- Are all plants actually worth growing in the garden?
This is a question that I've often had
and it's actually come to my mind a lot
with things like root crops such as potatoes
which I'm now fully on board are a hundred percent worth it,
but one that I've never actually thought was worth it
and I just didn't think I could be convinced is
the humble onion.
And that's because you could go to the store,
you could buy these for so cheap and really I just thought,
what's the point?
How good can a homegrown onion actually taste
for it to be worth it
over just going to the store and buying a bag?
Well, this last year I grew a decent amount
and I was so blown away by, first of all
how little space they take, how easy they were,
how delicious they were, and how long they lasted.
So I've really, really, really stepped
up the production here.
Don't worry, we're not planting all of those.
Some of those are going to be for Kevin
and maybe someone else, but we are going to go
over how to plant onions and why these onions look like this
because this might not be the traditional way
that you see onions when you're growing them.
So let's talk about what this is
and how to actually grow onions.
Before we get started, let's talk
about what onions actually have to grow here.
So the first one up is Texas Legend.
This is one that I remember gets like six inches across.
I'm not gonna get too specific here
'cause all this information and more is on their website.
Next is Texas Super Sweet.
Should be a classic super sweet sort of yellow onion.
Great for caramelizing.
Then we have Red Creole and Southern Bell Red.
So these are the two red onions that I'm growing this year.
Last year I grew Red Rock
and that was actually quite delicious.
We love using red onions on salads and just as sort
of a garnish and for pickles, it's quite delicious.
Yellow Granex, this is the only one
in here that I've actually grown before.
This did really quite well
for me last year so I figured I'd grow it again
but everything else is entirely new.
Let's see, we got two more in here.
This is White Bermuda, love white onions.
They're so good raw.
Cut them up really finely, sprinkle them on tacos,
make salsa, very versatile
and useful to add a little pop of texture
and flavor to your last finishing touches on a meal.
And this is the specialty sort of onion.
So this is Red Torpedo Tropea and rather than globing
up like a standard onion, it sort of forms
a more elongate onion that's maybe about this thick
across like maybe as thick as a banana.
So they look more like a shallot
but they're actually an onion
and they're apparently quite delicious.
So I'm really excited to see what these guys are like.
If I recall these ones might be a intermediate day,
so I'll have to double check on that
but I'll probably plant it anyway
'cause I don't really have a choice.
I already have it.
So when it comes to actually growing onions,
there are basically three different methods.
You could start from seed and get seedlings
which is basically what these are.
These are essentially seedling transplants.
And then the last option, I'm gonna count
that as number two is starting from sets.
And sets are basically like little tiny pearl onions.
And the thing with sets is that they seem really convenient
but they have a really poor success rate
in terms of forming nice bulbs.
Everyone I've talked to and everyone who I've known
who have tried growing from sets, including myself,
found that they just kind of underperformed.
So while they seem really convenient
if you had to choose just one way to grow onions,
this is definitely it because all
of these are totally ready to go.
I mean, look how big this one is here.
If I tried to grow this at home,
this would've taken me, man, at least two months to get
to that size, probably more and I would've had
to fertilize it for it to thicken up quite like this.
So this has given me a huge headstart
and these will be very successful
at forming nice delicious big bulbs
and they're also quite easy to plant.
Before we actually move over, let's take a look
at these tops here.
You can see they've all been sort of trimmed off
at the top, most likely this is due
to shipping so it's easier.
But if you are growing your own onion starts,
you can actually trim them periodically
and this will encourage more root growth.
So that might be a doubled up strategy
where they were trimming them consistently to get
that root growth and also they trimmed them
at the end to make it easier to ship.
Let's go over to that back garden there
and plant a couple rows of onions.
I'm gonna start by just sprinkling some compost
in the new growing area.
(upbeat music)
This will help break up the soil at the surface,
make it easy to plant.
To solve the irrigation for these onions, I'm going
to be using six inch emitter quarter inch thick drip line.
As you can see here, I have four different drip tubes,
so I'm going to only plant four varieties of onions.
I do have six total, so I'll have to figure out
where to put the rest.
But for now I'm going to put the new ones to me.
So I'm gonna do Texas Super Sweet, Red Creole,
White Bermuda, and the Texas Legend.
Now I'm going to be planting them
a little bit closer together as I said.
I'm probably going to be shooting
for about four inches apart.
Now that is what they recommend
but what they also recommend is
that when you have multiple rows
of onions you do give them about a foot
and a half space apart.
Here I'm obviously closer to six inches apart,
so it's really quite tight.
But I feel like with my good climate
and my early warmer spring, they should grow just fine.
And having all the drip tubing here will give it plenty
of irrigation to cover all of its needs.
The reason why you need irrigation is
that onion roots can be quite shallow.
