Well, I think I'll give up on this. On doing a little research, there are virtually no storage onions that are short day. Red Creole is the exception. As to size, sweet onions have a lot of water, which is why they're big, and sweet onions are non-storage because they have a lot of water. Not even clear if there are ANY large storage onions.

Now, I could try growing long-day onions down here, but I don't get 14 hours of daytime until June, and that's what they'd need to bulb. I sure don't want to wait until mid-summer to free up my garden space that I use for onions. Normally, for me, planted out in November, they bulb up in March, and I harvest onions in April. Definitely a winter crop for me.

No ideas here. But just to get closure, I posted the question to Dixondale, who are the real experts. They say that really there are no good short-day storage onions. Red Creole are the best, and Texas Legend has some little storage potential. Oh well.

Dixondale support, BTW, has always been very helpful to me. They answer promptly and clearly.

Enjoyed the thread even if you answered your own question. I sent in an order from Dixondale this fall, glad to hear they respond to questions. I grew onions from seed last year but this year the germination was not very good, so I decided to give Dixondale a try.

My local nursery gets a large carton from Dixondale every year, with several varieties. They sell the bunches for two or three bucks apiece. VASTLY less than what you'd pay if you ordered directly from Dixondale (mostly shipping). I feel blessed. The trick is to find out when they arrive before everyone else does. Starting in a few days, I'll be calling every day.

If you still want to find a short day storage onion I'd suggest you use the USDA ARS site as a research tool. If you click on their advanced search button you'll get search results for every thing they have otherwise you'll only get what they're shipping now which may not be much, if anything.

As I said use them as a knowledge base as I doubt they'll ship you anything and if they would you'd need a UPS account and they charge about $22 minimum shipping. They only want to ship to big companies and universities and don't ship to people even if you're a vet. The folks at Geneva NY seem to be more flexible; I guess because they have to trim their apple trees anyway.

I once found long day storage onion there but they wouldn't share with me.

Thank you. That's a MARVELOUS site. Now, it's a little tricky to use because if you ask for "short day storage onions", you just get a list of loads of storage onions, most of which are long-day. BUT, you can pull up info on each of the named varieties, and get details on them from other sites. I need to spend more time on that USDA site, but within a couple of minutes I did find "White Creole", "Yellow Sweet Spanish", "Yellow Globe Danvers", and some varieties of "Texas Grano" which several providers identify as being short day storage onions with large bulbs. Of some value is that the USDA site does list the "origin" of the plant, and you just pick out onions that originated in a warm climate. That is, don't bother with onions that originated in Wisconsin or Michigan! Then again, onions that originated in, say, India are not necessarily commercially available.

But the key is the name. You just Google the name of the onion, and if it is commercially available, you're likely to find economical providers who give detailed descriptions.

Not too surprisingly, Dixondale is pretty much only going to talk about onions THEY sell, and they don't sell these.

Well, onion classification is somewhat random. I thought Yellow Sweet Spanish and Yellow Globe Danvers were short day, but it is listed other places as long day. Many onion purveyors don't even bother to cite long- or short-day. Yep, they give planting instructions up the kazoo, but no day-length classification. I guess they feel that you want to watch onion plants grow, but don't really care about whether they actually make onions.

Also, one store says White Creole are medium-large onions, and another says small-medium. Flip a coin, I guess.