My latitude here is 36, almost 37, so according to your information it is short day for me. I have tried to grow long-day onions and yes, they are smaller. They also don't seem to keep very well. If I were you, I'd try it, you might well be in an area that could grow either kind. I'll be interested to see what other forum members have to say. --Ilene

Jacob - not all long day onions are created equal. Some types like Red Wing are only adapted down to 43N and north while others like Ailsa Craig, Patterson, and Copra can be grown successfully much further south. Copra is one of the best storing onions available. I still have a dozen or so left from last season. Yes, they won't reach their size potential that they would if grown further north but they should give you decent tennis ball to baseball sized bulbs. I know Okiedawn usually grows Copra in her garden and she is quite a bit further south.

Johnny's seeds gives the latitude adaptation range for most of the types they sell which is much better info than just short day, long day, or day neutral.

You might want to look up intermediate day onion varieties (sometimes called day neutral). I don't know all that much about the specific varieties, since I live in Michigan, but I do know that intermediate day onions should do well when grown in the middle part of the US.

Rodney

Rodney, I have considered trying intermediate day onions, particularly a variety called Australian Brown (sold by Southern Seed Exposure). The trouble I have found is that the seed companies that I am planning to order from do not sell intermediates. I’m planning to order from Stokes Seeds, Victory Seeds, and maybe Fedco (a fan of the prices, not a fan of political agenda...), and all mostly sell long day. I’ll probably just order an intermediate from a separate company, though the shipping costs may not be justifiable for just one item.

Has anyone tried the varieties Dakota Tears or Clear Dawn? Fedco rates them at 37 degree latitudes and up. I figure they may grow well in my location?

Jack, I figure I can deal with slightly smaller onions. I obviously don’t want golf ball sized, but baseball sized would be plenty, so long as they store. I need to try Johnny Seeds. One reason I have avoided the company is their very high prices, but if they’re as good as so many people seem to say....I have seen that Dawn grows some long days much farther south, one being Copra. I may go post a thread on the Okie forums.

Ilene, sounds to me as if just trying it may be the trick. I can’t find a whole lot of info on this topic online, and I may be quite surprised.

Just order the intermediate varieties you want as plants (not 'sets' but plants) rather than seeds. You'll have much better results with plants and no real advantage from using seeds IMO. I only grow-from-seed those varieties I can't find plants for.

Dave

Jacob - I bet there is someplace around you that sells Dixondale plants. The place I buy mine at always has about 10 different types including Copra, Candy, Red Candy, 1015Y, Walla Walla, Superstar.

Do you want me to pick up a packet of Early Dividend broccoli for you in February? I'd be glad to.

Long day onions like Lone Jack said are quite variable. I can grow Spanish types here in middle Georgia. They size up fine. Problems is that they take most of summer, which in my case is very hot and often dry. Short day onions are harvested almost 2 months before long day onions begin to bulb. Plenty of time for planting hot weather vegetables. I have not tried the super pungent long keepers which are always long day. The intermediate/ day neutral varieties will grow in most areas and I agree that they are a good place to start. After success with those you can start pushing the envelope.

I’m pretty sure a local feed store I go to sells plants from Dixondale, but it doesn’t seem Dixondale has many good storage varieties for my location. We eat a lot of onions, especially fresh, so I’m really after storage onions.

Farmerdill, you’re definitely at a lower latitude than I am, and you seem to have good luck with Spanish types (generally the storage ones I’ve seen). They would probably work well here then, I would assume. Have you ever grown Yellow of Parma? I don’t mind if I harvest the onions a little later, as that would get me closer to cooler weather for storage. Our garage stays right around 50-60 degrees all winter by the house wall, which would be pretty good for Onion storage I imagine. It’s also normally quite dry in there, including the humidity.

Dixondale has Copra which lasts in my cold cellar until We have eaten them all, usually in March some time.

All these comments made me think about a couple of things.

One thing is that the long-day varieties tend to be on the "hot" side. I don't mind that so much in my cooking, as an onion goes a long way with the flavor when it's I little hot. But for eating fresh, some of these varieties can pack a wallop for the mouth!

