Tips for growing onions from seed?

[ponyexpress]

Pony, your seedlings look great with 3 leaves already. The best place for them now is in the ground. I've transplanted with less and will be doing so this year.

I'm trying to confirm that I can grow big onions like Dixondale from seed. I was able to grow big onions last year using Dixondale's transplants. Now, can I do the same with my own from seeds?

Dixondale suggests that their transplants have 4-5 leaves so I'm going to keep them going in my "greenhouse" before transplant. I have them under my grow lights starting at 7am. Around 9am, I put them outside in my greenhouse to get the better sunlight and potentially warmer conditions. I try to keep the green house at 80-95deg since onions grow faster when it's warmer. The sun starts to go down around 6pm so I bring them back in under the grow lights until 7pm.

I do have some seeds that I did winter sowing. The seedlings are so far behind so I don't see how that can be a viable option for growing onions in the northeast unless you don't mind golf ball sized onions.

[Paquebot]

Now circle around to another fact. No matter if there are 2 or 5 leaves on a seedling, what happens? The leaves invariable all die while the plant repairs a new root system. Three leaves have ample reserve energy to support the new root growth before they die.

Martin

[ponyexpress]

Now circle around to another fact. No matter if there are 2 or 5 leaves on a seedling, what happens? The leaves invariable all die while the plant repairs a new root system. Three leaves have ample reserve energy to support the new root growth before they die.

I agree with you if all you want is a good, decent sized onion. With my dixondale plants last year, I definitely noticed a difference in size between the smaller & bigger onion plants. The bigger the plant, the bigger the onion. In the Dixondale bunch, you get a few really big plants, a bunch of mediums, and the rest are small or tiny.

I'm hoping that the ones I'm growing from seeds won't die because I will disturb the roots as little as possible. I'll report back with my findings as the season progresses.

I'm thinking that I may plant some of my bottle onions on Sunday. Will plant some at the community garden where it will get full sun and the rest at my house where I can keep a close eye on them.

[Paquebot]

The only time I ever saw all onion seedling leaves remain alive was almost 40 years ago before we had many sources. A guy was selling Walla Walla seedlings from back of his pickup. They were in 144-cell plug trays. If one wanted 3 dozen, that many were lifted from the tray. Virtually zero root disturbance and they never lost any leaves.

Martin

[Paquebot]

Jung's just got their Dixondale plants. My nose told me that it was raining when most were pulled. All varieties had very fresh and green tops. But size of most were too big. Searched through Patterson to find smallest plants and still only 39 in the bundle. Lots of ½" plants which will probably bolt. Redwing was close to ideal with 59 in the bundle which I selected. I didn't check every variety but all appeared to have about the same size tops.

Martin

[ponyexpress]

I got my Dixondale crate delivered a couple of days ago. Some of the bundles were quite big. Will post pictures later.

[Paquebot]

Pony, now that you have the case, you know that every plant has been trimmed to a certain length. Some p;ants may have had 5 leaves. Every single one of them are essentially dead. They will dry up and the plant will have to draw on its little bit of stored energy to start over with new growth.

Ironically, next door neighbor is now in his second year of learning how to garden. He started a lot of things early and one was Candy onions. This afternoon he asked what happened to his onions as he was certain that it did not get cold enough to hurt them. They were green when he planted them but today they have all flopped and white. No problem as they are working on recovering a damaged root system and then get back to making new leaves.

Martin

[bjbebs]

10 week old seedlings hit the ground running. Very warm, 75 plus with wind. Will set out 75 plants or so every couple days until the end of April. These plants went in on Monday and will be big as any store bought plant in a week. Might not see another 80 degree day until May.

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[bower]

I started some French Shallot seeds rather late on March 6 and just potted them up yesterday into the 9 cell pack - only about 30 plants. We've had a thaw and I was almost tempted to put them straight out, but thought better of it. they will certainly root up faster indoors or the greenhouse, and we are likely to have snow again and/or freezing nights for sure.
The cell packs are not really deep enough for a good onion seedling growth, from what I've been told, but it was a big benefit to transplants the year that I tried this before. The plants in cells produced much bigger onions than those that were trimmed and planted from a mass planting. Probably for the reasons Martin stated. Since the roots are not disturbed at transplant, there's no need to draw the energy back from the leaves. It would be a big expense of time and space for a large number of onions, but for my 30 shallots it's an easy cheat.
These shallots are only expected to make a small bulb in the first year from seed, anyway, and those bulbs are kept to plant the following year when they will grow larger and divide.

[Paquebot]

These shallots are only expected to make a small bulb in the first year from seed, anyway, and those bulbs are kept to plant the following year when they will grow larger and divide.

