sets, plants, and seed. I need to get some new onion seed....big box or local nursery.....my seed left from previous years has not germinated this year. I think I still have time to try again with fresh seed.