I grow onions every year and can be sown at the end of autumn for overwintering or at
the start of Spring.
Get yourself a bag of onion sets. These are red barons, which grow quickly but don’t
store for very long. With red barons, I’d recommend planting a handful every few weeks
for a continued harvest in the summer.
I’m planting these in March, so pop a coat on, grab your onion sets and a dibber to make
planting quicker. For those planting at the end of the year, a dibber is also a really
good Christmas gift for a gardener friend.
Sets are planted with the pointy end pointed up and the roots will grow from the rounded
bottom.
Planting is super simple. Push your dibber into the ground to make a hole which should
be about the same depth as the onion set. Drop the onion set into the hole and repeat.
Space them about a hands width apart.
I’m planting into one of my raised beds, in a sunny part of the garden, but it would
be the same process if planting straight into the ground.
Once you’ve finished planting, brush the soil back into each hole to roughly cover
the set. Then, grab your watering can and pour a little water into each hole. This isn’t
so much to water the set as the soil is damp at this time of the year already. It’s more
to properly cover them with soil. The water will wash soil around the set, removing any
air holes. Air holes are bad for root development.
As the soil starts to warm up, the set will start coming to life. Week 3, the middle of
april, shows the first shoots poking out of the ground. Keep the area free from weeds
which would take moisture away from the developing roots.
There’s still not many sunlight hours at this time of the year and you can see the
shoots leaning towards the sun over weeks 4 and 5.
Week 6 is the start of May, and I’ve covered the growing area with a hay mulch. This adds
nutrients to the soil and slows down evaporation. You don’t need to do this, but it reduces
the amount of watering these onions will need.
Over the next few weeks, through May, you only really need to keep an eye out for slugs
and snails trying to eat the shoots and making sure the soil doesn’t dry out as it gets
warmer. I recommend watering heavily, less often, rather than a light sprinkle each day
which doesn’t really penetrate the mulch.
Week 10 is the start of June, and the onions are growing stronger now with the increased
sunlight hours. They aren’t leaning anymore, and week 11 shows the start of some scapes
developing. Scapes are the seed pods, but will take energy away from the developing
bulb. Remove them by simply pinching off the scape head, like so.
The onions won't all develop scapes at the same time, so check often and remove them
when spotted.
Over the next couple of weeks, the onions are growing larger and larger and more energy
is being sent down into the bulb. They will be growing underground and the only thing
to keep an eye on is making sure the soil doesn’t dry out.
We’re into July now and the plant will start to fall towards the ground. This is normal
and a good sign that it’s nearly ready to harvest.
Once the stems are all laying flat to the ground like so, they can be harvested.
Harvesting is simple. Grab the stem, just about the soil surface and pull the bulb out
of the ground like so. Pull them all out the ground in the same way. Whoops, knocked the
camera.
Depending on the type of onion you’re growing, they may take a little longer, but the method
is the same. Growing garlic is almost exactly the same so if you can grow one, you can grow
the other. I’ll put a link to growing garlic at the end of the video.
Once they’re all out the ground, they need a week or two to dry out before they can be
stored.
Spread them out in a tray or a drying rack, and place them outside in a warm, sunny location.
The skin of the onion will dry out and the remaining energy in the stem will go into
the bulb, and the stem will shrivel up.
After a couple of weeks, the onion is ready to clean up and eat or store. Cut off the
stem like so, and clean up the roots by snipping them close to the bulb.
To store, keep them in a cool, dry and dark place. Some onions store better than others
and you should space out your sowing so that you have as many as you need throughout the
harvesting period.
And that’s how simple it is to grow onions from sets. I hope this video helped and encouraged
you to give onions a go. If you learned anything or you’re already an onion master, pop your
experience down in the comments so we can all learn together.
Thank you to my patrons for their ongoing support. You make these videos possible and
keep trying to make them as useful as they can be.
Here are some other videos which you may find useful, including how to grow garlic which
I mentioned earlier.
Thank you so much for your time, and as always, happy growing