I'm going to use for my pinky to my last finger
as a sort of guide to give me four inches.
And all I'm going to do is come in with two fingers,
pull the soil back, put your onion in
and then firm the soil around it.
That's really all it takes.
That's one of the beauties about growing
from these sort of starts is that they're just so simple.
You don't want to go any deeper than an inch
because if you do, you'll impede the actual bulbing ability.
So you just wanna basically make sure these roots get nicely
into the soil and that's really all you have to do.
Now one of the cool things is that you can control
what kind of harvest you get.
If you wanted to collect some spring onions,
then you would want to plant them like this
where they're just maybe two inches apart, even tighter.
And the beauty of this is that come spring I'll be able
to harvest this one in the middle, grill that up
for a quick little lunch and then leave the other two
to keep growing to form that final bulb.
So I'm gonna go ahead, plant this row down
and then we'll move on to the next one.
Before we actually get these onions
in the ground, there's something really crucial
that I forgot to tell you you about
and that is when I was talking
about the types of varieties
that I was growing, I mentioned that
what I have are all short day varieties
but I didn't tell you what that means.
Short day varieties are onions that require 10 to 12 hours
of sunlight before they start bulbing.
All onions will be triggered to bulb
once they hit a certain amount of sunlight hours
and the short day varieties are happen to be around 12.
There's also intermediate
which is about 14 and long day, which is about 16.
And what that really means is that in here in San Diego
in summertime, I might max out around 14 hours of daylight.
And so if I take a 16 hour onion, those long day varieties
and put it here, it'll never actually bulb.
Now the counterpoint is if I take a short day variety onion
and put it somewhere further north, it will
actually mature faster, which really means
that it's going to be smaller because the longer it's
in the ground before it hits that daylight photo period,
the triggers with the bulb, the bigger the onion will get.
So that's why you wanna make sure
that depending on where you live in the United States,
how far north and south aka latitude,
that's gonna really control what kind
of onion you are able to grow.
So I am limited to growing basically just these
because these are the only short day varieties they have.
There are a lot of other interesting varieties
but you just can't grow them
in the different photo periods and you can't really fake it
'cause you can't provide more sunlight
than you naturally have.
So before you order your onions, make sure you know
what kind of variety you need
whether it's short, intermediate, or long.
Luckily most seed companies
and onion websites like Dixon Dale Farm have little maps
that show you exactly where you are in terms of what kind
of onion you can grow.
If you grow the wrong one,
you're gonna be sorely disappointed
because you're just not gonna get a proper bulb.
So make sure you grow the right variety
and you'll be very successful.
(upbeat music)
So the next step here is
to just make sure you water all your onions in.
We ended up with about a hundred
to 120 onions in this one patch
which is pretty incredible for such a small little area.
It's about maybe nine feet
in length and only not even three feet across.
So like I said you could get quite a lot of onions
in a small space.
And the watering in here is really helping make sure
those roots get into the soil.
And watering from above is really going to make sure
that water percolates down and pulls the roots down with it.
Remember these roots were really dry when we put them in
and while this bed wasn't totally dry,
it wasn't totally wet either.
So this little bit of watering will really make sure
that these onions succeed and anchor themselves in.
Now that the onions are watered in, we're going to go ahead
and give it a light sort of feeding.
So this is a fruit and flour type fertilizer, meaning
that that middle number, that P is a little bit higher
and that's exactly what we want 'cause we want the P
and K to be higher to make sure
that it develops proper roots.
And that's really all it is with onions.
They have such weak shallow roots
that they can use a little bit of assistance to get going.
A little bit of nitrogen will also help them
in that early stage of growth.
But really you're looking
for that middle number, which is P.
So again, this is probably
about half the strength of what they would recommend.
I totally eyeballed it.
It's maybe even just the third of the strength.
It's really just to give that a little bit
of extra perk right at the beginning of their growth cycle
and make sure those roots can really get growing.
So you can see the water is nice and brown
and it definitely smells like a has organic fertilizer.
If you order in bulk like I did
each one of these bunches will only set you back $7.
As you order more bundles, particularly
from this farm, the price starts dropping.
Since I ordered six bundles to split
between me and a few others, the price ended
up being $7 per bundle.
And that means that each one
of these onions is only gonna cost 9 cents each.
That is way cheaper than what you could get
in the grocery store and you can't get this variety
and just the satisfaction of seeing a giant field
of onions growing like this.
I'm really excited to see how these grow
and you'll definitely see them
in the monthly tour updates as they keep growing.
But we probably won't get the first initial harvest
until sometime around March where I might pluck a couple
of these as spring onions
and do a quick little recipe for you guys.
But that's it for planting onions,
one of the most delicious, easiest crops that I've added
to my repertoire, and I highly recommend you do it too.