Not to change the subject but what shallot variety is available from seed which produces only a small bulb? True French shallots are only propagated from bulbs and very rarely produce flowers. Dutch hybrids grow from seed but make a large bulb. (They are really onions with similar characteristics to shallots.)

Martin

[bower]

[mention]Paquebot[/mention] I got these from Annapolis Seeds, where they are just dubbed "French Shallot". Someone elsewhere told me they are the same as Cuisse de Poulet or Zebrune, which I believe do also produce seeds from time to time. So they are not the Grey Shallot which many say is the true shallot. I don't care about the identity or whether they flower sometimes, would just like a multiplier that actually produces bulbs!

[Paquebot]

Zebrune is virtually an onion that looks-like a shallot. In the allium family, they are somewhere in between. I have grown them. They do not take two years to produce a full-sized bulb, they do it in one season. When planted as seed, you get a single bulb back. If bulbs is planted back, they will bolt to seed, not make bigger bulbs.

Martin

[bower]

Hmmm I may be in for another surprise then. Here is what the supplier says:
"Allium cepa var. aggregatum - An excellent keeper with red skins. French Shallots are the onion of choice at Yonder Hill Farm. Hardy and drought resistant, they always out-yield regular onions on their homestead. They grow into small-medium sized bulbs the first year from seed. In subsequent years, the bulbs can be planted like garlic in the fall, they'll grow into full clusters the following summer. From seed, grow them just like onions. "

[Paquebot]

The main thing about that description is that it does not apply to Zebrune or that matter, not to any French shallot. The French are very particular about their shallots and in fact refused to recognize the Dutch hybrids as shallots. Those are started from seed and grow as a single bulb, never a cluster.

Martin

[Paquebot]

I had time to go through about 12 crates of Dixondale plants. Overall the bundles were about same size as 30+ years ago. Sizes varied from some being too large with 4 or 5 leaves and over ¼" thick. One Patterson bundle had only 20 plants and I took that one just to give them a home. The bulk of the bundles throughout are well over the advertised 50 plants and those seedlings have/had only 3 leaves when they left Texas.

I will add that the Dixondale shipment is probably the best condition in at least 10 years, For all to come together, soil and weather conditions must be right. Then shipping connections must go well. I saw many thousands of seedlings today and would expect every one of them to produce a lovely onion.

Martin

[MrBig46]

My winter onions all survived the winter under a 19 g / m2 non-woven fabric. The temperature dropped to -15 ° C in February, currently night temperatures are around 0 ° C. The outlook for this week is positive, daytime temperatures above 15 ° C, then cold again with nighttime temperatures below 0 ° C. Onions are already growing. Cauliflowers in this flowerbed mostly did not survive despite the coverage of the fabric 19 g / m2 or under the fabric 50 g / m2. I think that this coverage rather harm them.
Vladimír

[mama_lor]

The Zebrune is also french. Yes, it is an onion, but I think dutch shallots are something else (not quite sure which, seems to be an american term). I have had some that multiply but also make seed if the spring is cold. Things like Red Sun, Biztro or other round shallots. They taste very good, to me the best of all onion-like things, not sure I've ever had the 'true' shallot but the long-ish ones from the store (not zebrune, probably things like Longor) are not as good as the round pink ones.

[ponyexpress]

Hi all, I've been away for a bit. Got Covid from my daughter so I had to quarantine myself for 2 weeks plus we had crummy weather. I finally planted some of my onions in the past week. The ones I grew from seed had a really good root system. I was able to pull the entire block out gently. The cells are 5" long. The trays I used are these: https://www.greenhousemegastore.com/dee ... plug-trays

I still have some more to plant so I'll take pictures of them so you can see what they look like. The roots were nice and long and not too bound.

When I got the Dixondale plants on April 1st, I put them in the same 5" deep tray because I had to stay isolated. They developed roots very quickly because I brought them outside during the day and then back in at night to protect them from the cold. Still, the roots are not as developed as the ones I grew from seed since they've only been growing again for 2+ weeks. So it's difficult for me to not disturb the roots when transplanting but I try to do it quickly and immediately water afterwards.

[Paquebot]

My Dixondale plants are just now showing fresh green growth after 19 days. Most of the Redwing plants were smaller than the Patterson but they greened up first. Redwing had a shorter root system that did not need trimming. Patterson were trimmed to just less than an inch. Expecting great results from both.

Added comments on shallots from seed. With the exception of Zebrune, just about all others are hybrids. They were developed probably less than 25 years ago. They are the nice round ones sold in supermarkets. Genetically they are onions which look like shallots but do not act like shallots.

Martin

[ponyexpress]

I recently planted some of my Dixondale and the ones I grew from seed. I couldn’t plant the Dixondales right away due to Covid so I used these roottrainer trays. They worked really well. Roots started quickly and were not bound. I was able to bring the plants in at night although the trays were quite heavy. Here are some pictures.

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