If you want to start onions from seed, you need to plant the seeds in the previous fall. Then you are assured of having transplants for the following spring that will grow well and bulb up. If I'm planting onion seed I will usually plant the seed intensively in a spot that I can protect in the winter with some kind of cover. One year, about this time, I planted Candy onions in a WinterSowing gallon milk jug and set it out. By the time others were buying Dixondale plant bundles, I had my own little plants which were acclimated to my area and didn't set on a shelf anywhere drying out. Dixondale's onions are marketed far too early here for the plants in the bundle that are bigger than pencil-size, and there are usually quite a few in the bundle that are. Also quite a few that are very tiny. So what I get that I can use are the ones in between. I have not tried "heeling in" the larger onion plants and then covering them, but I have tried to keep them alive inside until after April 15, the average date of our last frost, without much success. By April, all the good Dixondale plants are gone from our local stores, or so ratty-looking that I wouldn't waste my time on them. When the pencil-size ones are planted too early, they bolt to seed. When the tiny ones are set out, they get dehydrated and die.

One fall, I bought a "bulk" package of hybrid Candy seed, and I had good onions the following summer. Since you are familiar with keeping seeds in the freezer, this might be a good option for you. Which opens the door for another point I was going to make and that is, if you have to buy onion plants and find them terribly expensive, then make sure your selections are open-pollinated. Leave a few representatives of these onions in the garden till the following spring and they will go to seed. You can collect this seed and then you will be prepared for the coming fall, when you can start your own. If you want a LOT of onions for the lowest cost, seed is really the way to go, and the only way to fight off high shipping costs, if you cannot collect seed, is to order enough for several years' plantings and keep the extra seeds in the freezer. Spread out over several years, the shipping costs end up being nominal.

Well I see there have been two more comments posted on this thread when I started writing this comment so maybe some of these points have already been made by someone else. If so, sorry for the redundance. --Ilene

Oh, Jack! Forgot to reply to your comment RE broccoli. I'd love some Early Dividend broccoli. I've wondered if they sell it around here, but I have yet to find it. When you're ready, follow me, and you can message me. Need to read the rest of the replies. These threads get away from one pretty quickly if busy...

I was disappointed in Copra...too strong and maybe too tough?

Jacob - a few weeks ago I was watching an episode of “The Family Plot” which is a local gardening show on PBS here in this area. There was a guy on talking about growing onions in Tennessee. He was an Ag extension agent from around nashville which is slightly north of here and in middle Tennessee. He claimed that both long and short day onions will do well in Tennessee since it’s within the transition zone. The same thing might be true for you, as you’re just to the west but slightly higher in elevation. I can’t comment on how valid his statement was, because I really only grow onions for eating fresh and not for storage. I’m at 35 degrees latitude.

They have a YouTube channel. Here is a URL to it

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1yWvD192f3gHZ08_T-k5lQ

A bunch of us here order from Dixondale early, usually Candy. I have never gotten dried out plants. I still had 6 onions left the first of May. Stored in pantyhose hanging under my basement stairway. I've never had a bad one stored this way.

Dixondale has free shipping so you you pay the same price as you would driving down to the garden center and buying them there. You also get the full "catalog" rather then just the ones your garden center decides to order (mine for some reason orders a ton of short day onion varieties despite the fact we are at the upper part of intermediate day or the lower end of long day). Also you have them delivered to you as early or late in the season as you want.

Oh, that's interesting. I seem to remember shipping didn't used to be free. Either that, or they were quite a bit more expensive to buy in quantities that would be right for just one person's garden. I'll look into that. I did notice, last time I was on their website, that they would ship whenever they were asked to and I thought that was a real plus.

PS: I just looked at their price list. It's $12 for one bundle, $17.50 for two, and the price decreases as the number of bundles ordered increases till you get to 30 bundles, which break down to $3.30 each. So if I could get 10 people that live driving distance from me to go together on an order of 2 bundles each, I guess that'd make the price reasonable enough, but still not as economical as buying a package of the seed, planting intensively in late fall under a milk-jug "dome", then separating the plants in the spring for transplanting.

My local garden center sells Dixondale plants for $2.50 a bunch starting in early March and they offer at least 8 or 10 varieties. Here in KC, they carry all of the intermediate day varieties and a couple short day and long day types. I believe they get 2 shipments, one in early March and another a few weeks later. I buy mine when they get the first shipment and plant them within a couple weeks.

Local stores here get the onion bundles as soon as people will come buy them, which is ok as long as the plants are not as big around as a pencil. But there are always quite a few that size in the bundle. Setting those out when there are still a few nights below freezing will only result in those larger ones bolting. Candy onions have made seed heads for me but there are never any seed inside. Since when they bolt, the onion under the ground does not develop much, the bigger ones are a loss, and they take up space in the bundle making you think you're getting more plants than you are. HOWEVER, if you buy the onion bundle after all danger of frost is past, those bigger ones are the ones that are most likely to mature into softball size onions. I might have located a source for Dixondale onion bundles that are bought by the merchant closer to our last frost date and therefore might work for me. It's a small family greenhouse. I intend to try that this spring and see if it works out.

