growing onions from onion sets is not only easy but results in a very
productive harvest in today's episode we will look at how to grow onions from
onion sets so these are the onion sets and in the right season around December
or January you can buy the best quality onion sets at your local gardening store
and we are going to be growing two varieties of onions from these sets and
these are the white onions as well as the red onions now in the bag of onions
that you get the onion sets you will have a lot of onions the goal is to
choose the best onion sets that you will be growing in your home garden now some
of these may already be wilting or rotting you want to make sure that you
do not include those onions in your garden and as you can see here we have
separated out our good onion sets from the bad ones and you want to choose
onion sets that are about 1/2 inch in thickness or so and those result in the
best quality onions now to prepare our raised beds we are using a very well
draining potting mix in our raised beds and I have a lot of recipes for the
potting mix and we're also adding some rock dust now rock dust is an organic
amendment for your raised beds and it's very effective so the only thing that
really comes close to rock dust as far as providing nutrients go our worm
castings so if you have a well draining potting mix and you add some worm
castings and rock dust that's all you really need to grow good onions in your
home garden now to space our onions we will be planting them in rows and for
bigger bulbs which is what we are aiming for here we will be planting them about
6 inches apart and as you can see we are planting them approximately 6 inches
apart you can go about 4 to 6 inches and that will give you a decently sized
onion bulb after you plant one row the second row of onions can then be planted
as you see here and the distance between the rows again is about 6 to 10 inches
now its recommended that you keep about ten
inches between your onion sets and that will result in decently sized bulbs
42 days later you can see that the onion plants have grown quite well and at this
time if you don't have amendments in your soil it's a good time to add some
kind of a fertilizer now if you are using a liquid fertilizer I recommend
that you use a liquid fertilizer every 10 to 15 days and if you're using a
slow-release fertilizer you need to use it at least every two months or so now
the key to growing onions is to treat it as a leafy green not as a root crop and
that is because if you add an all-purpose fertilizer the fertilizers
will provide a lot of energy into growing good leaves which in turn will
result in growing good onions eventually because all the energy from the onion
leaves will eventually go into the bulb and I will provide links to all the
fertilizers that you can use to grow your onions
now 121 days since planting you can see that
the leaves will now start wilting a little bit they'll start
becoming brown and this is a good time to start trimming the leaves and
removing the dead leaves decaying leaves helps keeps pests and diseases away so I
highly recommend that you watch your onion plants and then try to keep them
clean by removing all the dead and wilting leaves now there are not a lot
of pests that attack onions but if you see leaf damage it's mostly caused by
thrips and a solution to that is to spray your onion plants with soapy water
whenever I have grown onions I have not really seen any insects or diseases on
my onion plants and with all the clippings that you have removed from the
plant these can be composted and finally you will have an onion bed that's clean
and it will help your onions grow bigger and better bulbs as the plant grows
now at 149 days you can see that the onion plants have grown quite well and you can
actually see the onion bulbs forming at the bottom of the plant and I've also
removed some of the soil from the bottom of the onion plants
and this just makes the bulbs a little easier to grow you can see that I've
removed a little bit of dirt from around the base of the onion and the onions are
now almost like they're floating on the ground and which is perfectly fine you
just need to make sure that the onion plants are well watered because they may
look healthy but they might be actually under watered now at 163 days since
planting you can see that the onion balls are now at a stage where they can
be harvested and we will begin harvesting the onions and the way to do
that is to just uproot the onions and keep them on the raised bed where they
were and allow them to dry for about a week or two now make sure that you're
not watering your onion plants at this stage the last thing you want is your
onion plants rotting due to the moisture around them so at this stage you should
stop watering completely in fact I recommend that you stop watering about a
week before you start harvesting your onions and they will be perfectly fine
and you can just uproot all your onion plants just like that and keep them on
the raised bed now if you see onion bulbs not forming there is a trick to
start the bulbing process and which is to break the necks of the onion which
means that you just bend the onions right about three to four inches from
the bottom on the stem and that will trigger the onion plants to produce
bigger bulbs now we are growing two varieties of onions here and they are
not too different and as you can see the onions will start drying out now and it
doesn't really matter if they're in full Sun or complete shade but they generally
do very well in partial shade when they are drying so if you have a place which
gets partial shade that's where you should be drying your onions now after
about a week or so you can take the same onions and then braid them and let them
dry in the air now it's a very simple process I'm using some Mason's line on
which I will be braiding these onions and the braiding process is not really
complex all you do is take the onion and wrap it around the Masons line
and they should just remain there and the benefit of doing this is the onions
are now elevated they're actually hanging in the air drying in the air and
you can actually use this as a method of storage in case you want to and I've
chosen an area which has partial shade which works best for this purpose but
you can also dry your onions in the garage and they will dry quite well and
don't worry too much about how the braiding process works or try to get an
expert in how you do the braiding it's just a matter of taking the onions and
wrapping it around the Masons line as you see and slowly the onions will start
drying out and if you notice I haven't washed the onions you want to keep the
dirt on and eventually the dirt will fall off but this is a good way to try
your onions you can dry them in bunches like these like you see here and they
will usually dry in about three to four weeks but you can also start consuming
your onions while they are drying so that's what we did we hung bunches of
these onions in our backyard and we also started consuming some of these onions
as they were trying so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing
onions from sets let us know what is your preferred way of growing onions if
you like this video do give us a thumbs up and if you have any questions or
comments leave them in the comments box below we'll see you again soon happy
gardening