Ilene - That is one of the benefits of buying Dixondale bunches locally. I can inspect the bundles and choose ones that do not have too many that are too large. I plant any of the larger seedlings in a different bed at 1" spacing to harvest as green onions.

That's a good idea, Lone Jack. I've tried growing those bigger ones inside in little pots of potting soil and then moving them outside after our last frost but I haven't had very much success with that.

If I remember correctly, bolting can only occur after the plants have developed 5 leaves. At that point the temperature only has to drop below 40 degrees for a certain period? Pretty tricky. Most people I see planting locally (and dont have issues with bolting) seem to plant about the end of March or beginning of April, smaller plants since we can still catch a hard frost for another month, rarely later. I’ll probably try and follow a similar schedule. On our property, my garden stays a little shaded most places until the end of March, one the sun rises above our southern tree line, so there’s not much sense in planting out earlier. I have a new location that I am building raised beds in that will get sunlight very late into the fall and very early in the spring that will be reserved for the earliest crops. We may be removing a red oak next spring though that cause some most of my shade due to its severe leaning towards our house. We already took out a white oak and another red oak in the same tree line for the same reason this past fall.

I was not aware Dixondale offered free shipping. That’s nice! I think we do have some stores locally that sell Dixondale plants quite early in the season. I may try starting some from seed this year as well as planting out transplants from Dixondale. Our daylight length doesn’t climb above 10 hours until mid-late January, so no sense in starting them in my cold frame until then. I may build a hotbed this year to keep the seedlings warm. I’m going to try some long days, particularly Yellow of Parma, and see what happens. They will take much longer to bulb up so I think they may take to a later planting alright. I suppose I probably should have seeded in the fall.

Well actually I think shipping is factored into the onion price, if you know what I mean. Good luck finding onion bundles in good shape by the time freezes are behind us. I haven't, so far, been able to find any local merchants who sell them that late. Most gardeners, and I have been among the guilty, get so anxious to get their hands in the dirt that they plant things too early. My problem is that I'm in that little narrow band of 6a and most of the state is zone 7. So everybody seems to assume we are ALL zone 7 and they ship and/or stock things accordingly, even the local Lowe's that should know better.

Lone Jack, I used to buy locally, but find ordering through the mail from Dixondale is a LOT better. You have a lot more choices of varieties. You get really fresh plants. You do no have the problem of being sold out because of a warm spell. ..and I can pick my shipping date.

Wayne - actually I get mine the first day they come into the store and they are very fresh and they have dozens if not hundreds of crates full. They also have all of the Dixondale varieties that would be suitable to my area and even several long day types as well.

This year I will only be growing Candy, Red Candy, Superstar, and Copra.

I live at latitude 36.9° and have great success with both Copra and Candy. The Copra typically yield 3+" onions and the Candy 3.5-5" onions. I buy plants from Dixondale and plant them out on April 1st, 6" between plants and 12" between rows. After rooted (about three weeks) I apply a heavy grass clipping or straw mulch, and keep them fed with a high nitrogen fertilizer (bloodmeal). Grow the green and let the green grow the bulb.

Thomas, looks as if I'm just half a degree lower, if that, than you. Thanks for the tips, much appreciated. I have read in the past to treat onions as a leafy green, high nitrogen, rather than a root, high potassium and phosphorus.

I should point out that I live at 2,600 feet elevation in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia, so while my day length should be the same as yours based on latitude, my climate may be colder. That said we seem to have the same zone so maybe not. My average temperatures at planting time April 1st is a high of 59°F and a low of 34°F, and in mid July our average high is 82°F and low is 60°F.

Sounds as if your summers are a little bit cooler than ours. Mid July for us is an average high of 88 F and average low around 66 F. Our April 1 average temps are about the same, maybe a few degrees warmer here. We’re around 1500 feet above sea level at our house, 900 feet lower!

I’m curious, what is your average last frost around there? Here it is about April 21, but frost into mid May isn’t unheard of. I figure I would probably want to aim for planting a week or so earlier than you, as I’m sure your elevation leads to a slightly cooler spring.

They say the last frost date is May 16th but I have not seen a frost that late in the six years I have been here. I plant sensitive crops around May 20 provided the 10 day forecast does not threaten frost.